Johnson Matthey, a global leader in sustainable technologies, has joined a major new European consortium, ‘IMMORTAL’, to develop higher performance fuel cell components for heavy duty trucks.

The fuel cell in the development stage will give a predicted lifetime of at least 30,000 hours, enabling it to take a step closer towards decarbonising freight transport and a net zero future.

IMMORTAL is a €3.8 million, three-year project supported by the European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH 2 JU), which brings together a major consortium of industry leaders and academic/research organisations coordinated by France’s CNRS, and includes Johnson Matthey, Bosch, FPT Industrial and AVL.

The project will deliver optimised management of the fuel cell power train with high performance and durability as critical outcomes. The industrial and academic partners will collaborate to advance materials and components that have shown considerable promise in recent European FCH 2 JU projects.

The four large industrial partners of IMMORTAL are major stakeholders in Europe's fuel cell supply, OEM and end user chain, from MEA (Johnson Matthey) to stack (Bosch, AVL), and from stack and system (Bosch, FPT Industrial) to the pioneering use of the fuel cell powertrains in heavy duty long haulage trucks (FPT Industrial).

Jo Godden, Managing Director, Johnson Matthey’s Fuel Cells business said, “Developing a robust fuel cell powertrain solution to decarbonise freight transportation will be critical to achieving net zero goals around the world. Johnson Matthey is proud to be a part of project IMMORTAL to leverage our decades of fuel cell experience to benefit all parties.”

The IMMORTAL project receives funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 101006641. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.