MIT Startup LNK Energies Converts Diesel Trucks to Hydrogen at 13% Lower Cost

By Daniel Okafor

A converted Class 8 truck running LNK Energies' hydrogen system costs 13% less to own and operate than a diesel equivalent, according to the MIT startup's chief technology officer. "If you look at total cost of ownership of a Class 8 truck, it's 13% cheaper than diesel," Alexis Huynh, CTO of LNK Energies, told TechCrunch. The company will pitch the technology live at TechCrunch Disrupt, running October 13–15 in San Francisco.

The claim lands at a moment when diesel prices sit near record highs and governments are draining strategic stockpiles to contain the fallout. LNK's founders argue that conversion, not replacement, is the cheaper route for trucking fleets. Their system keeps the truck, keeps the engine, and swaps only the fuel.

How does the truck carry hydrogen without pressure tanks?

Hydrogen trucking has a well-known bottleneck. Refilling a hydrogen tank is faster than recharging giant batteries, but moving hydrogen to stations is hard, and the on-board pressure tanks are large and expensive. Storing hydrogen on a truck normally means pressurizing it to more than 11,000 psi — 800 bar, roughly 800 times normal air pressure — and compression burns serious power.

LNK sidesteps that problem with liquid organic hydrogen carriers, or LOHCs. These liquids absorb hydrogen, hold it chemically bonded, and release it later. Researchers have studied LOHCs for decades, but mostly to move bulk hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations. The catch has been the reactor, the machine that splits hydrogen back out of the carrier. It was too big for a truck.

"A lot of the reactors that LOHC companies have today are really large. They're about the size of a shipping container," Huynh said. "We have shrunk that basically to the size of a mini fridge."

That size cut changes the economics. Because LNK's fuel carries hydrogen in liquid form and releases it on board as needed, the compression step disappears entirely. "We're eliminating the expensive compression step," co-founder and CEO Sayandeep Biswas told TechCrunch.

What happens to the engine?

The released hydrogen burns in a conventional internal combustion engine — the same kind used in today's diesel trucks — with a few modifications. The system recycles waste heat from the engine to help power the on-board reactor. Fleets that want zero combustion emissions can instead specify fuel cells, which convert hydrogen into electricity for electric motors.

The carrier liquid itself behaves like diesel in daily operations. It sits in a traditional fuel tank and dispenses through standard pumps. "The entire hydrogen infrastructure doesn't need to exist," Biswas said. "It's just a standard diesel station."

When does a converted truck hit the road?

Not yet. Biswas and Huynh have a lab demonstration reactor that powers a lawnmower engine. Within 18 months, they plan to install a larger version in a commercial truck.

The business case rests on cost parity without subsidies. Converted trucks will carry higher purchase prices, but the founders project operating costs below diesel at a hydrogen price of $6.50 per gallon once they have built just 50 to 100 trucks. None of their projections count government subsidies.

"The idea isn't to have a technology that is cheaper at scale, but one that is cheaper even during that adoption period," Biswas said.

Why the numbers matter

The 50-to-100-truck threshold is the pivotal claim. Most alternative-fuel plays promise savings only at industrial scale, years after adoption. LNK is betting the opposite: cheap from the first production run, insulated from the geopolitical price shocks that pushed diesel to record levels in recent weeks.

The demonstration at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield on October 13–15 will be the first public test of that pitch in front of investors. If the 18-month commercial truck timeline holds, fleet operators will soon get a concrete answer on whether conversion beats buying new.