Stellantis has announced the closure of the fuel cell development program powered a hydrogen. The group does not consider the project economically sustainable, also due to the lack of incentives for the purchase of hydrogen -powered vehicles and the slightest diffusion of distribution infrastructures.
A decision could compromise the future of SymbioJoint Venture born with the support of Michelin and Forvia, which should have produced fuel cells for Stellantis commercial vehicles powered by hydrogen. The groups of the group, however, should not undergo direct consequences of this choice.
Stellantis renounces hydrogen
The 2025 should have been the year of the manufacturing of commercial vehicles in Hydrogen for Stellantis. In the Pro One systems of Hordain, in France and glywice in Polandthe production of medium and small size vans with fuel cells should have started.
Instead, the group has announced not only a postponement, but a suit abandonment of the project. The head for Europe Jean-Philippe Imparato was clear in the explanation of Stellantis’ perspective on the theme:
Hydrogen technology remains confined to a nichewithout realistic prospects for medium -term economic sustainability. In an increasingly stringent European regulatory context on the CO2 emissions front, we must make clear strategic choices to remain competitive. We focus decisively on electric and hybrid mobility, where we can already offer concrete solutions to customers.
Symbio’s situation
The announcement has no direct effects on the Stellantis brands. Instead he has them on one joint venture that should have produced the fuel cells, Symbio. Created together with the tire giant Michelin and Forgethe company is now in a complicated situation, having lost the premises that had been born.
Symario would have had to be the basis of Stellantis’ strategy for hydrogen. Now consultations have been started with the other shareholders, all equal, of the company, to understand what its future can be at an industrial level, both at a financial level. Just a year ago, Symbio had announced big investments in France.
The options remained for the company are both not very attractive. The most direct, but also more problematic, is an extreme reduction in the industrial dimensions due to the loss of Stellantis’ order. The second is the search for a industrial partner Different, which replaces the group in the purchase of fuel cells produced by Symbio. A perspective that, at the moment, does not seem likely.
Because hydrogen is not working
The abandonment of projects for the production of hydrogen vehicles by Stellantis It is yet another failure of a plan of spreading this technology. Hydrogen could be used as a method of conservation and transport of electricity produced by renewable sources, but is proving to be much less convenient than expected.
Generating the so -called green hydrogen is expensive, not very efficient and much less competitive than the competition of oil -based fuels. In recent years, technologies for the production of H2 have not held up the step even of those for the accumulation of electricity through batteries.
For this reason, the projects designed for the development of hydrogen infrastructures that are canceled throughout Europe are increasingly more and more. In the UK several cities that should have moved on to hydrogen heating they gave up. Recently, even the steel giant Arcelor Mittal He announced that plans to replace natural gas with hydrogen in his steelworks are too expensive.
