Given the increasing interest for natural gas as an alternative fuel for vehicles and the advantage of using it in its liquefied form (LNG) for heavy duty trucks, a lot of developments efforts have been made by the industry over the last 10 years in order to offer safe, efficient, and cost-effective refuelling solutions for LNG.
These refuelling solutions have opened up a new range of opportunities for historic cryogenic equipment manufacturers. However, the industry had to cope with new challenges such as the adaptation to new customer profiles and expectations. Indeed, most of the customers on this market did not have such experience with cryogenic systems. Besides new types of requirements such as total cost of ownership, key performance indicators and turnkey contracts have become key criteria to drive the business.
One other important factor is that most of the new LNG stations are out on publicly accessible places and are used by drivers who only get a short introduction and training on LNG refuelling. Moreover, the main competition for LNG as a fuel for HDV’s remains diesel and LNG stations are compared to stations with conventional fuels. It is therefore extremely important to offer a ‘diesel-like’ experience to those users when they do use LNG stations.
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