Battery-electric vehicles are a fantastic innovation and almost definitely the future of passenger cars, but as many owners will have told you this winter, they don’t much like the cold.

Renault’s mileage calculator says that its Zoe will carry you 234 miles at a steady 31 mph when the temperature is 20 degrees C, but 187 miles (a drop of 20%) at 5 degrees C and just 152 miles (35% less) at minus 5.

That isn’t a problem for most car owners, but for many users of commercial vehicles, whether taxis, vans or trucks, it’s a major drawback.

Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) have no such issues. BMW showed no lost performance when testing its iX5 at minus 20 degrees C in the Arctic last year.

In a further demonstration of FCEVs all-weather performance, UK-based zero-emission truck manufacturer Tevva this week revealed its hydrogen-electric prototype completed almost 350 miles on a single tank and charge.

During a 1,000km (621 miles) test between Tevva’s London headquarters and the English-Scottish border at Berwick-on-Tweed (England’s northern-most town), temperatures rarely climbed above zero and dropped as low as minus 10 degrees C.

The 7.5-tonne Tevva truck stopped off for hydrogen refuelling at Element 2 in Teesside and in the Midlands.

Tevva’s hydrogen-electric truck will be available to customers in summer of this year. It will have a body and payload allowance of 2,718 kg and a platform capacity of 16 pallets. The battery can be 90% recharged in 5 hours while hydrogen refuelling takes just 10 minutes.

During a 1,000km (621 miles) test between Tevva’s London headquarters and the English-Scottish border at Berwick-on-Tweed (England’s northern-most town, pictured), temperatures rarely climbed above zero and dropped as low as minus 10 degrees C.

The fuel-cell-battery-electric hybrid allows owners to take advantage of plentiful electric vehicle charging infrastructure for making shorter journeys while also making use of its hydrogen range extender for longer journeys.

As our friends at HYCAP have said previously, the competition between hydrogen and batteries is unhelpful. The market will decide which applications are best suited to batteries and which to clean hydrogen.

When downtime is expensive and range is valuable, hydrogen has some advantages over batteries, which is why not only Tevva, but the likes of Daimler Trucks, Hyundai, Volvo Trucks and Hyzon Motors are investing heavily in hydrogen transport solutions.

Trials of hydrogen trucks by the likes Sainsbury’s and Immingham docks in Northwest Lincolnshire are taking the hydrogen trucking revolution off the drawing board and onto the UK’s roads.

Just this week, JCB demonstrated that hydrogen combustion engines can be transplanted into hydrogen trucks. It fitted an engine that it has developed for its plant machinery into a 7.5-tonne Mercedes truck.

In fact, a number of truck manufacturers are offering fleet managers an alternative decarbonisation route that allows them to use clean hydrogen within the well-known environment of the internal combustion engine.

 JCB demonstrated that hydrogen combustion engines can be transplanted into hydrogen trucks. It fitted an engine that it has developed for its plant machinery into a 7.5-tonne Mercedes truck.

This U.S. engine giant Cummins unveiled a medium-duty concept truck powered by H2-ICE in September last year, while Westport Fuel Systems revealed its HPDI hydrogen ICE engine for heavy duty vehicles the week before.

Infrastructure to support hydrogen trucks is also on its way. Among the many projects moving forward in the UK is a hydrogen production and dispensing facility being built by Ryze Hydrogen and Northern Gas Networks in Bradford that will include hydrogen vehicle refuelling facilities.

The options for fleet managers looking to clean hydrogen to decarbonise is growing and they won’t have to worry about the weather either.

To learn more about Ryze Hydrogen click here.