A hydrogen-powered emergency relief vehicle prototype backed by the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy has completed road testing.
The H2Rescue truck made its way from California to Washington, D.C., stopping at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Denver headquarters along the way, DHS’ science and technology directorate said Thursday.
H2Rescue was conceptualized in 2021 as part of an initiative by the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office.
Accelera, the energy technology business of Cummins, built the vehicle under a cooperative agreement with USACE’s Engineer Research and Development Center-Construction Engineering Research Laboratory.
DHS S&T, DOE, FEMA, the Army Ground Vehicle Power and Mobility and the Naval Research Laboratory provided design and funding assistance to the project.
The truck houses a mobile command center, can carry up to 33,000 pounds of load into a disaster zone and generate power at a 15-home, three-day capacity.
