How the UK's Motive Fuels is Helping Accelerate Hydrogen Vehicle Uptake with its Refuelling Stations

The UK's Motive Fuels has been building and operating hydrogen refuelling stations since 2016. Motive was founded as part of ITM Power – a  manufacturer of hydrogen electrolysers. Earlier in 2022, it was spun out to become Motive Fuels. The move was triggered by investment from Vitol – one of the world’s largest energy companies.

It has recently announced a partnership with the electric and hydrogen truck pioneer, Tevva,

Auto Futures has been talking to James Cross, Commercial Director at Motive Fuels.

"Motive’s first stations were small, targeting hydrogen cars. As the technology improved it became obvious that hydrogen is a better fit for large and heavy vehicles, so we’ve been building larger stations and moving our focus away from cars," says Cross.

The company's refuelling stations produce green hydrogen on site, which is then compressed and made ready for customers. All the stations need to make green hydrogen are sources of water and power.

"We use electrolysers, which take renewable power and separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. We either generate the renewable electricity on site or buy it directly from the generator via the national grid. That model works really well if there is space for the on site production – it means we aren’t depending on moving the fuel around, fossil fuels or buying hydrogen from overseas." explains Cross.

"The process of filling is close to what you’d see at a diesel station but without the fumes - you connect a hose and start the fill and in ten to fifteen minutes your HGV has a full tank of hydrogen. By producing on site, we can match the size of the station to the customer need and avoid transporting hydrogen which adds cost and emissions," he adds.

Motive strongly believes that the zero-carbon, heavy goods vehicle (HGV) sector will use both battery electric and hydrogen electric vehicles.

"We see customers opting for hydrogen for a few main reasons – the impact of large batteries on the weight and payload of the vehicle, the ability to fill in 10 – 15 minutes rather than 5-6 hours, the challenges of installing battery charging infrastructure at depots and most importantly increased range. On the flip side, hydrogen is the newer technology, so operators are rightly taking their time to ensure it works for them. We’d encourage HGV customers to look at both options and decide what works best for them for the routes and use cases," he says.

Making Hydrogen Fuel More Available And Affordable

Motive recently announced a partnership with Tevva, the British electric and hydrogen truck developer. The partnership will see Motive offer green hydrogen fuel as a package with Tevva’s trucks helping UK truck operators decarbonise the heavy transport sector.

Tevva intends to offer a range of hydrogen electric trucks with 7.5, 12 and 19 tonne variants.

In a press release, Dr. Harsh Pershad, Head of Hydrogen at Tevva, explains: “We want to make hydrogen fuel usage to be convenient, affordable and sustainable. To achieve this, we are helping remove some of the adoption risks associated with this transition as part of our hydrogen refuelling services. Motive Fuels is one of the most experienced UK hydrogen refuelling providers and a natural partner for Tevva in making this a reality and we look forward to working closely with the team.” 

"Our partnership with Tevva is about working together to anticipate where customers will be using hydrogen trucks and making sure that hydrogen is available at the same time as the truck. Until now, it’s often been left to the customer to solve the ‘chicken and egg’ problem that you can’t use a hydrogen vehicle without fuel, but no-one builds the fuel infrastructure without the vehicles. Working together means we can anticipate need and install different solutions depending on what the customer needs and how many vehicles will be on the road," Cross tells us.

"The other aspect is about customer experience – which is often a problem for new technologies, by working together we can make sure we’re giving a great experience to customers," he adds.

Producing Green Hydrogen at Scale

Motive has ambitious plans to open a number of large refuelling stations around the UK.

"Like our site at Birmingham, they’ll be producing green hydrogen at scale for buses and HGVs, working with an ‘anchor’ customer who is buying hydrogen vehicles. We’re also investing in mobile refuelling stations which allow us to support smaller fleets and provide backup when stations need maintenance," says Cross.

Looking to the future, Cross believes more needs to be done to promote hydrogen mobility in the UK.

"The government is putting a lot of effort into stimulating hydrogen production, that’s great but the ambition could be bigger and quicker. What’s missing is a clear signal from government to vehicle OEMs that the UK is a market to target – we haven’t seen any clear signs of support from government and that means the UK isn’t seeing a lot of vehicle supply. There is also a mismatch between the Departments for Transport and Business – hydrogen mobility seems to be caught between two different ways of thinking which creates uncertainty for industry."

Finally we asked Cross what role will hydrogen play in mobility by the end of the decade.

"By 2030 I expect hydrogen buses will be a very common site and we’ll be starting to see HGVs and vans at scale. We’ll have hydrogen supply from a few different suppliers, including Motive, so customers start to see a real network that gives confidence for really accelerating hydrogen vehicle uptake. We’ve also seen costs for battery electric vehicles come down hugely in the last 10 years, I’m sure that as the industry scales we’ll see the same for hydrogen, which can only help." he predicts.