Welcome to the Australian Investment Summit Podcast, your gateway to insights from industry leaders shaping the future of global investment. In partnership with the prestigious London Stock Exchange, we bring you engaging conversations with visionaries and innovators from Australian companies poised for international success.

H2X Global CEO takes the mic to introduce the company’s innovative hydrogen vehicles and future plans, emphasizing the advantages of hydrogen over battery electric vehicles and their aspirations for global growth. 

For further information on the investment opportunity or if you’re interested in attending the summit, please register via our website: https://australianinvestmentsummit.com/

Join us as we interview the strategic minds driving market advancements and explore why the UK-based investor landscape is a pivotal opportunity for growth-oriented enterprises. From discussions with representatives of the London Stock Exchange to exclusive interviews with CEOs of companies participating in the Australian Investment Summit, this podcast unveils the strategies, aspirations, and market insights that define success in today’s dynamic investment ecosystem. 

Tune in to gain first hand knowledge and discover investment opportunities with the Australian Investment Summit Podcast.

Read the Conversation:

Welcome, my name is Jack Colreavy, I am an Associate Director at Barclay Pierce Capital
and Head of the London Desk and I'm hosting today on behalf of the Australian
Investment Summit, an event to be held in London on July 10, showcasing the best of
Australian business and innovation. Now one of the companies that will be headlining the
event is H2X Global, an Australian fuel cell electric vehicle company. Joining me today
from H2X is its CEO, Anthony Tolfts.

Thanks for joining me, Anthony. Jack, g'day and lovely to see you again. Great to be with
you on another podcast.

We did one about three months ago, but really appreciate the engagement and support.
Looking forward to the chat. Yeah, always love talking to you and I very much appreciate
that Australian greeting you just dropped there.

Let's kick it off and let's just start simply. For those who are unfamiliar, who is H2X and
what's the company's vision? Jack, we make great hydrogen vehicles. You might know us
for making the world's only four-wheel drive that's hydrogen-powered.

That's just one of our models that gets a lot of attention. We're called the Warrego. We
also make larger vehicles that are hydrogen-powered and we just look forward to leading
the future of mobility.

That's all really, really exciting. Let's take a wider view. For people unfamiliar with fuel
cell electric vehicles and hydrogen, can you explain what a hydrogen vehicle is and the
advantages a hydrogen vehicle would have over, say, a battery electric vehicle, which is
also a zero emission vehicle? Well, thank you, Jack.

Certainly, if you're familiar with a battery vehicle, there's a lot of similarities to hydrogen,
except you don't have the battery. That comes with a lot of advantages. The top one is
they're a lot easier to refuel.

A hydrogen vehicle, like the ones that H2X make, takes about five minutes to refuel, as
opposed to a battery that will take you about 45 minutes, depending on your vehicle and
where you're filling it up or charging it. The other benefit you have is a much longer
range. Hydrogen tanks give you, our vehicles give you about 400Kms range.

If you want to go further, no worries. Add more tanks and you can go further. Now, the
other benefit is you can just keep refilling the tanks as long as you want, because unlike
a battery that wears away over time, then you're going to worry about recycling it.
The tank, you just keep refilling it. We really like the hydrogen tech and we're very
happy with where we're placed. Yeah, well, it sounds like a lot of strong advantages
there.

It sounds like it would be well suited for more of a commercial market where time on the
road is money. Is that the target for H2X? Absolutely. Hydrogen makes a lot of sense for
commercial vehicles.

That is where H2X focus. Now, you mentioned time on the road, absolutely important
with a five minutes to refuel. You can keep the vehicle going a lot more.

It's also very handy for emergency vehicles. You also raise a good point that without
having to carry a battery around, the hydrogen vehicle saves a lot of weight. That means
you can have more carrying capacity because you're not carrying a battery.

You can actually carry commercial goods or whatever you need. Performance is also
better without that extra weight and scalability across the range. We've also spoken
about the battery end of life and not needing to recycle the battery.

Yeah, really happy with the benefits that hydrogen offers commercial vehicles. Yeah,
from what I understand, a fuel cell, which is the main engine behind a hydrogen vehicle,
switching out the membranes, recyclability of that is very strong, which I think is another
tick in the hydrogen bucket there. You also mentioned emergency vehicles, not
something I was top of mind as well.

It sounds like those types of vehicles need to be ready to go. You don't want them all
trying to charge when you've had a heart attack. So who are your clients? Do you have
orders for your vehicles? Yeah, look, Jack, we are very happy with our client book.
Our biggest customer is Renova, who are a Swedish waste management company based
in Gothenburg. We couldn't be happier to have them as one of our main clients. They do a
lot of good for their community, but also focus on refuse collection in a sustainable way.
That's where H2X comes in. We provide them with hydrogen vehicles that obviously are
not low emission, but zero emission. So the only thing that's coming out of our vehicles
is water.

Yeah, I mean, the Nordics and Europe in general are very much leading the way in terms
of hydrogen and all that sort of stuff. So let's change tack a little bit and talk about the
specific vehicles. So I mean, you mentioned at the top, the world's first four by four.
Tell me about that project. So H2X's vision is we're starting with a retrofit strategy. So
that means we are taking an existing vehicle called a donor vehicle that is powered by
an internal combustion engine, and we're retrofitting it to be hydrogen.

The reason we do this is to allow us to have a lower capex because we don't need to
develop the vehicle. We just develop the hydrogen tech. We're starting small.

We're starting with a four wheel drive, the only one available in the world at the moment
that runs on hydrogen. That first vehicle, we've finished the concept already, will be
going through the roadworthy for Europe and the UK. We then hand it over to the
customer and we build the next one.
Our next vehicle up, because we have a number of models, is a three-and-a-half-ton
truck. We go through exactly the same process. We get it roadworthy for the UK and
Europe, and then we move on to the next one, which is an 18 ton truck.

Once the business is more mature, we look forward to launching our own vehicles, which
will be things like delivery vans and taxis. But step one, we want to stand on our own two
feet and let's get the retrofitting away using H2X proprietary technology. Yeah.

And look, I'm glad you touched there just then on H2X proprietary technology. What is
the intellectual property that has been developed by the company today? It looks the
most obvious is we have our own fuel tanks that are a little bit different, they're a little
bit smaller, they have less space than some of our competitors. They're also
conveniently bulletproof just to make sure they can handle the rigors of traffic and the
abuse that a typical commercial vehicle experiences.

We've also got technology that allows some of our vehicles to run without the need of a
separate lithium battery or any battery. We also have proprietary software that keeps
everything working together and allows us to plug into the four-wheel drive of the
traditional internal combustion engine and still access four-wheel drive capability. And
that's really important.

We don't want to make a vehicle that looks like a four-wheel drive, we actually want one
that can operate and take a knock and go off-road and smash it around and come back
to base. Yeah. All right.

Well, that sounds very exciting. In terms of the intellectual property, I mean, behind
every great idea is a great person who are some of the great minds of H2X besides
yourself, of course. You're very kind, Jack.

Look, a special mention to our founders, Brendan Norman and Chris Reitz, who have had
the idea and the inspiration and the vision for H2X. I also want to give a really special
shout out to Ian Thompson, who is our Chief Technology Officer. He's based in the UK.
And Ian has got irreplaceable experience. Ian was involved as one of the lead engineers
on the original Tesla Roadster. Ian was working at Lotus at the time, and they worked on
retrofitting the Tesla components into the Roadster.

So really, for Ian, H2X is second time around, and his experience is so valuable and
irreplaceable. Yeah. I mean, great pedigree there across the board and so important.
And yeah, Ian Thompson, a bit of a superstar in automotive circles. Before I let you go,
let's talk about the future. What are the future plans for H2X? Oh, Jack, I'm always very
forward-looking, and so this is a great passion of mine.

H2X have now proven the vehicle's capability. We now want to enter into mass
production, starting with the Warrego, which is our four-wheel drive, and then
progressing up into the bigger vehicles. We also have bigger corporate aspirations.
Now, I believe that listing makes a lot of sense for a business like H2X. On the one hand,
you've got the commercial aspect where the funds are useful to build out your vehicle
and your order book. But equally, I think being on the public markets and being subject
to all that rigor and disclosure, it just shows that H2X are here in for the long haul.

Now, we're already treating ourselves like a listed business, even though we haven't yet
gone through an IPO. And I think that's really important that our staff and our team, we
actually treat ourselves as if we're listed now. So really excited on that journey.
And to that end, we look forward to going to the AIS, the Australian Investment Summit
next month. Jack, look forward to seeing you there and speaking with European
exchanges. I know the AIS is in partnership with the London Stock Exchange, and we
look forward to presenting at their venues.

So really excited about that time of evolution for H2X as we enter the public markets.
Yeah, I mean, an IPO event, always a massive moment for any company. And H2X in a
listed environment will enable all sorts of investors who believe in the story and believe
in helping drive zero emission mobility can get behind the stock and have their
ownership piece of it.

So very exciting times ahead for H2X Global. As you mentioned, H2X Global will be at the
Australian Investment Summit on July 10 at the London Stock Exchange. So if you would
like to meet Antony in the flesh, you can so by registering.

Please refer to the link in the description for more information. Antony, thank you so
much for your time. Very much appreciated.

Thank you, Jack. See you next month.