New hydrogen Ford Transit tipper fixes potholes in Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire County Council has put a hydrogen-powered maintenance truck to work on its roads, becoming what it says is the first local authority in England to use hydrogen for highway maintenance.

The 3.5-tonne Ford Transit tipper runs on a combination of hydrogen and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), and will carry crews and materials to pothole repairs and other maintenance jobs across the county's roughly 3,000 miles of road.

The vehicle is a first for M Group too. The council's principal highways contractor funded the conversion and runs around 10,000 vehicles across the UK - none of them, until now, powered by hydrogen. A second conversion, expected to be a medium or larger HGV, is due to join the Oxfordshire fleet in early 2027.

Rather than buying new, M Group had a standard Transit tipper retrofitted by ULEMCo, the Liverpool-based specialist whose dual-fuel system injects hydrogen into a conventional engine alongside the base fuel.

Hydrogen typically displaces 30-70% of the base fuel's energy depending on duty cycle, and the council says the combination cuts tailpipe carbon emissions by an average of 30-40% compared with diesel, with nitrogen oxide reductions on top. Running HVO rather than diesel as the base fuel means much of the remaining exhaust CO2 comes from a renewable feedstock rather than a fossil one.

Aberdeen's council fleet got there first

The technology is well travelled north of the border. Aberdeen City Council contracted ULEMCo in 2023 to convert an initial 35 utility vehicles - refuse trucks, road sweepers, tippers and tractors - and Fife Council has trialled dual-fuel refuse vehicles and vans.

The hydrogen-HVO combination itself made its UK debut in September 2022, on a Keenan Recycling waste truck operating out of Aberdeen. Oxfordshire's first is narrower - no English local authority has used hydrogen for highway maintenance before - but it brings a proven Scottish formula onto England's local road network.

Highways crews have been trained to refuel, maintain and operate the truck, and the trial will be judged on drivers' experience, running costs and fuel efficiency. For M Group Highways, which took on Oxfordshire's £840m highways maintenance contract in April 2025 and is targeting net zero by 2040, the truck is a live test of what its own fleet decarbonisation might look like.

Oxfordshire's wider hydrogen push

The tipper arrives in a county with a wider hydrogen fleet programme already under way. ULEMCo leads the £7.8m HyER Power project - backed by a £3.9m Advanced Propulsion Centre grant - developing fuel cell range-extended fire engines and ambulances with the county's fire and rescue service, and in 2025 the council awarded Fuel Cell Systems an £825,500 contract for an on-site electrolyser and containerised refuelling unit capable of both 350-bar and 700-bar fills.

The council's release does not say where the tipper refuels, but its announcement photos show the vehicle parked beside a containerised Fuel Cell Systems HyQube refueller - the same equipment the company is supplying under that contract.

"We are committed to not only reaching our own net zero target as a council by 2030 but to enabling Oxfordshire to be carbon neutral well ahead of 2050," said Liz Leffman, the council's cabinet member for highways construction and repair.

HGVs produced 18.2 MtCO2e in 2023 - 16% of the UK's domestic transport emissions, according to the Department for Transport - and retrofits cut emissions from trucks that would otherwise stay on diesel for years, building hydrogen demand ahead of purpose-built replacements. The council has said its refuelling infrastructure could support a wider rollout across its heavy-duty fleet, subject to funding and demand - with the next candidate, that larger HGV conversion, due in early 2027.