World’s first hydrogen-powered tram service suspended

When the Gaoming Modern Tram Demonstration Line in China’s Foshan City was opened in December 2019, fitted with two 200kW hydrogen fuel cells, it was hailed as the world’s first ever hydrogen-powered tram service.

But now, after four and a half years of operation, the 6.5km line has reportedly been suspended with no timetable for resumption, amid a collapse in passenger numbers and rumours of rising costs.

The official reason for the suspension in early August, given by the local transport bureau on state media, is that the 838-million-yuan ($118m) demonstration is undergoing an “equipment and facilities overhaul”, and that service will be resumed in due course.

It is not clear whether this refers to the rail infrastructure, or the trams themselves.

Canada’s Ballard Power Systems, which co-designed the trams with Chinese state-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC Qingdao Sifang, as well as supplying the fuel cells for each of the five hydrogen-powered trams on the line.

But Chinese media has questioned whether an equipment overhaul is the real reason for the suspension, with state-owned China Newsweek citing rail experts who state that any maintenance on the railway could be carried out at night or otherwise outside normal service hours.

Moreover, the demonstration line — which officials state was only ever intended to showcase the technology — has been affected by ballooning costs, according to Hong Kong-based newspaper Sing Tao, which reported the line’s operational budget “climbing” to143 million yuan ($21m) in 2023.

In June this year Ballard confirmed in an online post that the Foshan tram was running on blue hydrogen — without saying where this was being sourced from — with a plan to switch to green H2 “as soon as prices allow”.

Ballard reported in January this year that the service had carried 600,000 passengers over four years of operation. However, passenger figures from the Chinese government suggest that the bulk of these occurred in 2020, when an average of 1,101 passengers were using the service each day — around 275,300 per year.

In 2021, when travel was restricted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, passenger numbers dropped to 578 per year, according to official figures.

This suggests that just 180,200 passengers travelled on the line (around 360 per day) in the two years to January 2024 when Ballard issued its figures.

Passenger numbers were not helped by a reduction in operating hours on the line from July 2023, with passengers cited by The Paper complaining that the service infrastructure was slow, infrequent and “inconvenient” to access.