Every fleet decarbonisation conversation ends up at the same fork: battery electric for the work it can reach, and something else for the long, heavy, time-critical work it cannot. Hydrogen is the leading “something else” - quick to refuel, long-legged, and for now almost entirely a trials technology. The honest picture of where hydrogen trucks stand in the UK is written in the government’s zero-emission freight demonstration programme.
GOV.UK publishes the winners of its zero emission heavy goods vehicles and infrastructure competitions - a research and development fund aimed at increasing zero emission road freight in the UK. The publication lists the winning consortia, their partners and their projects, and the shape of the list itself is the first lesson: this is real money and real operators. The projects carry total eligible costs in the tens of millions - one consortium’s project is listed at £89.9 million with £62.7 million of funding, another at £63.6 million with £49.2 million - and the participant lists read like a who’s who of UK logistics: Maritime Transport, Royal Mail, Kuehne + Nagel, Wincanton, XPO, Eddie Stobart and others, alongside the truck makers and energy companies.
Read the consortium list closely and the technology balance is clear. Several projects are explicitly battery electric truck demonstrations - electric HGVs plus dedicated charging on the strategic road network. The hydrogen content is concentrated in projects like Zero Emission Northern Freight - ZENFreight - a consortium spanning truck manufacturers, an academic partner, freight operators and an energy company. Its plan, as listed, is a network of 7 sites combining hydrogen refuelling and electric charging technologies, with a total project cost of £131.6 million and £54.6 million of funding allocated.
That pairing - hydrogen refuelling and charging planned side by side at the same sites - is the practical state of the art. Nobody serious is building a hydrogen-only freight network; the trials run the technologies head to head on real work and let the duty cycles sort out which belongs where.
Three conclusions an operator can bank. First, hydrogen HGVs are a trials technology in the UK right now: the trucks exist, the refuelling is being built in demonstration corridors, and the economics are being proven on real fleets - but you cannot buy a hydrogen truck and fuel it on tomorrow’s infrastructure. Second, the government’s money is backing both technologies rather than picking a winner, so fleet strategy should not bet the business on either being declared obsolete. Third, the operators inside these consortia are the ones learning the real numbers - duty cycles, refuelling logistics, total cost - and that knowledge will be the competitive edge when the technology commercialises.
It is worth noticing who put their names into these consortia: big fleets with shippers who ask hard questions about emissions, and energy and charging companies who want to own the refuelling infrastructure of the next thirty years. Their participation is a signal in itself - the freight industry expects zero-emission trucks to become commercial, and the argument is now about which technology wins which duty cycle, not whether change is coming. The trial fleets are buying knowledge with their participation: real range data, real downtime, real driver feedback. That is the same knowledge every other fleet will need, delivered a few years early.
Every hydrogen conversation in freight ends at the same place: not the truck, but where it fuels. A diesel fleet can assume a fuel station exists anywhere the work goes; a hydrogen fleet cannot, which is why the trials build refuelling as part of the project rather than assuming it. The consortium model - operators, truck makers and energy companies bound together - exists precisely because no one party can solve the chicken-and-egg of trucks without fuel and fuel without trucks. Watch where the trial refuelling sites land: they sketch the first corridors where hydrogen operation will be practical, and a fleet whose work sits on those corridors will be first in line when the technology commercialises.
For the fleet not in a consortium, the programme is still the best free intelligence available. The publication lists who is doing what and where, so an operator can see whether demonstration corridors touch its own lanes. When hydrogen or battery trucks become buyable propositions for your work, the case will be built on exactly these projects’ results. Until then, the rational posture is: run the diesel fleet as cleanly as possible, watch the trial outputs, and know which technology fits which duty cycle when the market arrives.