Bosch to Make $1.3 Billion Worth of Investments in Hydrogen Technology by 2025
Bosch North America stated that it would invest $1.3 billion in hydrogen technologies by 2025. The world’s largest automotive supplier rethinks its future business as prospects for internal combustion fade and transitions to electrification and automation accelerate.
Bosch, like other automotive manufacturers, has reorganised its enormous product development department as it strives to adapt to a shifting mobility landscape.
Bosch announced in 2020 that the Cross-Domain Computing Solutions unit would consolidate all of the company's software development teams into a single organisation. This software company employs around 17,000 people worldwide.
Bosch, on the other hand, is still highly involved in hardware and has long been working on hydrogen fuel cell systems. Nikola Motors was an early investor in the company. The fuel cell system and electric propulsion used in some of Nikola's planned long-haul trucks are supplied by Bosch.
The four electric motors used in the Rivian R1T and R1S are manufactured by the German company, which also offers a variety of electric drive units for commercial vehicles with integrated gearboxes and power electronics.
The increased fuel cell investment will raise the overall expenditure to more than $1 billion by 2024. The stack that takes in hydrogen and oxygen and produces power and water is only one part of a fuel cell system. Bosch is boosting its efforts to build other supporting components in addition to the stack.
However, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are only helpful if hydrogen is readily available. Hydrogen is rarely found alone in nature. It is the most abundant element in the universe, including in water, which contains two hydrogen atoms in each molecule. Electrolysis of water is one of the cleanest methods of obtaining hydrogen. This process is essentially the reverse of the fuel cell.
When water is passed through an electrolyzer, the water molecules are broken, oxygen and hydrogen gases are produced. Bosch is using its fuel cell expertise to build electrolyzer systems with a $600 million investment by 2030, with half of that invested by 2025, when production is expected to commence.
Bosch intends to pursue opportunities under the Department of Energy's $9.5 billion Clean Hydrogen Initiative, which was made possible by the recent infrastructure package.
The provider will assess potential deployment sites for its electrolyzers that can run on renewable energy. This is especially critical for long-haul transportation, where batteries are too hefty for the required range and payloads.
Finally, Bosch is putting its technical know-how to work on decentralised stationary solid oxide fuel cells that can run on hydrogen or methane/biomethane. While natural gas-powered cells do not produce zero emissions, they are significantly more efficient, with an initial efficiency of 85 per cent.
Electric vehicles, whether they use fuel cells or batteries, require robust thermal management systems to keep all of the components functioning at peak efficiency and assure durability. To boost these capabilities, Bosch is creating a new flexible heat unit.
In 2010, Bosch and many of its carmaker clients hoped that diesel engines would be cost-effective to reduce transportation-related carbon emissions.
Bosch was (and still is) a prominent provider of diesel systems, such as fuel injection and exhaust after-treatment. When Volkswagen and other automakers were caught cheating on diesel emissions at the end of 2015, demand for diesel components plummeted, favouring a trend toward electrification.
Source: Forbes
