MAN Truck & Bus, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Nuremberg Tech have signed a cooperation agreement on the research and development of hydrogen-based vehicle drive systems. For the first time, university academics and students are running a laboratory and test rigs for researching hydrogen technology jointly with a vehicle manufacturer’s developers directly at its plant premises. With this Hydrogen Campus, what right now is the MAN diesel engine plant is laying the foundation for a successful transformation towards alternative drives. This concept has obvious advantages for all partners: researchers and engineers joining forces right at the MAN plant makes direct collaboration possible within the project team. Working together at the Hydrogen Campus and the infrastructure that is already available there also facilitate hands-on and applied research and development. The mutual transfer of expertise is set to speed up the research into hydrogen drives considerably.

The partners’ competencies fit together perfectly as part of this process: FAU will focus on basic research, THN will use its strengths in the field of applied research, while commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN will ensure that the research findings are integrated into the production of hydrogen fuel cells and combustion engines installed in trucks and buses. They all share the same goal: the Nuremberg Metropolitan Area is to become a European center of competence for hydrogen drives within the framework of the Hydrogen.Bavaria H2.B strategy formulated by the Bavarian government. In addition to FAU and TH, the list of important institutional research partners in the region also includes the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy HI-ERN, Energie Campus Nürenberg (EnCN), the Nuremberg Campus of Technology, and two Fraunhofer Institutes: IIS (Institute for Integrated Circuits) and IISB (Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology).

The work taking place at the Hydrogen Campus will span the entire value chain of this type of drive system: from eco-friendly hydrogen generation through distribution, infrastructure, and converting it back into electricity all the way to technology application in customer vehicles.