This report comes from General Director of GAZ Power Aggregate division Konstantin Rukhani. “After 18 months we shall complete the tests, after about 2.5 years, we’ll come to mass conveyor production,” he told Ruhani. He added that the design of the new hydrogen engine will be similar to its gas reciprocating engine.
“We consider that at the moment, if we come to the strategy of use gas piston engine working on hydrogen, we can get vehicle with a price of 30-34% higher than current ones. The engine will be less demanding for the purity of hydrogen fuel,” he added.
With this, existing electric buses are 2.5 times more expensive than diesel ones.
Rukhani mentioned that hydrogen piston engine is significantly cheaper than a fuel cell bus. Reciprocating technology resolves the task for reducing carbon exhaust but retains synergy with the design of currently produced CNG engines, transmissions and other components.
In September, the GAZ group said it will develop first two prototypes of hydrogen piston engines in 2021. Also, company has introduced two models of buses with hydrogen fuel cells. A finished prototype of the bus with hydrogen piston engine will be shown in 2023.
GAZ group is a leading Russian bus maker. Read The Article
PSR Analysis: A GAZ representative has not explained how the OEM is going to resolve the safety problems. It is well known that hydrogen is an extremely volatile and explosive gas. But if these issues are resolved, this concept has good possibilities.
Maxim Sakov is Market Consultant – Russia Operations for Power Systems Research
