Winston Churchill reportedly said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” It’s a sentiment resonating with TR Group’s effort to bring hydrogen-powered vehicles to New Zealand. What started as a gargantuan but promising endeavour in 2020 turned into a nightmare by the end of 2024. Yet the solution emerged close to home – proving the truth of the ‘diamonds under your feet’ parable and highlighting the untapped potential of New Zealand’s heavy transport industry.

This is a tale about ambition and endeavour, smoke, mirrors and broken promises, and incredible home-grown success. Forget everything you’ve heard in the pub or the smoko room – this is the story from the source of how TR Group placed its faith in but was blindsided by international fuel-cell electric vehicle company Hyzon Motors and how Christchurch-based Global Bus Ventures came to the rescue and proved the might of Kiwi solutions.

Can-do attitude, ingenuity and world-class solutions: Kiwi industry is familiar with them all, especially in transport. When TR Group launched New Zealand’s first 50-tonne hydrogen-powered prime mover at the end of March at an event at Hampton Downs, it almost came as a surprise. After all, it was just three months after Hyzon Motors – which was supposed to have engineered the vehicles – announced the company would be dissolved.

How did TR Group manage to pull that off? What happened behind the scenes with Hyzon? And how did the entire debacle end with a silver lining that nobody could’ve foreseen?

From the beginning

“We have many customers that look to us for a bit of understanding and some knowledge around these types of things,” says Brendan King, TR Group general manager, when asked about his company being a key player in New Zealand’s zero-emissions journey.

“One of the fundamental desires in our business is for it to make a difference in the world around us. That extends to climate change being an issue for the wider world, and we need to be doing something about it.

“We said, based on the vision for our business of making a positive difference, with the reliance that so many customers have on us, we see it as our responsibility to take a few steps in these directions – and so that’s why we committed to spending a fair bit of money and time in the alternative fuel space.”

While never backing a singular technology, TR Group began investigating adding electric trucks to its rental fleet in 2017. In 2019, three SEA Electric BEVs arrived (New Zealand Trucking, June 2021), which are still in the fleet. “They’ve gone really well. We put a lot of effort into our three before we put them on the road and worked closely with SEA. We found a few kinks and made a few subtle changes that just made them a bit more usable,” Brendan says.

Around that time, TR Group was also involved in getting the first wave of Fuso eCanters into operation with the likes of Genesis (New Zealand Trucking, August 2021) and others willing to dip their toes into the world of electric trucks. “The bulk of our electric trucks would be eCanters, about 40 of them. They have performed well for what they do,” Brendan says.

The big prize, however, was bringing alternative propulsion to the heavy end of the market. In July 2020, TR Group and Taranaki-based Hiringa Energy announced a partnership to do just that using hydrogen. TR Group would supply the vehicles, support and maintenance, and Hiringa would provide the fuel network. It was your classic chicken-and-egg scenario – you can’t operate the trucks without being able to fuel them, and there’s no point establishing a fuel network without the trucks to use it … Combining ambition and leveraging expertise was a no-brainer.

“Hiringa kicked off conversations; they’d been looking for someone to partner with on this journey. They certainly had a strong desire to build a hydrogen fuel network and needed a partner on the trucks. We felt partnering would be a good thing,” Brendan says.

“At first, we thought, ‘Hey, we’re pretty early here … There’s no one building these things.’”

With customer interest in the project, a vehicle supplier was sought. American company Hyzon Motors entered the picture. Hyzon was founded in 2020 as a spin-off of Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, founded in 2003. In November 2021, TR Group announced an order for 20 Hyzon hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. The first units were promised by mid-2022 but, as it would turn out, all was not as it seemed. Despite Hyzon publicising its engineering and manufacturing endeavours overseas, further announcements, and a revised commercial agreement with TR Group in November 2023 – now promising the first two trucks for commercial trial beginning in March 2024 to be assembled at Hyzon’s Melbourne facility – the company wouldn’t see the end of 2024. Notice was issued that it would dissolve in December.

The fight for trucks

With hindsight, the Hyzon relationship was probably doomed from the start. “We’d ordered 20 trucks from them, and there were a lot of issues early on. They didn’t really know anything about us; they didn’t really know much about trucks,” says Brendan.

“They told us that they had gliders ordered direct out of the DAF factory in the Netherlands. It turned out that they were ordering trucks off a dealer in the Netherlands, who was stripping them of their engine and drive train. Of course, that meant the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and the whole spec of the truck was different to what we’d operate in New Zealand.

“That was the first little hiccup, which we managed to get through by sourcing the right spec truck for New Zealand ourselves and having them delivered originally to Hyzon in Europe for them to convert,” says Brendan. The situation behind the scenes turned out to be much worse, though.

“They had supply issues with their fuel cell, the development of which was further behind than what we were led to believe. At the start, we were told the fuel cell was already in production. It turned out it was still a prototype in testing, and they were quite far off from having production fuel cells.

“They had all sorts of issues with the business in Europe, such that they weren’t even starting our trucks there. We started dealing with the Aussies by then because Hyzon had set up a production facility in Melbourne, and they said they’d get the trucks to Australia and convert them there for us.” At this time, the pandemic was in full swing and shipping costs were at an all-time high – but the 20 trucks arrived at no cost to TR at least.

“The Aussie team eventually got some trucks done for other people, and once they got going with ours, they were pretty much on the home straight. By October 2024, they had built four trucks for us, which were in testing – and that’s when the Americans pulled the pin. The team in Australia were really bloody good people and good to deal with,” says Brendan.

Ultimately, on very short notice and by indirect means, the Australians found out they were without jobs, and TR Group found out it would not receive its 20 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks.

Diamonds under your feet

On the quiet, at the beginning of 2024, TR Group hedged its bets, supplying Christchurch-based Global Bus Ventures with another DAF CF 530 to develop a hydrogen fuel-cell conversion using its own IP. GBV’s entry into the story is a silver lining if ever there were one, and has resulted in the company taking on the remaining 16 trucks from the Hyzon deal to complete the job for TR Group. That first secret development truck is the one you see on these pages and is currently in the middle of a real-world testing programme with TR Group and GBV, using the company’s proprietary telemetry system. In future, the trucks will be developed based on data and refinements from this testing.

“GBV came with a lot of credentials. The company is a global leader when it comes to fuel-cell integration, and Mike Parker [executive vice president hydrogen and electric vehicles, GBV] is a very, very clever guy,” says Brendan. While Mike would rather point to the history, expertise and culture within GBV, it doesn’t take long in his company to agree with Brendan’s assessment of him.

That said, who and what is GBV? The company was founded in 1985 as bus manufacturer Designline and today employs over 130 staff, operating from an 8450m2 manufacturing facility in Rolleston. It is the last remaining certified vehicle manufacturer in New Zealand to put its chassis numbers on vehicles and is ADR-approved for Australia. The company produces more than 130 buses annually from the ground up for both markets, and has a history of designing and integrating battery electric and hydrogen powertrains into vehicles for Australasia, the Middle East, Japan, the UK and the US. Most recently, in 2022, it made headlines for engineering the powertrain for Chase Zero, Emirates Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup hydrogen-powered chase boat. In 2023, it won the contract for a further five chase boats.

“We joke now that GBV should stand for good bloody vehicles,” Mike says with a laugh as he recounts the company’s journey from buses to boats and now to trucks.

In 1997, the company developed and manufactured its first hybrid electric bus, followed by various electric and hydrogen- powered models up to 2011 – all of which successfully used some pretty innovative technology, including micro turbine hybrids (which Mike describes as “a little jet engine that functions as a generator”), Zebra batteries (a liquid sodium nickel chloride battery) and hydrogen combustion.

“In the late 1990s, there wasn’t anything you could just buy and install,” says Mike. “We started with diesel hybrid buses and built our own power electronics, battery management systems and vehicle management systems … it’s very unusual even now for a bus manufacturer to do that.

“It was painful in those days, but it gave us a huge understanding to do what we do now. We developed everything ourselves and, even today, we do all our own electrical design, the whole lot, in house. I do the code writing for our systems,” he says.

In 2008, when the company first dabbled in hydrogen, it was to convert a four-cylinder CNG engine to run on hydrogen for a bus operator in Hong Kong. “Fuel cells then were not yet commercialised. But we learnt a lot about hydrogen, the vavle gear, storage tanks, connecting it, fuelling it, safety…” he says.

With the market for alternative propulsion not yet mature enough for scale, GBV backed off development until Auckland Transport released an international tender for a hydrogen FCEV bus in 2020. GBV won it, built the chassis and body and integrated the individual systems despite Covid lockdown restrictions preventing technicians from ZF and Ballard (Canadan fuel-cell developer) from visiting New Zealand to show the team how it’s done. The bus was delivered on time, and the company then set out to develop a pure electric bus that was 100% within New Zealand VDAM regulations – evidentially, it’s a bit of a problem with EV buses that make their way onto our roads.

From buses to boats… and B-trains

GBV was shoulder-tapped by Emirates Team New Zealand following its success with AT’s FCEV bus. “They said, ‘We know you know hydrogen. Can you help us with the Chase Zero boat?’ They had some tanks and potentially a Toyota fuel cell because they were sponsored by Toyota. Toyota contacted us, saw what we did with the Ballard fuel cell, audited us and allowed us to be the fuel-cell integrator for this project. That’s how Toyota came into our picture…” Mike explains.

“The Toyota fuel cells are just a gem. Why wouldn’t you leverage Toyota quality? It performs exactly as they say it will; you have their backing. We’re not tied to Toyota, but we have a strong relationship with them,” Mike comments.

A mere eight months later, Chase Zero was in the water, with GBV designing and integrating the entire hydrogen FCEV powertrain and the racing team designing the boat. “I spent three more weeks fine-tuning the software, and it hasn’t been touched since,” says Mike. “We learnt a huge amount.”

And with that, we come full circle to the first truck to get the GBV treatment.

“We looked at trucks, spoke with OEMs and monitored what TR was doing with Hiringa, but we hadn’t otherwise gone to market. I was introduced to TR by Hiringa. Brendan was pretty frustrated with what was going on, and he asked us, in all seriousness, if we thought we could build them a truck.

“I said we think we can, but we need a couple of months to ensure we can get together everything correctly – make sure the software will work, understand what the energy requirements are, etc. We threw data loggers on some trucks, did the computer modelling and we believed we could do a truck. I gave him the price and the lead time, and 8am the next morning, a DAF CF 530 was delivered for us to start on!” says Mike.

“TR Group was contractually obligated to Hyzon, but Brendan said he’d give us one to work on – if nothing else, we’d get one sale, and it would give Hyzon a hurry-up.”

Mike explains that it is still a DAF truck. “We’ve really just done a re-power,” he says.

“We had good support from Southpac, but we’re taking apart another OEM’s product, so we had to figure out a lot ourselves over three or four months and then three or four months of assembling it. It took us about seven months to get it operational, and it then had to go through brake certification and all that for a few months. There was lots of reverse engineering to keep the truck systems operational and also the integration of the Wabco hybrid drive braking systems.”

Mike says GBV consulted NZTA from the beginning, explaining the project and understanding what was required before certification. “There are no standards around hydrogen in New Zealand yet, so we work to European standards, audit ourselves to those standards and then explain to NZTA how we’ve designed it and why. They’ve been so receptive.” The hydrogen tank frames are designed to EC79 standards, meaning they’ll withstand 6g loading force front and back and 5.5g side to side.

Working with Brendan, Scott Donnelly (TR Group energy and emissions reduction lead) and Grant Doull (TR Group hydrogen fuel cell truck project manager), Mike is confident GBV has engineered a truck that will suit New Zealand operators. The 6×4 unit will have the capability for a 28-pallet semi and 34- or 36-pallet B-train. Excitingly, Mike says an 8×4 unit is a real possibility – a combination Kiwi operators might be forced to go without as the global OEMs design their vehicles for their volume markets.

“New Zealand axle loads are really light; we’re a really niche market. To the big OEMs, 50 units a year isn’t worth getting out of bed for … for us, that’s beautiful. We see that as a niche we can fill in this market for quite some time,” Mike says.

The road ahead

As you read this, GBV is re-powering the remaining trucks for progressive delivery. We’ve deliberately kept this article light on detail about the actual vehicles for two reasons. First, given the rapid advancement and GBV’s thoroughness in developing its vehicles, the remaining 15 units will be up-specced from the development truck – plus, there’s a huge amount of technical detail to delve into. Second, we’re sticking true to our policy of only featuring cover trucks that are out there earning a crust – rest assured, as locally developed FCEVs with the credentials we’ve discussed, these trucks are certainly cover-worthy and deserve their own in-depth feature when in full operation.

The purpose of this feature was to do right by TR Group and Hiringa by quelling any banter around the events of the past five years and introducing GBV to the trucking industry. For all parties, the landscape has changed considerably since 2020.

Throughout it all, Brendan adds, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority has been steadfast in its support. “EECA has been real good. Very practical, helpful and understanding. They can see it’s been challenging, but they’ve been pragmatic as long as what we’ve done helps us achieve what we wanted to achieve at the start. We’re grateful for EECA’s support.”

Now, though, the view out the windscreen is a very different picture. TR Group will lease and fully support the trucks as it does with any other. “We’re working really hard in the background to deliver a good product to customers who will be very satisfied and will want to operate more trucks with us,” says Brendan. “Our driver-training business is involved so that when the trucks get delivered, they can educate operators on the best way to maximise the truck’s capabilities.

“Originally, we had all 20 trucks signed up. Some customers have remained and are waiting for the finished product; some were interested but lost faith; and circumstances have changed for others. But now it’s here, it’s real. People can look at it and take it for a drive, kick the tyres, learn about it.

“That’s reinvigorated a lot of conversation,” says Brendan.

On GBV’s part, other than developing, testing and building the trucks, it’s also been working with TR Group to train a service agent in the North Island.

“We’re here and designing and supporting it for New Zealand conditions, and we’ll be here when the trucks need to be upgraded in the future. We’ve been around for a long time doing this, 20 years of hard work,” says Mike.

“Nikola was a horror story, Hyzon was a horror story … there are all these horror stories. Now that we’ve done it and people see the trucks out there at work, we’re a success story, and hopefully, operators will want to get on board with us.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we’re excited to see the trucks in operation. The final word, though, has to go to Andrew Carpenter, TR Group managing director, who, in addressing the 250 guests at the event in March, said: “While it was a big and unhelpful disruption and not what we wanted, we’re actually in a much better place now because of it. What we’re doing here is very important to us; it’s a reflection of our purpose. We look beyond what we do every day to make a difference in people’s lives and make a positive and lasting impression on the world. It’s our intention to provide leadership around this important matter.

“We’re willing to put the time, effort and money into this, and we’re also willing to take the risks to make it easier for operators to put these trucks on the road. When you’re operating a hydrogen truck, you have our backing to make it successful and turn a lot of the uncertainties into certainties. Putting these trucks on the road symbolises what matters to you and your organisations.

“Once these trucks are built and delivered, there will be 40 hydrogen trucks on the road in New Zealand – that puts us out in front, a leader in what we’re [New Zealand] doing with hydrogen trucks and refuelling.

“Everything important has to start somewhere, with someone taking a step or two.”