Large scale demonstration of European H2 Heavy Duty Vehicle along the TEN-T corridors

To produce and operate a minimum of at least 150 homologated fuel cells hydrogen trucks, including a service/maintenance/dealer/parts network along defined comprehensive TEN-T[[https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructure-and-investment/trans-european-transport-network-ten-t_en]] corridors throughout Europe and to operate them supported by a backbone of HRS for a minimum of 2 years, all of the following actions should be addressed in the proposals:

• Minimum 150 hydrogen trucks delivered by at least 3 different truck OEM (not part of the same group), with a minimum of 20 trucks per OEM cluster. The cost per truck should remain under EUR 450,000€, unless properly justified and a short term path to achieve the cost goal will be presented;
• Minimum 6 operators from as many different EU countries along the core and comprehensive TEN-T corridor(s). It is suggested to have as many transporters/shippers as possible in order to trigger a significant impact on dissemination activities. Links among a number of the deployment sites are strongly encouraged (i.e. proximity leading to sharing of HRS);
• The trucks can be tractor or rigid based with a minimum tonnage of 19 tonnes for rigid and a minimum tonnage of 37 tonnes for tractors. More than 65% of the trucks should be long haul and > 37 tonnes. Vans are excluded from funding;
• The fuel cell vehicles powered with hydrogen should be capable of long-haul operation and they should be deployed along the core and comprehensive TEN-T corridors;
• The minimum range of 50% of the trucks should be 600 km without refuelling under all driving conditions. The rest of the trucks can target a regional intensive use with, if needed, two (local) refilling’s per day and a minimum range of 400 km without refilling;
• The vehicles should operate for a minimum of 40,000 km or 60,000 km (according to the truck type) per year, per truck, per operator for a minimum of 2 years. The operational data of these trucks has to be gathered and processed by an independent organisation. Such organisation could be a partner, but independent from trucks’ suppliers;
• Include a data monitoring strategy (with minimum parameters to be monitored) that would allow evaluate the overall financial, environmental and technical performance of each of the truck operation profile / fleet in the project in sufficient detail. In addition, a sufficient subset of the trucks (representative of each OEM fleet and of the use cases) should be placed under a detailed data monitoring to gather relevant information at truck level (speed, load profile, journeys, etc). Costs related to the monitoring equipment are eligible;
• The truck models deployed in the framework of the project should become commercially available in limited numbers after the project in order to increase real-time data gathering and improve the next generation Heavy-Duty hydrogen vehicles;
• In order to stimulate the EU hydrogen and fuel cell market, for each vehicle the share of main hydrogen subsystems –originated from the EU should be reported;
• The truck OEM, HRS operators and transport companies such as transporters and shippers (their adhesion are key to ensure the success of the initiative), should cooperate to contribute to the adoption of regulatory incentives and technical harmonisation of hydrogen trucks and HRS on a European level;
• Innovative business models are encouraged such as turn-key solutions to end-users and/or leasing;
• An overall plan for deployment (with different stages) that goes beyond the timeline of this project should be foreseen. The needs of support for later stages should be justified in view of closing the funding gap in a dynamic environment where hydrogen trucks become increasingly competitive with incumbent technologies.

Proposals should contain a calendar clearly defining the key phases of the implementation of the action (i.e. preparation of the specifications of trucks and HRS, manufacturing, deployment and operation) and their duration. Proposals should foresee enough time for monitoring and assessment. In that respect proposals are therefore encouraged to put forward ambitious deployment plans including the deployment of a significant percentage of the fleet within the first 2 years of the action, in order to fully unlock the potential of European FCH solutions in the HD segment and contribute to the EU CO₂ emission standards for new heavy-duty vehicles (EU 2019/1242) targets.

The refuelling infrastructure and its associated costs are not in the scope of this topic. Applicants are therefore strongly encouraged to seek support from alternative sources of funding and/or financing and provide such additional plan to minimise the risk of the implementation of vehicles and associated infrastructure and maximise its impact.

Applicants are therefore encouraged to submit complementary proposals to Clean Hydrogen JU (for the deployment of the vehicles) and to CEF Transport (for the deployment of the refuelling infrastructure)[[The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for Transport (CEF-T) work programme 2021-2023 has a 3-year rolling call running for the Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Facility, with deadlines every 6 months, .]].

Furthermore applicants may consider additional synergies with other Programmes (e.g. European Structural and Investment Funds, Recovery and Resilience Facility, Just Transition Fund, Connecting Europe Facility, Innovation Fund, Modernisation Fund, LIFE, etc) and/or clustering with other projects within Horizon Europe or funded under other EU, national or regional programmes, or having loans through the EIB or other promotional or commercial banks; such synergies should be reflected in a financing structure and strategy describing the business model, including envisaged sources of co-funding/co-financing and in line with state-aid rules.

Additionally synergies with the 2ZERO partnership topic HORIZON-CL5-2022-D5-01-08[[https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl5-2022-d5-01-08]] should be explored and developed where possible.

This topic is expected to contribute to EU competitiveness and industrial leadership by supporting a European value chain for hydrogen and fuel cell systems and components.

It is expected that Guarantees of origin (GOs) will be used to prove the renewable character of the hydrogen that is used. In this respect consortium may seek out the purchase and subsequent cancellation of GOs from the relevant Member State issuing body and if that is not yet available the consortium may proceed with the purchase and cancellation of non-governmental certificates (e.g CertifHy[[https://www.certifhy.eu/]]).

Proposals should provide a preliminary draft on ‘hydrogen safety planning and management’ at the project level, which will be further updated during project implementation.

Activities developing test protocols and procedures for the performance and durability assessment of electrolysers and fuel cell components proposals should foresee a collaboration mechanism with JRC (see section 2.2.4.3 "Collaboration with JRC"), in order to support EU-wide harmonisation. Test activities should adopt the already published EU harmonised testing protocols to benchmark performance and quantify progress at programme level.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 7 and achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project.

The maximum Clean Hydrogen JU contribution that may be requested is EUR 30.00 million – proposals requesting Clean Hydrogen JU contributions above this amount will not be evaluated.

At least one partner in the consortium must be a member of either Hydrogen Europe or Hydrogen Europe Research.

The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 2.2.3.2 of the Clean Hydrogen JU 2022 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021–2022 which apply mutatis mutandis.