Image inspiration - Man Ray - link
Toyota is taking a hydrogen fuel cell Hilux to the Dakar Rally. The DKR GR FC Hilux will compete in the experimental Dakar Future Mission 1000 category in January 2027 covering 1,000 competitive kilometres across 13 stages. Toyota hopes to demonstrate that hydrogen fuel cell technology can withstand heat, dust, vibration and the general mechanical brutality of desert competition.
It's an impressive engineering project but the more revealing test of hydrogen may be taking place at considerably lower speeds, stopping every few yards to empty bins. If hydrogen has a serious future in heavy transport, the waste industry ought to be one of the places where it can prove itself.
Waste collection is not ordinary transport
We already operate fully electric waste collection vehicles, however our initial decision to adopt them was not made without reservations. Most discussions about electric commercial vehicles overlook a fundamental difference between delivering goods and collecting waste. A delivery vehicle generally leaves its depot fully charged and heavily laden. As it completes its round, it becomes progressively lighter. A waste collection vehicle does precisely the opposite. It leaves the depot with a full battery but an almost empty body. As its working day progresses, the remaining charge falls while the vehicle becomes steadily heavier. By the time it is carrying its greatest payload, it has its smallest remaining energy reserve.
Propelling the vehicle is only part of the demand. Energy is also needed to lift containers, operate hydraulic equipment and repeatedly compact the collected material. The vehicle may stop and start hundreds of times during a single round. Regenerative braking can recover some of that energy. Predictable routes and overnight depot charging also make waste collection well suited to electrification but those advantages do not erase its unusual operating profile. A waste collection vehicle is not simply a delivery lorry with bins substituted for parcels.
A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is still essentially electric. Hydrogen passes through a fuel cell to generate electricity which powers an electric motor. A battery normally provides additional energy storage and handles peaks in demand. Its potential advantage is that additional operating range can be carried as hydrogen rather than through an enormous battery pack. Refuelling can also take minutes rather than hours. For a heavy waste vehicle, that could offer several benefits such as longer working rounds, quicker return to service, less dependence on lengthy charging windows, greater suitability for double shift operations and potentially less loss of payload to battery weight.
That last point matters. Every kilogram occupied by batteries, tanks or propulsion equipment is a kilogram that cannot be used to carry waste. A zero emission vehicle that repeatedly reaches its legal weight before its body is full may be environmentally admirable but operationally expensive. Hydrogen does not need to outperform batteries on every route. It only needs to solve the duties on which battery electric vehicles struggle.
Norba has already built one
This isn't merely a concept waiting for Toyota to finish playing in the sand. Geesinknorba has already participated in the development of hydrogen powered waste collection vehicles. One vehicle produced through the European HECTOR programme used an electric Mercedes Econic low-entry chassis, Geesinknorba collection equipment, a 145 kWh battery and four hydrogen tanks storing a total of 20 kg at 350 bar.
Its anticipated operating range on hydrogen was approximately 120 km. Other vehicles in the programme used different combinations of fuel cells, batteries and storage pressures. Some were designed around 350-bar hydrogen and others around 700 bar. The variation tells us something important, i.e. the industry has not yet settled upon a standard technical formula. These were not mass produced vehicles rolling from a mature production line. They were early generation machines assembled from conventional chassis, specialist waste bodies, batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems supplied by several different businesses. That's engineering development, not yet straightforward fleet procurement.
HECTOR—Hydrogen Waste Collection Vehicles in North West Europe was led by the amazingly foresighted Aberdeen City Council and involved vehicles operating in Aberdeen, Groningen, Arnhem, Duisburg, Herten, Brussels and Touraine. Its purpose was to examine fuel cell refuse vehicles under actual working conditions. The project covered urban stop-start collections and longer rural rounds, with operators gathering information on procurement, infrastructure, training, maintenance and vehicle performance. The early financial comparison was sobering.
HECTOR estimated the purchase price of a conventional refuse vehicle at between €220,000 and €300,000. A hydrogen fuel cell equivalent was estimated at between €630,000 and €751,000 (approximately two to three times as much).
The vehicles typically stored between 15 and 20 kg of hydrogen. Expected urban range was around 120 km, potentially rising considerably on rural routes where the vehicle was not constantly stopping, lifting and compacting. One truck was expected to consume roughly one complete 15–20 kg fill during a working day. Operators also had to consider depot alterations, hydrogen detection, ventilation, specialist maintenance, driver training and a secure supply of suitably pure fuel. Planning and constructing a permanent hydrogen station could take up to two years and that's the less glamorous side of hydrogen adoption. Buying the vehicle is only the opening ceremony. Keeping it fuelled, maintained and earning money is the actual project. The HECTOR operational handbook describes both the potential and the considerable practical preparation involved.
The hydrogen question begins before the vehicle moves
A fuel cell vehicle emits water rather than carbon dioxide at the point of use. That makes it attractive in towns and cities where air quality and noise matter, however, “zero-emission” at the tailpipe is not the same as zero-carbon. Most hydrogen is still manufactured from fossil fuels. Green hydrogen, produced by electrolysing water using renewable electricity, offers far greater carbon savings but also introduces a substantial efficiency penalty.
Electricity can be sent directly through the grid into a battery. Producing green hydrogen requires that electricity to be used to split water, after which the hydrogen must be compressed, stored, transported and converted back into electricity inside the vehicle.
At every stage, energy is lost. If an operator can complete the same round using a battery-electric vehicle charged directly from renewable electricity, hydrogen will struggle to make either the environmental or financial case. Its opportunity lies where direct electrification becomes operationally restrictive.
Waste could provide both the demand and the fuel
The waste industry has one further reason to be interested: it does not merely consume energy. It also handles materials from which energy can be produced. Hydrogen can potentially be made using electricity generated from energy-from-waste facilities, landfill gas or anaerobic digestion. It may also be produced from biomethane, although the carbon performance depends upon the feedstock, production method and treatment of the resulting emissions. More controversial proposals involve producing hydrogen through the gasification or pyrolysis of waste. These processes are often promoted using the seductive language of “waste-to-hydrogen”, but the description alone proves very little.
The important questions remain - what material is being used; could it have been reused or recycled instead; how much external energy does the process require; what emissions and residues are produced; how much usable hydrogen emerges and what is the genuine lifecycle carbon saving?
Turning unrecyclable waste into low-carbon hydrogen could create a compelling circular system: waste collected by vehicles powered by fuel made from residual waste. Turning valuable material into expensive hydrogen while disguising fossil carbon behind an attractive label would be rather less revolutionary. The feedstock and the arithmetic matter more than the colour assigned to the hydrogen in the press release.
Batteries have already left the starting line
Hydrogen’s difficulty is not that it has no technical advantages. It's that battery electric vehicles are already improving and entering working fleets. Operators now have practical data on electric RCV routes, charging, driver behaviour, payload and energy consumption. Battery capacity continues to increase, charging becomes faster and manufacturers benefit from a much broader electric-vehicle supply chain. Hydrogen refuse vehicles remain comparatively rare, expensive and dependent upon specialist infrastructure. A fleet manager cannot base a procurement decision on theoretical range alone. The questions are brutally practical:
• Will the vehicle complete the round in winter?
• How much payload does it sacrifice?
• Where will it refuel?
• What does the hydrogen cost per kilogram?
• What happens if the filling station is unavailable?
• Who can repair the vehicle?
• How quickly can parts be obtained?
• What replacement vehicle is available when it fails?
• And what will it be worth at the end of its working life?
A specialist tool, not a universal answer
Hydrogen does not have to defeat batteries everywhere to justify its existence. For predictable urban rounds completed within one shift, battery electric RCVs may remain the more efficient and practical option. They can return to a depot, charge overnight and use regenerative braking throughout their stop-start routes. Hydrogen may prove more valuable for the difficult remainder:
• long rural collection rounds;
• high-mileage commercial services;
• vehicles operating two shifts;
• hook-loaders and skip vehicles;
• heavy specialist collections;
• and operations where charging time or battery weight materially reduces productivity.
It's an impressive engineering project but the more revealing test of hydrogen may be taking place at considerably lower speeds, stopping every few yards to empty bins. If hydrogen has a serious future in heavy transport, the waste industry ought to be one of the places where it can prove itself.
Waste collection is not ordinary transport
We already operate fully electric waste collection vehicles, however our initial decision to adopt them was not made without reservations. Most discussions about electric commercial vehicles overlook a fundamental difference between delivering goods and collecting waste. A delivery vehicle generally leaves its depot fully charged and heavily laden. As it completes its round, it becomes progressively lighter. A waste collection vehicle does precisely the opposite. It leaves the depot with a full battery but an almost empty body. As its working day progresses, the remaining charge falls while the vehicle becomes steadily heavier. By the time it is carrying its greatest payload, it has its smallest remaining energy reserve.
Propelling the vehicle is only part of the demand. Energy is also needed to lift containers, operate hydraulic equipment and repeatedly compact the collected material. The vehicle may stop and start hundreds of times during a single round. Regenerative braking can recover some of that energy. Predictable routes and overnight depot charging also make waste collection well suited to electrification but those advantages do not erase its unusual operating profile. A waste collection vehicle is not simply a delivery lorry with bins substituted for parcels.
Is this where hydrogen enters?
A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is still essentially electric. Hydrogen passes through a fuel cell to generate electricity which powers an electric motor. A battery normally provides additional energy storage and handles peaks in demand. Its potential advantage is that additional operating range can be carried as hydrogen rather than through an enormous battery pack. Refuelling can also take minutes rather than hours. For a heavy waste vehicle, that could offer several benefits such as longer working rounds, quicker return to service, less dependence on lengthy charging windows, greater suitability for double shift operations and potentially less loss of payload to battery weight.
That last point matters. Every kilogram occupied by batteries, tanks or propulsion equipment is a kilogram that cannot be used to carry waste. A zero emission vehicle that repeatedly reaches its legal weight before its body is full may be environmentally admirable but operationally expensive. Hydrogen does not need to outperform batteries on every route. It only needs to solve the duties on which battery electric vehicles struggle.
Norba has already built one
This isn't merely a concept waiting for Toyota to finish playing in the sand. Geesinknorba has already participated in the development of hydrogen powered waste collection vehicles. One vehicle produced through the European HECTOR programme used an electric Mercedes Econic low-entry chassis, Geesinknorba collection equipment, a 145 kWh battery and four hydrogen tanks storing a total of 20 kg at 350 bar.
Its anticipated operating range on hydrogen was approximately 120 km. Other vehicles in the programme used different combinations of fuel cells, batteries and storage pressures. Some were designed around 350-bar hydrogen and others around 700 bar. The variation tells us something important, i.e. the industry has not yet settled upon a standard technical formula. These were not mass produced vehicles rolling from a mature production line. They were early generation machines assembled from conventional chassis, specialist waste bodies, batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems supplied by several different businesses. That's engineering development, not yet straightforward fleet procurement.
The HECTOR experiment
HECTOR—Hydrogen Waste Collection Vehicles in North West Europe was led by the amazingly foresighted Aberdeen City Council and involved vehicles operating in Aberdeen, Groningen, Arnhem, Duisburg, Herten, Brussels and Touraine. Its purpose was to examine fuel cell refuse vehicles under actual working conditions. The project covered urban stop-start collections and longer rural rounds, with operators gathering information on procurement, infrastructure, training, maintenance and vehicle performance. The early financial comparison was sobering.
HECTOR estimated the purchase price of a conventional refuse vehicle at between €220,000 and €300,000. A hydrogen fuel cell equivalent was estimated at between €630,000 and €751,000 (approximately two to three times as much).
The vehicles typically stored between 15 and 20 kg of hydrogen. Expected urban range was around 120 km, potentially rising considerably on rural routes where the vehicle was not constantly stopping, lifting and compacting. One truck was expected to consume roughly one complete 15–20 kg fill during a working day. Operators also had to consider depot alterations, hydrogen detection, ventilation, specialist maintenance, driver training and a secure supply of suitably pure fuel. Planning and constructing a permanent hydrogen station could take up to two years and that's the less glamorous side of hydrogen adoption. Buying the vehicle is only the opening ceremony. Keeping it fuelled, maintained and earning money is the actual project. The HECTOR operational handbook describes both the potential and the considerable practical preparation involved.
The hydrogen question begins before the vehicle moves
A fuel cell vehicle emits water rather than carbon dioxide at the point of use. That makes it attractive in towns and cities where air quality and noise matter, however, “zero-emission” at the tailpipe is not the same as zero-carbon. Most hydrogen is still manufactured from fossil fuels. Green hydrogen, produced by electrolysing water using renewable electricity, offers far greater carbon savings but also introduces a substantial efficiency penalty.
Electricity can be sent directly through the grid into a battery. Producing green hydrogen requires that electricity to be used to split water, after which the hydrogen must be compressed, stored, transported and converted back into electricity inside the vehicle.
At every stage, energy is lost. If an operator can complete the same round using a battery-electric vehicle charged directly from renewable electricity, hydrogen will struggle to make either the environmental or financial case. Its opportunity lies where direct electrification becomes operationally restrictive.
Waste could provide both the demand and the fuel
The waste industry has one further reason to be interested: it does not merely consume energy. It also handles materials from which energy can be produced. Hydrogen can potentially be made using electricity generated from energy-from-waste facilities, landfill gas or anaerobic digestion. It may also be produced from biomethane, although the carbon performance depends upon the feedstock, production method and treatment of the resulting emissions. More controversial proposals involve producing hydrogen through the gasification or pyrolysis of waste. These processes are often promoted using the seductive language of “waste-to-hydrogen”, but the description alone proves very little.
The important questions remain - what material is being used; could it have been reused or recycled instead; how much external energy does the process require; what emissions and residues are produced; how much usable hydrogen emerges and what is the genuine lifecycle carbon saving?
Turning unrecyclable waste into low-carbon hydrogen could create a compelling circular system: waste collected by vehicles powered by fuel made from residual waste. Turning valuable material into expensive hydrogen while disguising fossil carbon behind an attractive label would be rather less revolutionary. The feedstock and the arithmetic matter more than the colour assigned to the hydrogen in the press release.
Batteries have already left the starting line
Hydrogen’s difficulty is not that it has no technical advantages. It's that battery electric vehicles are already improving and entering working fleets. Operators now have practical data on electric RCV routes, charging, driver behaviour, payload and energy consumption. Battery capacity continues to increase, charging becomes faster and manufacturers benefit from a much broader electric-vehicle supply chain. Hydrogen refuse vehicles remain comparatively rare, expensive and dependent upon specialist infrastructure. A fleet manager cannot base a procurement decision on theoretical range alone. The questions are brutally practical:
• Will the vehicle complete the round in winter?
• How much payload does it sacrifice?
• Where will it refuel?
• What does the hydrogen cost per kilogram?
• What happens if the filling station is unavailable?
• Who can repair the vehicle?
• How quickly can parts be obtained?
• What replacement vehicle is available when it fails?
• And what will it be worth at the end of its working life?
Waste does not stop accumulating because an experimental drivetrain is waiting for an engineer.
A specialist tool, not a universal answer
Hydrogen does not have to defeat batteries everywhere to justify its existence. For predictable urban rounds completed within one shift, battery electric RCVs may remain the more efficient and practical option. They can return to a depot, charge overnight and use regenerative braking throughout their stop-start routes. Hydrogen may prove more valuable for the difficult remainder:
• long rural collection rounds;
• high-mileage commercial services;
• vehicles operating two shifts;
• hook-loaders and skip vehicles;
• heavy specialist collections;
• and operations where charging time or battery weight materially reduces productivity.
That's a narrower opportunity than the promised “hydrogen economy”, but it is also a far more credible one.
Toyota’s Dakar Hilux will attract headlines because speed, sand and motorsport make good pictures. A hydrogen refuse vehicle completing an ordinary Wednesday collection round is unlikely to generate the same excitement, but the waste vehicle may be the more important test. The waste industry places exceptional demands on its vehicles. They become heavier as their stored energy falls, while continually powering lifting and compaction equipment. If hydrogen can offer greater productive range, rapid refuelling and acceptable payload without imposing intolerable costs, refuse collection could become one of its strongest applications but the case will not be established through prototypes, launch events or statements about water vapour.
Operators need published figures for availability, payload, fuel consumption, maintenance, infrastructure, whole-life cost and actual carbon intensity. They need performance measured over years, seasons and thousands of working rounds. Electric refuse vehicles are already doing the job. Hydrogen must now demonstrate that it can do the difficult parts better. Until then, it remains a promising fuel awaiting something the waste industry understands very well: Proof of collection. More like this (H2) - link - more like this (waste H2) - link - more like this (Dakar) - link
Operators need published figures for availability, payload, fuel consumption, maintenance, infrastructure, whole-life cost and actual carbon intensity. They need performance measured over years, seasons and thousands of working rounds. Electric refuse vehicles are already doing the job. Hydrogen must now demonstrate that it can do the difficult parts better. Until then, it remains a promising fuel awaiting something the waste industry understands very well: Proof of collection. More like this (H2) - link - more like this (waste H2) - link - more like this (Dakar) - link
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