Billionaire Issa brothers, Mohsin and Zuber who own Asda are bankrolling a fledgling zero emission lorry company and plan to create Britain’s first network of hydrogen fuel stations to support the decarbonisation of Britain’s 300,000 heavy goods vehicles.
HVS, founded in Glasgow as Hydrogen Vehicle Systems in 2017, is testing and developing a lorry running on hydrogen fuel cells at the automotive industry’s Mira proving ground at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, after winning £21 million of taxpayer-funded grants.
The company also has attracted £30 million of investment from Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who made their fortune with the Euro Garages petrol station business that they have merged with Asda, the supermarkets chain they bought during the pandemic. HVS plans to start production by 2026 as a first mover in a sector that is proving slow to cut its carbon emissions.
It is understood that the Issa brothers’ EG Group believes that a hydrogen long-range lorry fleet can be serviced by only seven strategically sited hydrogen filling stations on the motorway network: at Dover, on the northern stretches of the M25, in the Midlands and near Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.