Hyzon Motors receives CARB certification

Hyzon Motors announced that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) certified its Class 8, 7, and 6 Repowers as exempt from emission requirements, enabling the company to sell fuel cell electric trucks in California.

Hyzon’s Repower program allows customers to exchange their used diesel trucks for conversion to fuel cell electric using Hyzon’s proprietary fuel cell technology.

With this certification, Hyzon expects it will offer the first commercially available repowered Class 8, Class 7 and Class 6 FCEVs in California. While FCEVs have been granted provisional approvals for trials, and fuel cell electric buses have received CARB certification, no known heavy- or medium-duty FCEVs are currently available, based on the list provided by California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP).

HVIP, an incentive program administered by national clean transportation consortium CALSTART, provides subsidies to reduce the incremental cost of clean commercial vehicles. CARB certification is the primary requirement to secure HVIP eligibility in California. Hyzon expects to qualify for the incentive program later this year.

Repowering vehicles is expected to be a more time and capital-efficient approach for fleets to decouple from diesel, given 16+ month lead time for new diesel trucks. Repowering an existing vehicle is also expected to reduce customer costs, leading to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) at or below diesel parity in California, thanks to subsidies. Additionally, the Repower program avoids waste and manufacturing carbon emissions generated by asset renewal.

Craig Knight, Hyzon Motors CEO, said,  “Our technology has already proven itself in daily runs at the Port of Long Beach, and we look forward to putting more clean trucks on the road. Drayage operations are a particularly attractive use-case on hydrogen, and we expect to see rapid uptake in California.”