German multinational engineering and automotive technology firm Bosch, which completed 100 years of operation in India this year, is working towards pilot deployment of hydrogen-based vehicles by 2025-26 in India, a top company executive said.
“We believe we are not going to be the least as a country not going to lag behind any of the advanced countries in the deployment of hydrogen-based vehicles.
So, we should start to see some pilot deployments maybe by ’25-’26 timeframe,” Guruprasad Mudlapur, joint managing director and chief technology officer of Bosch Limited, told reporters.
Mudlapur’s statement came after the Bosch Limited Managing Director Soumitra Bhattacharya’s announcement during the press conference that hydrogen is an area which the company is focusing on.
“The recent announcement was a very specific one in the context of making components to make electrolyzers. Electrolyzers help convert water into hydrogen. We were not doing that before, but we will now start doing that. So, we get into that aspect as well,” said Mudlapur.
Explaining, he said Bosch already has a full portfolio over the last seven to eight years, and it is now being deployed in pilot volumes all over the world.
Mudlapur said they have pilot vehicles running on fuel cell electric vehicles in China, Europe, and the US. “When does it come into India? I think this is something we’re working on together with original equipment manufacturers. We are working on also with ecosystem developers,” the Bosch executive said.
Stating that the existing infrastructure is inadequate to run hydrogen vehicles, he said there would be a need for hydrogen-filling stations and hydrogen-manufacturing units. The Bosch official said there are players who are working on developing the overall hydrogen ecosystem.
Bosch Limited MD Bhattacharya said the company’s work on hydrogen-based automobile solutions is at a very advanced stage.He added that the highly combustible gas would be used for heavy commercial vehicles using the internal combustion engine, which can be affordable and innovative.
Regarding the possibility of hydrogen vehicles in India, he said, “The Fuel Cell Electrified Vehicle for hydrogen is a strong possibility for India and will happen.
We also believed that the Stationary Hydrogen Fuel Cells will also take place.” The company said in a statement that it ended its fiscal year 2021-22 with total revenue from operations of Rs 11,781 crore, registering an increase of 21.2 percent compared with the previous fiscal year.
The profit before tax (PBT) increased by 14.4 percent to Rs 1,500 crore in 2021-22, which amounted to 12.7 percent of total revenue from operations, whereas the profit after tax (PAT) stood at Rs 1,217 crore.
Total investments, including capital work-in-progress in 2021-22, amounted to Rs 635 crore with major spending on the expansion of the sprawling Adugodi campus in Bengaluru into a smart campus.
SOURCE: EXPRESS mobility
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