Kamaz to develop hydrogen-powered trucks and buses

Kamaz Group, which is the largest heavy vehicle producer in Russia, announced to start working on the development of hydrogen-powered trucks and buses this year.

Kamaz accounts for 45% of the country trucks market and ranks in the world’s top 20 trucks producers. So far, it has produced 2.24 million trucks. KAMAZ Group consists of 110 companies, including joint ventures, globally.

Russian companies have started taking initiatives to explore potential market opportunities in the hydrogen market, despite abundant fossil fuel reserves in the country. Kamaz probably wants to seize the opportunity and aim at the export market, which can be quite lucrative with first-mover advantage. There are a few companies who also announced recently to develop hydrogen-powered trucks.

In October 2020, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved a plan for developing hydrogen energy market in Russia, to provide support for the hydrogen energy sector and develop regulatory and research framework.

Kamaz said that its engineers in the R&D department plan to develop an 18-tonne hydrogen truck and a hydrogen bus. However, the company has not revealed the time scale when the hydrogen-based vehicles would be ready for commercial production.

Sergey Kogogin, the CEO of Kamaz, said that developing hydrogen-powered vehicles would be a similar experience as they went through with their electric buses. Hydrogen has a similar story. We currently see a trend for hydrogen-powered vehicles, which is why we are starting working on it.