Automotive and energy developer First Hydrogen has received road certification for its inaugural hydrogen fuel cell vans, enabling planned trials with major fleets to start in 2023.

First Hydrogen’s FCEV demo vans have now been certified legal on British roads by the VCA

Revealed earlier this year, the two vehicles are the first zero-emission LCVs from the London- and Vancouver-based firm and have now been certified legal on British roads by the Vehicle Certification Authority.

First Hydrogen will now push ahead with plans to run the demonstrators on fleet trials spanning multiple UK locations from next January in collaboration with the AHFC (the UK Aggregated Hydrogen Freight Consortium).

Steve Gill, CEO of Automotive for First Hydrogen, said: “This is an important step which validates our engineering and technical expertise. The whole team has worked hard to deliver this certification and we can now move forward with the important customer trials commencing in early 2023.”

The customer trials will run on public roads for a period of 24 months, providing significant proprietary data from fleet owners while showcasing the benefits of hydrogen power and helping to capture high-level interest for future orders.

A total of 13 UK fleet operators have signed up to participate, covering various industries, including telecoms, utilities, infrastructure, delivery, grocery and healthcare.

The real-world trials will demonstrate the advantages that fuel cell electric vehicles have over battery electric vehicles in terms of range and refuelling speed. The First Hydrogen vehicles offer 249-373 miles of range (400-600km) on a single refuelling and the latter takes a matter of minutes.

The certification will also help with the further approvals required as First Hydrogen scales up its vehicle demonstrator programme to trial the vehicles in the EU, US and Canada.

The business is also working in parallel to arrange green hydrogen generation and distribution under its ‘Hydrogen as a Service’ (HaaS) programme, providing an holistic solution to markets in the UK, Europe and North America.

Balraj Mann, chairman and CEO at First Hydrogen Corp, commented: “We are proud of our Automotive team and their recent accomplishments. I am excited about the groundwork laid by the whole team and, as we move forward, executing our business plan in the coming months. Green hydrogen is becoming a clean alternative answer to fossil fuels.”