Rolls-Royce, Daimler Truck to cooperate on stationary fuel cell systems
As recently as April of this year, Daimler Truck AG already inked a preliminary agreement with the Volvo Group to establish a joint venture for the development, production and marketing of series-ready fuel cell systems for use in heavy-duty commercial vehicles and similar fields of application. Rolls-Royce’s Power Systems business unit now plans to rely on these fuel cell systems from the planned JV for the emergency power generators of the MTU product and solution brand it develops and sells in data centers.
Daimler and Rolls-Royce are not only linked by many years of cooperation on conventional drives in other application fields. At the end of last year, Rolls-Royce Power Systems and Lab1886, Daimler’s innovation unit for new business models, had agreed on a pilot project to develop a demonstrator for the use of this technology for stationary energy supply on the basis of fuel cell modules from automobile production. It will go into operation in Friedrichshafen by the end of this year, Daimler announced at this opportunity.
Daimler regards the development of fuel cell systems as an important complement to battery electric drives on the way to realizing CO2-neutral transport systems. The cooperation with Rolls-Royce now opens up very concrete opportunities for the commercialisation of this technology. In addition, this measure would also bring the development of a hydrogen infrastructure across sectors and applications closer.
The move helps Rolls Royce to achieve its goals in decarbonising its energy supply systems for critical infrastructures more quickly. This primarily involves emergency power generators for computer centres, hospitals and control centres for transport infrastructure and telecommunications. “The fuel cell will play a key role in this decarbonization,” said Andreas Schell, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. “No other technology offers such high reliability, modular scalability and all the advantages of renewable energy without the dependence on the conventional energy market”.
Over the past two decades, Daimler has already built up considerable expertise in fuel cell technology at its site in Nabern, Germany (currently the headquarters of Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell GmbH) and at other production and development facilities in Germany and Canada. In order to make the joint venture with the Volvo Group possible, Daimler Trucks is bundling all Group-wide fuel cell activities in a new fuel cell unit and will combine them in the planned joint venture. This also includes the allocation of the activities of Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell GmbH to Daimler Truck AG.
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