(Credit: Pixabay)German company Bosch is betting big on a hydrogen future, investing $2.8 billion by 2026.
The company is starting its investment in hydrogen through fuel cell systems, which can generate electricity and water from hydrogen. The end product of fuel cell systems is water. In the mobile version, electricity is produced with proton exchange membranes, and in the stationary version using solid-oxide technology. The mobile versions are used in trucks, while the stationary versions can supply power to computing centers or even urban districts.
Bosch is already underway producing mobile fuel-cell systems in Chongqing, China, and Feuerbach, Germany. The company aims to include its Anderson plant in South Carolina as well in the future.
That investment is expected to bring in roughly 5 billion in sales by 2030, company leaders said during Bosch’s Tech Day on July 13. Bosch is a global supplier of technology and services, employing roughly 421,000 associates worldwide as of Dec. 31, 2022.
“Between 2021 and 2026, we will have invested a total of nearly 2.5 billion euros in the development and manufacturing of our H2 technologies,” Markus Heyn, chairman of mobility solutions at Bosch, said during a Tech Day speech.
Of the significant amount of money Bosch plans to invest, nearly two-thirds go into the fuel-cell powertrain. According to Heyn, by as early as 2030, one in five new trucks weighing 6 tons or more will feature fuel cell powertrains. The company is also working on delivering a hydrogen engine suitable for agricultural and construction machinery and heavy long-haul trucks.
Bosch also wants to supply stacks for hydrogen production, thereby entering the electrolysis market, which is expected to have a global volume of 26 billion euros by 2030. Plus, Bosch is aiming to use stationary fuel-cell technology for distributed energy systems, which has a global market volume of nearly $22.5 billion by 2030.
The company also received nearly $181 million for the IPCEI hydrogen project Bosch Power Units for the initial commercialization of stationary fuel cell systems. The funding was presented by Robert Habeck, federal minister for economic affairs and climate action of Germany, at the Bosch research campus in Renningen, during a summer tour with other esteemed guests, including Baden-Württemberg Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann, Baden-Württemberg Minister of the Environment Thekla Walker, and Bavaria State Minister Melanie Huml.
“Germany is a strong location with strong companies that are ready to tackle and master the transformation,” Habeck said in Renningen. “The funding for the large-scale production of Bosch stationary fuel cell systems, as part of a common European hydrogen project in close cooperation with federal and state authorities, shows how business and political leaders, innovations, and their funding go hand in hand on the road to climate neutrality. A highly innovative key technology for ramping up the use of hydrogen can now go into production in Germany.”
