Hydrogen’s Moment: Building the Case for Clean Commercial Mobility with Tarek Abdel Baset

In this episode, Tarek Abdel Baset, Director of Business Development for Hydrogen Storage Systems at Forvia, discusses the evolving role of hydrogen in clean mobility. Drawing on over two decades in the automotive industry—including his work with Stellantis, Fiat Chrysler, and the U.S. Department of Energy—Tarek breaks down why hydrogen is gaining momentum alongside battery electric solutions. He explores real-world use cases from commercial vans to transit buses and Class 8 trucks, explains how modular fueling infrastructure is shaping the future, and clears up long-standing safety myths. The conversation also dives into how policy, business needs, and engineering realities are aligning to make hydrogen a viable option—especially for heavy-duty and high-uptime fleets. Whether you're an energy skeptic or an alt-fuel advocate, this episode will leave you thinking differently about what’s possible for zero-emission transportation.

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Transcript

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mile Marker podcast. My name is Angela Samos, your host. And today's guest is Tarek Abdel Bassett, director of business Development for Hydrogen Storage Systems at Forvia. He's leading zero emissions initiatives across North America, helping drive the company's fuel cell and hydrogen storage solutions forward. With over 20 years in the automotive industry. Tarek has held roles at Stellantis and Fiat Chrysler focusing on electrified propulsion, hydrogen technology, and government collaboration. He's also contributed to national hydrogen targets through work with the US Department of Energy. Tarik holds a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Waterloo and brings deep expertise and passion to the future of clean mobility. Welcome Tarik.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Hi, Angela. The pleasure to be on today and looking forward to the discussion.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah, well I'm excited because we haven't really talked about hydrogen on the show yet, and so this will be new for our listeners and with the advancements happening, I think it's a perfect time and I think we'll talk about some of the myths about how past impressions of what hydrogen technology was like versus where it has come today. And I think people seem to be a little bit more open to that and there's some very good use cases. But first let's talk about, well, and actually there was a strong divide between I guess hydrogen and battery electric, so everyone kind of went full force on EVs, even though hydrogen technology had been worked on for quite a while. But we've noticed some collaboration I think moving forward rather than competition. Can you expand on why you think that shift is happening and maybe how both technologies can exist together?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Absolutely. I used to be part of that camp that we used to be, I'm the hydrogen camp when we used to fight the battery guys even in the same company and really in the last five years I'd say we all just grew up and got mature and figured out where each one belongs. Both technologies got better, but also both technologies figured out where they work best. And the way how it all boils down is the bigger the application, particularly say in mobility in vehicles, the bigger the application as we're kind of moving into heavy duty trucks and larger class A pickup, semi trucks trains bigger, bigger and bigger. Hydrogen will likely be the dominant technology, whereas in most of your smaller or passenger type vehicles, some form of battery will likely win out there. So that's everybody's settled into their area because of just the physics of where the technology is, which one will work out better.

So we're no longer fighting each other in terms of this will win, it's going to be this and that, not this or that. It's going to be complimentary. Like you said in the end, a fuel cell vehicle is an electric vehicle. We still create electrons with a hydrogen fuel cell and we still run it through an electric motor and power the vehicle that way. So a lot of the components, a lot of the architecture will be shared with electric vehicles and there's going to be some vehicles that'll be equally well-served by both a battery or a hydrogen option. But they all need motors, they all need some battery of some kind. They all need the wires and all that other stuff that goes, that's part of an electric vehicle, we'll all share that. So that's where a lot of sharing is happening now.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah, you bring up such a great point that's like in some situations it just doesn't make sense to have this multi-thousand pounds batteries mean if I think about mining equipment, I just dunno that that would ever be feasible to have an electric version of that. And so let's talk about some real world applications where hydrogen is being used already. I think there's the Paris Olympics, I think there were some hydrogen fuel cells vehicles there and other more specific applications.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

And I like that you brought up the Paralympics. So a lot of our systems were in those vehicles that were used in the Paralympics, so we're pretty proud of that. Cumulatively, I'll say a small plug, but we're at greater than 4 million kilometers now of accumulated kind of real world miles on systems. But Paralympics, you're starting with commercial vans kind of as the smallest vehicle that you'll see and then you see a lot of buses. So we've seen that for a few Olympics now. A lot of hydrogen powered buses, especially public transit and an Olympics type setting. And then class eight where you're seeing it and then also these class five through seven, these vocational trucks, things like that. We're seeing hydrogen gain ground there. But I'd say visually where you're seeing it the most right now are these commercial vans, transit applications, and you're just starting to see some of the bigger class eight vehicles now starting to get on the road.

Angela Simoes:

Okay. And let's talk about infrastructure. What does infrastructure look like if it is kind of the more commercial vehicles and bigger scale vehicles, so we're not having to worry about the everyday person having hydrogen fueling stations on every corner. So what does infrastructure look like and are there regions that have made more progress in this area than others? And where does the US stand?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, okay. Let's start with the biggest question first. We've got to work our way down the details. So in terms of where does the US stand, we're definitely behind compared to some of the more dominant regions that have been working on it for longer, like Korea, Japan,

Germany. We're kind of usually leading in the last decade, but we're suddenly coming on strong in the last few years to the point now where I think the US is projected to probably be in the second or third largest spot. China's also coming on really strong right now too, whereas Japan, Korea, Germany still holding, but the growth is in the US and China really right now in terms of the stations. So we're still definitely in the us, almost all the stations are still in California. We are still definitely behind where we should be surprisingly. Also Texas really showing a lot of ground, a lot of momentum in Texas just from converting the hydrogen today is used in a lot of industrial processes and oil and gas and agriculture and fertilizer. So a huge amount of hydrogen is already made and used in the Texas area. And so we're seeing a lot of piggybacking off of that. And then the stations, like you said, kind of moving to the larger trucks, what you're seeing is a switch to what we call a heavy duty station, bigger like

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, there's a few things, but literally it's a bigger nozzle compared to the stations you see today in California. So we're writing new standards, we're filling these vehicles, they have 10 times more energy than a passenger vehicle does, so we literally need a bigger hose to feed more hydrogen. And so we are literally just kind of finished writing all the protocols and the codes and the regulations for that. And early stations are being built now to try out these heavy duty, bigger, bigger nozzle type stations. Where I think it'll go is most of these initial fleets will be what we call captive fleets, where the vehicle will likely return to its base. So you have these stations that are maybe not necessarily all kind of public stations.

It could be a small modular station that belongs to say that fleet owner could be at a warehouse, could be at say a big utility company where they have lots of vehicles come home every day, and then you build those up in a very modular way. I think one of the mistakes, I wouldn't call it a mistake, but one of the things we did I think in the last 10, 15 years is we tried to build stations that looked like a normal gas station and accommodate a lot of vehicles in one day, and that made for very expensive stations to say, be able to do a thousand vehicles a day or a thousand kilograms of hydrogen a day. These were big stations, very expensive stations. And what we're seeing is most of these fleets are just dipping their toes in right now. They may be starting with 5, 10, 20 vehicles. We build a smaller more modular station on their property and we get going with that at a fraction of the cost and then we scale as the market comes. So I think we're going to see a lot more of that happening in the next five years.

Angela Simoes:

Is there a situation where, let's say a fleet has a fueling station for gas vehicles, would you be able to, and this is total ignorance on my part, so I'm just asking the question, maybe some of our listeners aren't aware either. Would you ever put hydrogen station in one of those so that maybe you have one or two and they don't have to completely build a brand new facility, and then maybe as you get fewer ice vehicles but more hydrogen vehicles, then you just start to replace the gasoline station, the actual pump with the hydrogen pump that just from a cost perspective, is it more costly, effective or is that, I don't know how that works, but

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, about you do see it today, actually, a lot of stations will have that, their traditional gas station in the normal gas station, and there'll be that one dispenser that where it says hydrogen and then they have a line and then they got all the systems behind the fence somewhere where the hydrogen is stored. And those do exist. A lot of them like that in California are like that today. I mean, they're expensive to retrofit and to zone and to get passed. They were all designed for gasoline and diesel and now you're bringing in hydrogen that has different regulations. So it's very convenient and doable, but it's also a very expensive way to get one line in there. But it's familiar. It looks like a normal gas station, the hydrogen handle, it all feels familiar, so it's a good way to get going, but definitely your retrofitting to a different technology. So it can be expensive to get just one or two of those dispensers in.

Angela Simoes:

And so ideally, I dunno, as you're talking to customers or you're talking to people, in your ideal world, what would be I guess the best way to implement an infrastructure that's scalable and affordable?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

So first all, we don't build the infrastructure ourselves, but obviously we're connected, right? It's in our interest that the infrastructure proliferates, but generally having this modular approach in the beginning, this organic growth model I think is probably more sustainable. You see a lot of companies or fleets dipping their toe in starting with 5, 10, 15, 20 vehicles. Okay, get that modular station. Let's start with the behind the fence kind type stations and put 'em in an industrial area, put 'em kind in, not necessarily a customer facing area because easier to permit, et cetera. Try it all out as the fleets, as the confidence gains, as the volumes increase. And we can start switching some of those to public facing stations. And it's not to say we shouldn't do public facing stations. They typically today need to have a lot of subsidies, a lot of they're not going to be profitable from the get-go.

But as these fleets grow, as these corridors go as they want to travel out now along popular trading corridors, certain highways, city to city, then we start putting in, okay, it stops every couple hundred miles. Let's put one in from between cities, build out these corridors, and then become more and more, more and more public facing. Also, we see a lot of models where, hey, we can coexist with EV fast charging, we can use the hydrogen to also create electricity, to do ev fast charging. Some of these collaborative models I think can also work, but I think ultimately we start organically, we start small captive fleets behind the fence as we gain confidence, then we move out to public facing, build out the corridors, strategically build out corridors, and then from there you kind of proliferate just anywhere and everywhere. But I think we have to start strategically where the captive fleet is first.

Angela Simoes:

You talked about building confidence in the technology and there are a lot of myths around about people hear hydrogen and they think bomb, I'm not going to drive around in this car. That's just going to explode. So talk about some of the misconceptions and myths maybe that used to exist and have they completely gone away, they're starting to go away, and what helps with dispersing some of those myths?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, overall, I think people are becoming more receptive. So the fears, the concerns are always still there, but in general, I feel like people are becoming more receptive. They've been hearing about hydrogen more and more, and so slowly I think the acceptance is there. I mean, the one thing in terms of safety, every energy source is whether it's battery or gas or they all have their inherent risks and you just have to design around them.

Angela Simoes:

Like gas cars can also blow up.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Right? There's fires every day that happen in your gas vehicles, but we've learned as a society one to deal with it. We've come to understand the technology, we know how to design around it. There's a comfort level that's built up over a hundred years in terms of knowing the limits of something like that. Hydrogen, not as many people have been exposed, but we've done a lot of all the testing. You can go online today and you look at, there's videos from Toyota and Hyundai that are on YouTube and you just type in crash test Toyota hydrogen vehicle. And what you'll see with the tanks is those tanks, these big carbon fiber tanks that we use, they're stronger than the vehicle around it. You find that the vehicle and the impact vehicle, they all crush around the tank. So these very thick carbon fiber tanks, very, very, very, very strong. As part of our testing in some of the regulations, we have to actually do what we call a puncture test, a penetration test where we actually shoot it with a large tower

Angela Simoes:

Bullet. You're trying to break it open, right?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, you shoot it, you burn it. This is all part of our validation and our testing that we have to do to certify a tank. And again, you watch these videos from Toyota where they literally shoot it with an armor piercing bullet and nothing happens. You see a little puff of tape. So those are the things like the real world that the tanks themselves are usually stronger than the vehicle around it, but I mean it's still a fuel. You have to take care and you have to design around it. What we like to say is hydrogen in terms of its risk with say relative to gas, it's equal and opposite in many ways as to what gasoline does. So it's not any more or less dangerous. It's still something you got to protect for, but we have to protect for it a little bit differently. Gas goes down when it leaks, hydrogen goes up, and in almost every other kind of measurable metric, hydrogen in many ways is like a diametrically opposed, right? It needs this concentration to ignite versus that it needs this much energy versus that it's just equal and opposite in many ways, but it's not any more or less dangerous. It's just you got to design and protect for just like you do for a gasoline vehicle.

Angela Simoes:

So you mentioned some of a great place to start is the captive fleets, and that really one of the use cases is the larger or heavier vehicles, but let's say it's like vans, right? Let's talk about that mid area because I think that's where you see comparable electric vehicles like Amazon delivery vans for example, and you do have some electric semis out there, some other heavy duty vehicles. There are no options. But let's talk about the different levels of the heavier vehicles and what are some of the decision factors go into a fleet company choosing electric versus hydrogen or some combination?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Okay, good question. So I'd say there's two things you really got to look at. You got to look at the comparison of the vehicle itself, an electric versus hydrogen vehicle, and then you got to look at on the flip side of that, the infrastructure you need to get that power or that fuel to the vehicle.

Angela Simoes:

Does it exist? Do you have to build it all that?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Exactly. And in many ways, the pros and cons of each mirror each other on the infrastructure just like it does on the vehicle.

So let's say that commercial van, the hydrogen option let's say, will get you typically a little bit more range than the battery. If I take that same spot where I had a battery and I put in the hydrogen tanks instead, I'll get a little bit more range, not necessarily dramatically more so if I need that more range for my fleet, if I have some vans that are going out making deliveries in the rural areas, maybe I need that range, then maybe I go for that option. But the big thing too is charge time, right? I'm filling a hydrogen vehicle in five minutes versus half hour, one hour, two hours for an electric vehicle. If that downtime is important to you, if you can't afford that downtime in your fleet, just like say forklifts for example, today in most factories, you don't want to go down for a shift to charge that battery.

That means I need a second forklift. So today, fuel cells are very competitive today without subsidies there and a lot of manufacturing locations. So that downtime costs me money for fueling or charging. So that's one area where you may want to choose the hydrogen vehicle. Now, on the flip side, okay, let's get to the infrastructure side. The amount of energy a class A truck needs, it's like a megawatt hour of energy. Think about it as just one fueling event is the equivalent. Just a way to put it in perspective is it's the amount of energy I move when I go fill up that class. A truck is like powering the Michigan football stadium in terms of the amount of power. You just think that there's a huge amount of power that you're moving, and if you're filling up, you're at a truck stop and it's truck after truck after truck, getting that kind of power through the wires could be a problem. Some places it will be not everywhere. I don't ever want to knock the grid or say the grid can't do it. There are a lot of places the grid will be able to supply, but it's just a matter of the cost of upgrading in that location. Can I get that? Depending on the regulations, can I get that power? Maybe, maybe not. So hydrogen can take, if I do that with a hydrogen fueling station, I take a lot of that load off the grid.

That's a decision that you as a fleet owner with your local utility company saying, I have these 10 beautiful buses or 10 beautiful EV trucks, can you get me the power? The answer may or may not be, no. So hydrogen kind of takes that load off the grid, and if anything can actually help buffer the grid. Maybe I'm generating the hydrogen at times of low power use or something like that, and then I can put that energy back on the grid when it's needed. So hydrogen will play nice with the grid, take the load off the grid. So we've heard that from a lot of fleet owners that maybe they do love the electric van or a bus or class a truck. They maybe love the vehicle, but just can't get the power from their local utility and for that's the reason why they'll switch to hydrogen. Others are like, no, we want the extra range or the extra payload that the hydrogen gets us, and maybe it is hard for us to get a station right now, but we need that range in that uptime. So whether it's the vehicle or the infrastructure could be the deciding factor for you.

Angela Simoes:

So let's take the forklift example. Most forklifts now are gas powered, right? I'm going to assume I don't have any stats, but I'm going to assume

Tarek Abdel Baset:

A lot of propane, natural gas, a lot of electric, but yeah, increasingly a lot of hydrogen, a lot of,

Angela Simoes:

I was just going to say, or maybe there's another vehicle that you can think of that's predominantly gas powered. What would be the comparison or what would be the reason to switch to a hydrogen fueled version of that vehicle? Is it really that it's a cleaner fuel? Is it a more efficient fuel? What are some of the benefits over transitioning from traditional gas?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, so right now it's mostly about the cleaner fuel in terms of a spec for spec, comparison to diesel. Let's say the average diesel truck or something. Honestly, we we're not quite there yet in terms of the range, the total amount of volume, the space you got to give up for your fueling systems. So you're not quite there. I do think we will get there, but as of today, right now, you're mainly doing this to clean up your emissions. You have a target that you're trying to hit with your fleet, with a regulation, an internal company target. That's generally why you're doing it today, because the cost right now and the performance isn't quite at par with diesel now we think we're going to be there by 2030, and that's always the promise.

Angela Simoes:

That's not too far away.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Honestly, if you want to launch in the automotive world, if you want to launch by 2030, you need to be kicking off programs next year. Basically there is, that development cycle is minimum three years, realistically five years to really kick off a production program. So it isn't that far away. We see the technology improving quickly, but today, yeah, we're not quite there, but that's where we think we bring the value being kind of a large tier one automotive, that's what we do. We make millions of parts cheaply and very high quality. That's kind of what a tier one usually delivers in terms of value, and that's something that we haven't seen yet necessarily applied to the hydrogen storage business. So that's our pledge of what we think we can do to drive costs down dramatically, get the volumes up. That's where we think we can apply our just standard tier one engineering discipline and get us there.

Angela Simoes:

Got it. And let's take this opportunity to talk about Forvia and what your group does. We usually actually do that in the beginning, and I truly realized I kind of forgot to ask you about that. That's

So yeah, give our listeners a kind of overview of what your group is working on and what kind of clients you work with. So you mentioned being a tier one supplier, so what goes into, what are you doing?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, we're a large multinational tier one supplier to all the OEMs. So I think of any car brand, there's a good chance one of our parts will be in there. So one and two vehicles on the road today globally, we'll have a part from four via in it, and that can come from multiple divisions. It's not just the fuel systems. It can be traditional exhaust system was a very big one for us, but interiors, seating, lighting, electronics, almost the whole vehicle. There's some way for us to contribute to it. So except one and two vehicles globally will have a part from us in it. And we work with all the major OEMs and the miners too. So that's who we typically are. So we're top 10 in the world in terms of the revenue and the parts, number of parts that we supply every year.

And so that's why we kind of decided when we looked at where are we going in the next 10, 15 years with electrification, what are we doing? So today we have one of our big divisions is what we call clean mobility, which is traditional gas and diesel exhaust systems. And we're number one in the world of that today. And obviously as we electrify that part of the business will likely decline. So what do we do to backfill for that? And then there's two ways to go. Should we do batteries or should we do hydrogen storage systems? And then we looked at what we're good at, and it aligned better with hydrogen storage than it did with batteries. One battery today is very competitive space, very saturated space, lot of good players already in the battery space, and we didn't think we necessarily brought anything significantly new to the market there.

But when it comes to hydrogen storage, there's two primary ways today to store hydrogen, either in a compressed kind of carbon fiber composite tank or in the form of liquid hydrogen in some kind of a stainless steel tank. And so those two major commodities, stainless steel and carbon fiber are something that we are good in today because of our existing business groups. So because of the exhaust group that we have, we are today the world's largest buyer and welder of 3 0 9 stainless steel material. That's what most exhaust systems are made out of. Don't you know what to make a liquid hydrogen tank, you need to buy and weld 3 0 9 stainless steel. So that was a natural segue for us to get into liquid hydrogen. Hey, we already have the expertise and the capacity and the purchasing power, et cetera to make a difference there. Same thing with composites for the compressed tanks through our other divisions, interiors and seeding, et cetera. We have a lot of experience with composites, so we have a lot of good expertise and material expertise in the company already on composites. So that was again, a natural evolution for us to go into that space. We thought, Hey, we can bring value here. So that's why we ultimately decided let's go the path of hydrogen storage from where our company strength already lies perspective.

Angela Simoes:

And so when you talk about storage, you're talking about inside the vehicle, the container that holds the hydrogen. The hydrogen,

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Exactly. Yeah, the vessel itself that stores the hydrogen. So think of your traditional gas tank and take that out and put in a carbon fiber pressure vessel or a liquid hydrogen container.

Angela Simoes:

Got it. So my six degrees of separation and my thought process, it's okay, you've got this tank essentially at some point you want to know if there's anything wrong with the tank in the vehicle, so there's got to be sensors around it,

Which then connects to the car's system, and that's all telematics. So that's feeding into a system. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about, and maybe because you're so focused on storage, you may not be able to comment on this, but it just made me think about a lot of talk in the fleet industry right now is figuring out, okay, we've got all these systems on the vehicle and we need one place to see what's happening with the driver, with the car itself, especially like an ev, do we need to tell the driver he needs to go charge? Or from a hydrogen standpoint, we need to tell the driver he needs to go fill up and maybe he sees the gate, but he's not doing it, so hey, but you're further away from the station to fill up than you think you are. So I'm wondering, I guess the question is, are you having the conversations around the types of technologies being used to monitor the performance of the hydrogen vehicle, maybe the gas, the fuel tank itself, the performance, I don't know all those types of things, especially for fleets, right? Is they're

Trying to figure out does this type of vehicle make sense for my fleet? You mentioned range and that they really are looking to get more range, but then there's the infrastructure as well. So are you having those conversations with clients as well, and what are you seeing there?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, and for the most part it's the OEM that we work with that's more responsible for that kind of global view. I mean, we have our sensors, leak sensors, temperature, fresher, all those normal things to monitor the health of the tanks themselves and how much fuel is left in them, and hey, is there a leak or is there a problem somewhere? So all those kind of diagnostics, we will include those sensors in the systems that we do. Usually though it's the OEM themselves that will take that and put it on the global vehicle level. They'll program, hey, the message that comes on your dashboard that says, Hey, you're low or something's wrong, or, Hey, there's a station that you need to get to, that'll usually be the OEM responsibility to do that. We will provide the raw data to make sure that our tanks are operating properly, that they're filling properly and leak tight, all these kind of things. So we'll usually embed those sensors into our systems.

Angela Simoes:

Got it.

So brief question on policy and regulation that often can sort of make or break. I think it prevented EVs for a long time and then we had this big surge, and now no one kind of knows what's going to happen unless you want to buy a Tesla. So from your perspective, when it comes to hydrogen development, infrastructure, all those kinds of things, what role has policy and regulation played and do you see that being, I guess, how do you see that changing in the future? Whether, I mean, yes, given the current administration, but does that not quite matter because you're still kind of battling the same battles when it comes to regulation

Tarek Abdel Baset:

And regulation and policy? It does matter, obviously, I'll say it either speeds up or slows down what naturally wants to happen anyways. At the end of the day, the feedback we get from everyone is listen, administrations, they come and go, but is the need fundamentally there right at the end? Do we need to be really doing this? Is it the right technology? Is it the right place? If it is, then we march forward. And the availability or availability of incentives or policy that can speed up and slow things down a little bit. But if it's still the right business decision, then it'll want to happen anyways. And I've been at this, I'd say long enough right now that I'm going through my third cycle of what we call hype and hangover. So we've seen whether it's BEVS or hydrogen, 20 years into it now, we've seen it spike.

In the beginning it actually started with the Bush administration and it was really up, and then it was down in the Obama administration, and then it was up again. And right now we're coming off of a high right now, potentially. There's a little bit of wait and see happening, but every time, to me, what's positive is after every kind of hangover cycle, we've made positive progress and then we go up again and you come down, but you came back somewhere higher than where you were. Something is now makes business sense where it maybe didn't before. And I really see that this time there's a lot of places where hydrogen, now that the technology has improved, the knowledge around it has improved that now there's a lot of things that are going to move forward with or without all the CEO incentives, right?

Angela Simoes:

That's promising.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yes, those things help. They do have an effect, but in the end, is there a business case? If it's just about regulation, then you're at the whim of a lot of policy change, and that's a really hard way to run a business, right? At the end you got to make sure, am I really doing the right thing? And I do. I still ultimately believe that there is a place, the hydrogen has its place, right? It's not going to be the silver bullet for everything, but it genuinely has its place. And I see us marching the technology, the improvements every year. We're getting there. So steady, keep it steady as it goes and just keep moving forward. And in the end we'll be okay. Okay.

Angela Simoes:

Last question. I know we're going a little bit over allot of time here, but it's a really fascinating topic. So you mentioned making the business case, is it the right thing to do? And that requires education and knowledge. What has been your observation in terms of what works best to educate people on the benefits of hydrogen fuel cells and what makes it a good business decision? And I'm not necessarily talking about eBooks or marketing materials, but what have you found works best to really get that education across?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

I'd say hardware in hand. Get in a vehicle and you'll be impressed. These are very nice vehicles. And you get in a fuel cell vehicle or a fuel cell truck, you realize, wow, these things, they're quiet, they're powerful, they're fast. The range is great. The fears either of safety or range, and all these things usually kind of melt away the second you actually get in one. So the proof is in the pudding when you actually have product in front of you. So continuing to do these larger demonstration programs, these pilot programs, getting people sitting in these vehicles I think helps get people to the plants, the manufacturing facilities, the warehouses that are using the forklifts and see that these things are operating in real environments. These are tough, dirty, sometimes environments, chaotic, whatever it is, real environments, real people interacting around these things, and they're there. It's not a science project. So I think some of those things kind of take people beyond the, Hey, it's a science project type thing. And okay, here's real vehicles, getting dirty, getting beat up, even getting into accidents and still being

Angela Simoes:

Fired and still safe, and they're okay. Yeah.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah, just existing in the real world and things are going okay. So to me, that helps get over most of the fears, the costs, and the rest of it. That's a little bit, I'd say not academic, but that's more on the fleet owner of the business model. That's not a visual thing.

Angela Simoes:

You got to print the numbers on that.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Yeah. That you walk beside a hydrogen vehicle and everything is fine. I think what really helps get people's minds more in a positive mood towards it,

Angela Simoes:

As they say, the proof is in the pudding. Yeah. I say, well, literally, well, this has been great, have learned so much then. I didn't know much about hydrogen's coming to this conversation. So thank you so much for your time. I hope that our listeners also found it educational and best of luck. And I look forward to in the future what the balanced combination of fuel types will be, because I truly believe that there may even still be diesel applications and gas applications for certain things. So it'll be just really interesting to see how things play out and which fuel sources are best for what. So it'll be fascinating. And it's evolving quite quickly, right?

Tarek Abdel Baset:

It is, it is. And I fully agree. We say there's no silver bullet, but there'll be a silver buckshot. So there'll be multiple fuels as there is today. Today. We live in that world today. Why I don't expect it to change. It'll be different fuels, but we should expect to live in a world with multiple different fuels out there. Yeah, I

Angela Simoes:

Agree. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Tarek Abdel Baset:

Alright, thank you Angela. Appreciate it as well. Thank you.