Metier's hydrogen combustion truck passes MOT and hits UK roads
Oxfordshire firm says its repowered DAF LF is the UK's only road-legal H2 ICE truck, with full diesel-matching power expected by August.
Metier Technologies says it has put the UK's only hydrogen internal combustion engine truck on public roads after the vehicle passed its MOT and received a VC5 certificate from the DVLA, meaning it is now registered for road use. The Oxfordshire firm spent a decade inside Rheinmetall's automotive division before founder James Budgett bought it back in 2022 and refocused it on hydrogen.
The demonstrator is an 18-tonne DAF LF with a 6.7-litre, 6-cylinder engine supplied by FPT Industrial and converted to run on hydrogen. MAHLE Powertrain handled the engine calibration from its Northampton test facility, and H-Power (formerly AFC Energy) provided the fuel. The truck currently produces around 130 kW - roughly 175 hp, or about 80% of the diesel LF220's standard output - which Metier says is enough for urban distribution. The company is targeting 170 kW by August, which would match the diesel equivalent and open the door to motorway and heavier-load work.
Rather than asking operators to buy new vehicles, Metier wants to repower the ones they already have - stripping out the diesel drivetrain and fitting a hydrogen combustion system in its place. The company says a conversion costs less than a new diesel base vehicle, takes 2 to 3 weeks, and extends the chassis life by 5 to 10 years. For fleet operators running specialist bodies on DAF LF rigids - refrigeration units, tippers, cranes - that still have years of structural life in them, swapping the drivetrain rather than scrapping the vehicle is the proposition.
"By starting with fleets of rigid trucks that return to base, we can create offtake for local hydrogen ecosystems that enables them to survive and then expand organically," said James Budgett, Metier's managing director.
The approach sits at a very different scale to the OEM programmes now moving into production. MAN has delivered around 200 units of its hTGX with a 383 kW hydrogen engine, and Volvo is road-testing HPDI hydrogen trucks ahead of commercial launch later this decade. Both are new-build vehicles. Metier is targeting commercial conversions from 2027, with ambitions to reach 1,000 vehicles by 2028.
A DfT consultation that closed in March proposed defining a zero-emission HGV as one with no internal combustion engine at all - which would exclude hydrogen combustion regardless of the fuel burned. The EU, by contrast, already classifies mono-fuel H2 ICE trucks as zero-emission under its revised HDV CO2 standards. A final UK position has not been published.
Liberal Democrat MP Calum Miller, whose Bicester and Woodstock constituency includes Metier's facility, visited the truck recently and backed the technology publicly.
