New Jersey is investing up to $13 million in a pilot project to put six hydrogen-fueled trucks to work in the Port of New York and New Jersey as the port authority prepares to launch an unrelated initiative to cut trucking emissions by opening the first publicly accessible heavy-duty truck chargers at the port. 

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) on April 9 agreed to pay Rutgers University to develop the hydrogen project with money from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Rutgers researchers will buy six Class 8 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks, as well as fueling facilities and fuel, and partner with one or two logistics companies to operate the trucks at the port. 

The project will add to the ongoing effort to cut emissions in and around the largest port on the East Coast. Pollution from the port has attracted attention because of its location in a densely populated area already burdened with fossil fuel electricity generators and highways. Much of the port is in Newark, the state’s largest city, and the marine terminals contributed about 8.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the area, according to the EDA’s memorandum of understanding for the hydrogen project.  

The 15-month-long hydrogen project, with the option to extend by a year, will be carried out at Port Newark and Port Elizabeth marine terminals and aims to “position New Jersey as a leader in clean hydrogen innovation,” according to a memo outlining the project that was submitted to the board by EDA CEO Tim Sullivan. 

Rutgers researchers will “gather raw data to assess the vehicle’s feasibility” and will submit quarterly reports to the EDA that address issues including “procurement, health and safety, equipment operations, vehicle mileage, fuel consumption and maintenance,” the memo says. “This data will emphasize economic and environmental factors, including but not limited to total cost of ownership and tailpipe emission,” the memo adds. 

EV Advances in the Ports

The EDA’s approval came as two heavy-duty electric charging initiatives are close to coming online. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is ready to open four EV DC fast chargers (DCFC) in the port that will be available to the owners and operators of drayage trucks, which move shipping containers in and out of the port. 

In an unrelated project, California-based Zeem Solutions/EV Edison is completing construction on Kearny Point, a heavy-duty trucking depot meant to handle 500 Class 8 trucks. A company spokesman said it could open in the next few weeks. 

Located on a former electricity generating site on the edge of the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Zeem depot is close to the New Jersey Turnpike and two other highways. It will be equipped with 84 DCFCs that yield 400 kW of charging power, a representative said at a New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority meeting in 2024. 

That means, for example, that if a Volvo Class 8 truck comes in at about a 20% charge, “you can get it back up to 80% in about two to three hours,” Nicholas Raspanti, senior director of sales and port Initiatives at Zeem Solutions, told the agency in a presentation. 

Drayage trucks make more than 14,000 trips in and out of the port each day, but the drayage sector and truck owners in New Jersey have been slow to embrace electricity or any other alternative truck fuel, as they have been in other states.  

PANYNJ in July 2024 said the use of electric trucks and container handling equipment increased by about 8% from 2022 to 2023. But that growth started from a small base. The authority’s March 2025 report shows there are 19 electric trucks serving the port, compared to 10,875 diesel trucks.  

Drayage trucks typically pick up containers imported through port terminals and deliver them to a distribution center or a warehouse, often returning the same day to the port with empty containers. As such, the distance of a typical drayage delivery is much less than, say, those made by cross-country truckers. 

A National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report in 2023 found that existing electric trucks on the market had sufficient range to replace 20% of diesel trucks in the port, because the average route they completed each day was 140 miles. (See NREL Report Sees Role for Electric Trucks at Port of NY-NJ.) 

Trucker Skepticism

Truckers, however, say electric trucks on the market are too expensive, the number of models available is limited and the range for those EV trucks on the market still is too small. A diesel truck typically costs $180,000 and an electric truck upward of $400,000, according to the American Trucking Associations. Studies have shown EV trucks can be cheaper than diesel over the life of the vehicle, due to the lower fuel and maintenance costs. (See NRDC Report Predicts a Decline in NJ’s EV Truck Costs.) 

Truckers say the hefty EV battery takes up space that otherwise would be used for carrying goods and products, making the trucks less efficient. And they say the time taken to charge the battery also reduces truck efficiency, compared to the relative speed with which a diesel truck can be filled up. 

The cost factor is particularly important because many of the trucks that serve the port are owned and operated by small businesses that operate a handful of trucks and have little capital to buy an electric truck. 

Lisa Yakomin, president of the Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers, which represents drayage truckers in the port, said she’s not familiar with the hydrogen pilot proposed by the EDA, but said the state lacks charging or fueling infrastructure for hydrogen trucks, as it does for electric trucks. 

“If you compared the two side by side, I think there are, from a charging standpoint, advantages to the hydrogen fuel cell” over electric trucks, Yakomin said. “But the challenges relating to infrastructure are the same for both, and the challenges in terms of cost are the same for both. And those are two very big issues that keep them from being taken seriously. 

“I’m not aware of any public fueling stations for hydrogen (around the port). I think there’s one private one in the entire state of New Jersey,” she said. Still, she added, “one of the advantages that hydrogen fuel cell trucks have over EVs is that they charge about as quickly as a diesel truck does. They also go twice as far as an electric truck. But when you compare it to a diesel truck, they still go a fraction of the distance of a diesel truck on a full tank of gas.” 

While a diesel truck can go about 1,300 miles on a tank of gas, and an electric vehicle can do 200 miles or so on a charge, a hydrogen truck can go about 400 miles, she said. She added that port officials have said the chargers planned for the new electric charging sites are 350 kW, which would charge a truck in about two hours — a time she suggested is too long for the rapid-turnaround needs of the drayage sector. 

The website for Phoenix-based Nikola, which makes hydrogen fuel-cell trucks, says its vehicles have a range of 500 miles and can be refueled in “20 minutes or less.”  

Hydrogen is made by electrolyzers splitting water molecules into their components of hydrogen and water. For hydrogen produced this way to be clean, or green, as it is commonly called, the electrolyzers have to be powered by zero-emissions renewable or nuclear energy. 

The EDA, in memorandum outlining the hydrogen project, said “hydrogen is most applicable to industries that are difficult to decarbonize through battery electrification. In the transportation sector, electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles remains a challenge.” 

The Department of Energy in 2024 allocated $750 million to fund 52 projects in 24 states across the nation, with an aim to advance electrolysis technologies and manufacturing and recycling capabilities for clean hydrogen. The goal of the projects, with funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is to boost the manufacture of electrolyzers to produce up to 1.3 million tons of clean hydrogen yearly and boost the production of fuel cells, which run on the clean hydrogen, by 14 GW yearly. (See DOE Announces $750M in Clean Hydrogen Funding.)