Elemental Trucks is a Canadian manufacturer of zero-emission heavy-duty trucks focused on hydrogen fuel cell and battery-electric vehicle technologies for freight transport. Founded in 2022 and based in Toronto, the company’s founding partners previously contributed to the AZETEC project, North America’s first 60-tonne fuel cell electric truck demonstration.
What first drew you toward transportation and the decarbonization space?
Transportation was always a subconscious thread and passion because of my family history in the trucking industry; from a young age I was fascinated by trucking and aviation. At Waterloo, I saw early on that transportation was moving toward electrification and decarbonization, and I knew that was where I wanted my career to go.
A book about Ballard Power Systems in the late 1990s called Powering the Future caught my attention. During the dot-com boom, Ballard got huge attention around hydrogen cars, and I saw fuel cell technology moving from the lab into vehicles. There was already concern about climate change and smog in places like California. As an engineer, it was clear that electrifying vehicles would remove local emissions, and if the electricity source was decarbonized as well, that was what everybody wanted.
Talk us through what Elemental is building and where you see hydrogen fitting into the future of freight?
We always go back to first principles. We see battery electric as complementary to hydrogen. Our drivetrain is electric; we already have batteries onboard, and we could easily build a battery-electric version of our truck. Battery electric works well for shorter-range, lower-payload applications, and those trucks are already being deployed.
For commercial vehicles, utilization is everything. A car drives maybe 2% of the time, while a truck needs to operate almost constantly. That is where battery-electric limitations become clear: charging time, winter range reductions of 20–30%, and battery degradation over time. Hydrogen solves some of those problems because refueling takes about the same time as diesel, range can be extended onboard, and we get much higher energy density and payload capacity. Our truck can do 800 to 1,000 kilometres and carry 63.5 tonnes, or about 140,000 pounds, which is the highest weight rating commonly used in Canada. Most zero-emission truck OEMs targeted the Californian and broader U.S. market, which is limited to 82,000 pounds, but in Canada, maybe 50% of the semi-truck fleet operates at 140,000 pounds. We move much heavier payloads over much longer distances, and that is where the economics become attractive.
How did Canada’s geography and operating conditions shape the way you designed the truck?
Most trucks designed for American applications are optimized for California conditions. When we looked at Canadian routes and weather, we realized almost every major component had to change. We designed this truck to operate down to minus 25 and in mountainous terrain because our main customers are in BC and Alberta.
Long-duration mountain climbs require far more fuel cell power, motor power and heat rejection than other zero-emission trucks currently provide. Descending is also a huge challenge because diesel trucks use engine braking, while electric trucks cannot rely on air brakes alone without overheating. We created the equivalent of an engine brake using very large resistors that convert generated electricity into heat and reject it through the radiators. Designing for minus 25 to plus 35 required a completely different system from the ground up.
What did the public unveiling of the truck represent for the company?
The unveiling was fantastic because, while we were not exactly in stealth mode, we had not publicly revealed the truck, the design or the performance specs. We suddenly started getting messages from around the world from people surprised by the range, payload and performance figures. The response came from Europe, Asia, Australia and across the U.S.
For the team, it was rewarding to finally be in the spotlight at Truck World and engage directly with people visiting the booth. Commercially, the timing also mattered because the U.S. cleantech market has stalled somewhat, while Canada and other global markets are still investing heavily. Canada is recognized globally for hydrogen and fuel cell technology, so it became a strong moment to reveal the truck and explore export opportunities.
Where does the appetite for zero-emission trucking stand in 2026, particularly given the uncertainty and slowdown in the U.S.?
When Trump was elected in late 2024, uncertainty in the U.S. market became extremely high. In 2025, we focused on delivering our Canadian project with HTEC because nobody really knew what would happen in the U.S. market. Projects were being paused, repealed or delayed, but we were fortunate to have a fully funded Canadian deployment. Cleantech sentiment hit its low point sometime in 2025, but since then, we have started seeing opportunities return, especially in places like California and Washington State.
In Canada, though, the opportunities in zero-emission trucking never really stopped. Canada has become the lifeboat for this technology because there has been far more business certainty here. The market probably needed a reality check regardless of politics. In 2023 and early 2024, the targets being discussed were extremely ambitious, and from an industry perspective, we knew the manufacturing capacity did not exist. Expectations are now smaller, but much more aligned with what the industry can actually deliver. Instead of talking about 10,000 trucks next year, we are probably talking about hundreds.
Where are you seeing the strongest momentum globally around hydrogen trucking?
Canada and the U.S. are our primary focus, but globally, there is still huge momentum. China is already deploying fuel cell trucks at an enormous scale and has always been ahead in this area. In Europe, OEMs like Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have continued developing hydrogen trucking technology, and Toyota recently joined them in a fuel-cell joint venture based in Vancouver. At the trucking expo in Las Vegas, hydrogen solutions dominated the conversation. Heavy-duty trucking remains a major priority globally.
One thing that has shifted sentiment is the growing focus on energy insecurity, particularly following the war in Iran and the resulting oil-price volatility. Every time there is instability around the oil supply, interest in alternative fuels increases. What Canada really needs now is to move from pilot projects to large-scale deployment. California and China provide good examples where incentives are tied to zero-emission kilometres travelled. Governments help set the goals and fund the transition, while the market determines the best way to achieve it. The biggest challenge is still scale: we need higher production volumes to reduce both truck costs and fuel costs.
What still needs to happen for hydrogen trucking to scale successfully in Canada?
The biggest issue is infrastructure. Every customer asks the same question first: Where are the refueling stations? Fleets need confidence that they can reliably buy fuel and operate these trucks long-term. The encouraging thing is that Canada does not require a massive infrastructure buildout because freight traffic is concentrated on a relatively small number of corridors. A few stations along the 401 corridor could support a huge percentage of Canadian truck traffic. HTEC already has infrastructure in BC that could support hundreds of trucks; Alberta has more stations coming, and Quebec is developing opportunities around Val-d’Or and Quebec City.
Historically, price parity with diesel was around eight dollars per kilogram of hydrogen, although with diesel prices rising, it is probably closer to ten or twelve dollars today. Truck pricing is entirely tied to scale. If we stay at pilot volumes and build four or five trucks at a time, costs will remain high, but even moving to 100 trucks a year would create major supply-chain savings, and 1,000 trucks a year would reduce costs dramatically.
The key challenge now is moving from demonstration projects into real deployment volumes.
