Back‘Diesel engines will dominate trucking biz until next decade’
The company believes that diesel engines and flex-fuel options that use biofuels, blended ethanol and natural gas will remain dominant as India transitions to fully green technologies.
PremiumNEW DELHI : Cummins India, a maker of diesel internal combustion engines, believes that while alternative fuel technologies such as hydrogen-IC engines and fuel cells could help the trucking sector go green, they won’t be adopted widely until the next decade due to significant infrastructure requirements.
The company believes that diesel engines and flex-fuel options that use biofuels, blended ethanol and natural gas will remain dominant as India transitions to fully green technologies.
The company is investing in building electrolyzers in India to generate green hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and fuel-agnostic platforms for Indian commercial vehicle makers as they transition to emissions-free technologies between 2040 and 2050, Ashwath Ram, managing director of Cummins India, said in an interview.
“Ninety-nine per cent of everything we sell in India today is diesel-powered, and about 1% utilizes natural gas. Between now and 2030, we think that the CNG, LNG, biofuels and blended ethanol fuels could probably get to as high as 15%, and about 85% will continue to be with diesel, but between 2030 and 2040, we think the percentage of all those other fuels, including hydrogen, can go to 30%, and then in the 2040 to 2050 timeframe, we think we can get to 50:50. For a country like India, the time between 2050 and 2070, which is when we have committed to achieving net zero-carbon emissions, the remaining portion will also convert to green fuels", Ram said.
“The way we think about destination-zero is that it will not be a cliff event but a gradual journey towards zero. And our concern is what we can do today. In this decade, we are cleaning up the technologies. We are making our products more efficient and introducing several other platforms, such as LNG, CNG, biofuels and blended mixes with ethanol."
According to Ram, it will take at least two decades for hydrogen-powered vehicles, particularly fuel cells, to gain wide adoption in India due to challenges such as lack of green hydrogen availability and storage, high cost of hydrogen IC-engines and fuel cell technologies, and regulatory bottlenecks.
“Hydrogen storage and transport regulation in India says that 350 bar is the maximum pressure at which tanks can be used for hydrogen transportation. Around the world, the standard has already moved to 700 bar. When you move from 350 to 700 bar, you can store double the amount of fuel because it’s pressurized," Ram said. “So this regulation will have to change, and it will, as the world has already changed to that standard."
Secondly, storage tanks for hydrogen are currently not built locally. “These tanks are built from carbon fibre. We need a supply of carbon fibre, which is produced by only a few companies in the world. It’s not produced in bulk volume in India as of now; so that infrastructure needs to be set up," Ram said.
Additionally, hydrogen production for mobility will have to ramp up.
“Today, most of the hydrogen produced is used up in the petrochemical processes to produce ammonia and decarbonize steel. So, where is hydrogen available for use in the mobility space? The industry will have to start generating excess hydrogen just for mobility. Besides this, all hydrogen being produced today is what’s called grey or blue hydrogen right out of the petrochemical process. It’s not green hydrogen, which solves only part of the problem of zero-emissions, not the complete problem", Ram said, adding that Cummins is also setting up electrolyzers in India to produce green hydrogen.
Lastly, hydrogen-IC engines currently cost roughly twice that of a comparable diesel engine, while a fuel cell vehicle comes with nearly five times the cost today. “There is a huge catch-up between where fuel cells are from a cost perspective, to where hydrogen ICE can get to quickly. We see that hydrogen-IC engine is a strong bridge for India and can be a dominant technology for 25-30 years before fuel cells become viable," he said.
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