But Haas loves wrenching, and he’s comfortable with the startup hustle. He came up in the corporate world, putting in 27 years of engineering leadership work at Ford Motor Co. before serving as an engineering director at Tesla Motors for a year and a half. He worked most recently as president and CEO of Mahindra North America in Auburn Hills before being recruited to Quantron in 2021.
Money and infrastructure are the primary reasons hydrogen vehicles haven’t taken hold in the U.S. There are virtually no hydrogen fueling stations outside of California, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The cost for Quantron to build a semi exceeds $750,000, Haas said. Even with incentives from California, the production cost must be below $500,000 to make financial sense.
At the same time, the business case for hydrogen seems to be shifting as more vehicle makers come to appreciate the role of hydrogen to hit emission reduction goals and as billions of dollars in incentives for the technology from the federal Inflation Reduction Act come down the pike. The impact of EVs on the electrical grid are also forcing manufacturers to think outside of battery electric.
Haas said it’s a matter of time before the cost of hydrogen-fuel cell technology falls, just as it did with EVs.
“It’s what battery electric vehicles were 20 years ago,” he said. “Hydrogen’s going to be the same way: Starts expensive, gets cheap.”
Quantron is aiming to beat other companies at setting up hydrogen infrastructure in the U.S., said Richard Ansell, who Haas lured from Mahindra to work as Quantron’s vice president of marketing.
“You’ve got to get the hydrogen. You’ve got to set up the refueling,” Ansell said. “There’s a whole infrastructure that needs to happen, which the other players in the U.S. haven’t done yet.”
The company’s as-a-service model also takes the risk away from the consumer, Haas added. Fleet operators can try out the technology without making big capital investments.
“I would want an investment-light way to sniff out the technology, to see if I like it,” he said. “That’s a way to do it so people can get into it without taking on an excessive amount of risk.”
Haas said Quantron has a memorandum of understanding with Nevada-based TMP Logistics Group Ltd. for up to 500 Class 8 trucks for delivery by 2024. He expects more orders to follow as Quantron gets its name out and manufacturing plan squared away.
Haas has faith in hydrogen fuel and its place in the U.S., but the next couple of years will tell whether his timing was right.
“You want to be out ahead of everybody…not so far that you self-destruct, but far enough so that you’re the first person people look to when they say, who were the first movers in this segment,” he said.