Prospects of Green Hydrogen for Indian autos – especially MHCVs

The continual efforts to reduce emissions from vehicles has elicited interest in Green Hydrogen as a potential fuel for Indian MHCVs, aiming to address both environmental challenges and dependency on imported fuels.

Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicles (MHCVs), that operate in mid-mile and long-haul sectors, contribute significantly higher emissions when compared to smaller vehicles due to their excessive annual mileage. Furthermore, these vehicles need high payload and volume capacities, making it challenging for batteries to be used, considering the substantial weight and volume of such batteries. In this context, the potential of using Green Hydrogen as a fuel becomes relatively encouraging, considering its lower weight and higher energy density, when compared to batteries. In India, there is an ulterior advantage besides being environmentally friendly, which is to reduce petroleum dependency and conservation of foreign exchange. This is because Green Hydrogen can be produced domestically.

Additionally, it is also observed that buses have limited payload requirements, comparatively. Therefore, battery-powered electric buses are being used across India and other countries, with expectations to grow significantly in numbers.

With this, it can be established that the adoption of Green Hydrogen powered MHCVs is essential on various levels. However, there are several key challenges like:

1) On-road and TCO prices: On-road prices and TCO will be influenced significantly by the choice of powertrain technologies & onboard storage systems in the MHCVs as used in Indian conditions. These include options like Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines (H- ICE), which emit NOx rather than carbon emissions, and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (H-FCEV), which produce water as the byproduct.

2) Storage & Pan–India Distribution of Green Hydrogen: De-centralised access to commercially viable green hydrogen as a fuel on highways should be immediately adopted for nationwide distribution of Green Hydrogen. Additionally, enabling the ease of Vehicle Financing, and Insurance and assuring reliable and accessible after-sales MHCV Services are still yet to be rationalized.

3) Technological Adoption: The application of IoT, Machine Learning, AI combined with data analytics & cloud-based platforms is crucial to enhance transparency, enable preventive maintenance, and ensure robust resale valuation of such MHCVs.

4) Social Acceptance: The social acceptance of such Green Hydrogen powered MHCVs amongst the community is a prime factor. To ensure this, special initiatives aiming to create awareness & simplify understanding of such MHCVs shall be vital for their acceptance.

5) The applicability of Carbon Credits their monetization on Carbon Markets: These are yet to be implemented for Automotive OEMs & fleet owners/operators to benefit financially from this.

The Government of India however has already identified the significance of Green Hydrogen and set up the Green Hydrogen Mission, under which a variety of major initiatives have been launched to promote the adoption and use of Green Hydrogen. These initiatives by the Government will give a jump start to the domestic commercial production of green hydrogen in 2025 itself, also improving the prospects of increased availability of Green Hydrogen for transportation purposes. In addition to this, Initiatives led by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) ensure round-the-clock availability of Renewable Energy required for Green Hydrogen production.

In this regard, the Indian Automotive Sector has already sensed an opportunity, with various pilot projects featuring MHCVs with H-ICE & H-FCEV underway. However, homologation of such MHCVs needs to be done by the appropriate authorities before any sale of such Green Hydrogen-powered MHCVs. To achieve this, Automotive OEMs will need to put in significant resources and time.

It is evident that surmounting these various challenges and enabling easier adoption of Green Hydrogen powered MHCVs requires intense cross-sectoral engagement by all stakeholders combined with timely policy interventions from the arms of the Government.

Given the various activities underway across the relevant sectors & combined with the positive push given by the Government of India, it may be reasonable to expect that Green Hydrogen powered MHCVs, particularly lorries & trucks could start becoming commercially visible on Indian highways in late 2026, showing the emergence of "Green Shots."

With this, it can be established that Green Hydrogen gives a cleaner alternative that aligns with environmental goals and reduces dependence on imports. Due to the emergence of government initiatives, adoption of Green Hydrogen and stepping closer to sustainable transportation has become more likely to be attained.

Mustafa Wajid is the chair of the Future of Mobility Panel (FoMT) at The IET, a Global engineering body. Views expressed are his own.