Image shows Dr. Markus Heyn at the Bosch conference. Credit Bosch
Bosch has revealed its future plans for creating clean commercial-vehicle powertrains, including hydrogen fuel cells.
By 2025, the company aims to have over 40,000 Bosch fuel-cell systems on the road. To support this goal, Bosch also manufactures the stacks itself and is establishing global production capabilities close to its customers, specifically at its plants in Anderson (USA), Wuxi (China), and Bamberg (Germany).
Fuel cells are not the only way to power trucks using hydrogen; there are also H2 engines. Bosch develops the control units and injection technology required for these engines and has already acquired a major project in India.
According to Bosch forecasts, over 80 per cent of all trucks weighing six metric tons or more will still be diesel-powered in 2025. Powertrain diversity will subsequently increase and, by 2035, half of all new commercial vehicles will be electric, powered either by battery or hydrogen.
“A technology-neutral approach is particularly useful in commercial vehicles. Depending on the application, there will be more than one climate-neutral option for the truck powertrain,” Dr. Markus Heyn, member of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the Mobility Solutions business sector, said.
At Bosch, 3,400 engineers alone are working on the truck powertrain of the future, and has already 30 major orders from manufacturers for battery-electric powertrains.
Bosch has also joined forces with U.S.-based cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to operate a software platform that bundles not only its own logistics services but also third-party services. Integrating these solutions delivers a boost in efficiency. Instead of using the multitude of independent solutions currently on offer, logistics companies and freight forwarders across the globe will have quick and easy access to digital services from a single source.
One example of Bosch services for the transportation and logistics industry is logistics monitoring. Bosch service centers monitor the condition of critical or even medically vital goods – between 30,000 and 40,000 truckloads annually. During the coronavirus pandemic, Bosch also took on the monitoring of vaccine shipments. There is also high demand for secure truck parking, a service that can be used to reserve truck parking spaces. Bosch already offers 100 suitable areas along the highways in eleven European countries. Bookings tripled in 2021 alone. Bosch is also expanding its service portfolio to include a retrofit solution for the keyless access system for commercial vehicles, which will be launched in 2023.
Keyword: Bosch outlines plans for clean commercial-vehicle powertrains