“IKEA introduces first hydrogen trucks because ‘battery vehicles do not have the range to deliver to remote areas.'”
But IKEA does, if you ask nicely and multiple times, fill in various forms and pay them money, deliver flat heavy cardboard boxes to buildings within driving distance of its stores. And it wants its deliveries to be carbon free. As a result, the company sensibly leaned into electric vans for its delivery fleet in Austria — 56 of them.
As a result of this confluence of semi-rationality and good intentions, the Austrian arm of IKEA bought five whole hydrogen-powered, sub-7.5 metric ton vans, with ranges of a massive 400 kilometers on a single highly compressed tank of the gas. The firm has been around in one form or another for about 130 years, starting out with horse-drawn carriages in the late 1890s. It’s never been big, and it still isn’t, with €23 million in revenue a couple of years ago. Why the heck is IKEA with its global footprint and €41.
Is it because hydrogen is magically cheap in Austria? Well, no. According to a site which keeps track of these things, Austrian stations are allright now. Electricity is about €0.24/kWh as the price for households. On an electrons to electrons comparison, it’s easily twice as expensive per 100 kilometers. The extra cost for drivers who have to go a long way out of their way instead of just having the vehicles charge up in the IKEA parking lot overnight will also burden the cost case.