Company overview
Vanguard was founded in partnership with the University of Birmingham to provide solutions for powering clean, sustainable mobility solutions across all transport sectors with a particular focus on global rail networks.
Vanguard aims to demystify the use of hydrogen as a motive fuel and educate heavy transport operators on the importance of a global push towards net-zero carbon emissions. This is achieved using ground-breaking scientific research alongside real-world engineering experience and the ongoing development of hydrogen-fueled propulsion technology.
The future of sustainable transport relies on the early adoption of hydrogen fuel-cell technology and, just as importantly, the infrastructure needed to support this technology. Vanguard offers consultancy services focussed on all aspects of the real-world use of this technology including the project management and production experience required to make the net-zero goal a reality.
Adopting a zero-waste approach, Vanguard specialises not just in the design of zero-carbon emissions powertrains for new vehicles, but also in the conversion of existing, fossil-fuel based propulsion systems which allow them to run on hydrogen without any compromise in performance.
HydroFLEX
The UK’s first hydrogen train was designed, developed, and delivered in a collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Porterbrook. The founders of Vanguard led the University Team that performed the R&D which resulted in a working demonstrator train being built in only 9 months.
Passengers were able to experience their first zero-emissions journey aboard HydroFLEX as part of its first mainline trials in September 2020 before the fully approved production version of HydroFLEX attended COP26 for visits by the Prime minister and Royal Family in November 2021.