{"id":8912,"date":"2026-05-26T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/?p=8912"},"modified":"2026-05-26T05:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T09:45:09","slug":"hydrogen-chevrolet-colorado-zh2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/hydrogen-chevrolet-colorado-zh2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toyota Mirai Is Stuck in the Driveway. The U.S. Army’s Hydrogen Chevy Colorado Has Bulletproof Tanks, a JP8 Reformer, and a Generator in the Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone has been joking on the Toyota Mirai<\/a>, and probably for good reason. But the issue may not be hydrogen \u2014 it’s likely how Toyota is dealing with hydrogen. Because there is a hydrogen-powered vehicle meant to withstand an active war zone, and it seems to have an answer for everything.<\/p>\n

The Chevrolet Colorado ZH2 is a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle concept created in collaboration between General Motors and the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC). It’s a hefty version of the ZR2, with bigger tires, upgraded suspension, and a 177-horsepower electric motor paired with a proton-exchange membrane fuel-cell stack.<\/p>\n

In the real world, hydrogen doesn’t seem to be the answer. The Mirai is essentially an expensive paperweight at this point due to a lack of infrastructure and support. Toyota keeps it going<\/a> just because it believes hydrogen will happen someday despite only selling a few hundred units a year. But it seems like hydrogen could be a lot more useful on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Well, if it weren’t for one big flaw.<\/p>\n

The Chevrolet Colorado ZH2 isn’t fully ready<\/h2>\n
\"GM
Image Credit: General Motors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hydrogen may be sorta pointless in the United States (especially with even EVs struggling to remain relevant), but it’s the perfect fuel to explore on the battlefield. It makes the vehicle nearly silent, reducing its acoustics and thermal signatures, despite being a very clearly massive vehicle. This makes the ZH2 perfect for stealth operations.<\/p>\n

“The ZH2 provides an alternative power source other than generators, which are very loud and at times difficult to maintain and move based on the operating environment,” said<\/a> Capt. Quinn Heydt, 2nd Squadron assistant operations officer.<\/p>\n

Hydrogen is not as scarce in the battlefield as it is while driving through California, apparently. The battlefield is full of JP8, or “jet propellant eight,” which it uses for tanks, trucks, and generators. Basically, anything with an engine. To fill the 10,000-psi H2 tanks, TARDEC has a reformer that converts JP8 into hydrogen. Car and Driver also reported that the Zh2 has a portable generator in its bed, delivering electricity to the truck. They wrote: “It is almost as if they’ve thought of everything.”<\/p>\n

They have even thought of protection. General Motors said the ZH2’s hydrogen tanks are bulletproof. Executive Director of Global Fuel Cell Activities told Car and Driver that .50 BMG bullets from a rifle with extreme kinetic energy would “bounce off the tank.” If someone attempts to shoot it, the ZH2 vents the now-volatile hydrogen upward. This is good, since hydrogen is extremely flammable.<\/p>\n

The downfall? The Chevrolet Colorado ZH2 has a very limited driving range. TARDEC even admitted to Green Car Reports that this has been very detrimental to the vehicle’s success. When driving through rough terrain \u2014 which would be quite common in various battlefields \u2014 the range dropped to 90 miles. That makes the ZH2 a pretty lackluster option in the majority of operations.<\/p>\n

Still, the army seems very keen on making hydrogen a thing. A few years after the ZH2’s reveal, the army began considering how to produce portable hydrogen for soldiers to carry, which could recharge batteries for night vision goggles, thermal cameras, and more.<\/p>\n

About that range problem \u2014 GM actually fixed it<\/h2>\n

Here’s the kicker. The 90-mile range issue everyone keeps flagging as the ZH2’s killer flaw? GM and the Army built a second truck specifically to fix it. The Silverado ZH2, revealed in 2018, swapped the Colorado’s single hydrogen tank for three larger ones, paired them with a Hydrotec-branded fuel cell, and pushed the GM-estimated range up to 400 miles. Same stealth, same exportable power, same JP8-to-hydrogen pitch \u2014 just with enough fuel to actually go somewhere. It went into evaluation that same year. It never made it into production. There is exactly one Silverado ZH2 in existence. The civilian world doesn’t get one. Neither, really, does the army at any meaningful scale.<\/p>\n

Then GM quietly killed the whole hydrogen program<\/h2>\n

Here’s where it gets a little sad. On October 10, 2025, GM officially pulled the plug on its next-generation Hydrotec fuel cells \u2014 the technology that powered both the Colorado ZH2 and the Silverado ZH2. The company cancelled a $55 million Detroit factory<\/a> that was supposed to mass-produce them, axed 144 planned jobs, and quietly ended its hydrogen locomotive project with Wabtec. Its joint venture with Honda survives, but only for stationary applications \u2014 think backup generators for data centers, not anything you’d drive. GM’s stated reason was infrastructure: 61 hydrogen refueling stations nationwide against more than 250,000 EV charging locations. The math, even GM had to admit, doesn’t really work for hydrogen on the road.<\/p>\n

So yes, the truck that “seems to have an answer for everything” got built by a company that, almost a decade later, decided hydrogen vehicles weren’t worth answering for anymore. There’s a particular kind of cruel irony there.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon, on the other hand, didn’t give up<\/h2>\n

The army didn’t lose interest just because GM did. It just changed partners. In March 2026, the U.S. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal awarded a Basic Ordering Agreement to Heven AeroTech for a hydrogen-powered drone called the Z1<\/a>, the first hydrogen UAS to clear the Defense Innovation Unit’s Blue UAS Select vetting list. A month earlier, Heven’s Zepher Flight Labs subsidiary won a contract modification under DIU’s HyTEC program \u2014 Hydrogen at the Tactical Edge of Contested Logistics \u2014 to keep developing a transportable hydrogen generation trailer that’s already been delivered to Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. There’s also a partnership with Sesame Solar on a solar-powered mobile drone refueling nanogrid that pairs directly with the Z1. The Pentagon’s interest in hydrogen has, if anything, gotten more serious since GM walked away. It just doesn’t run through Detroit anymore. It runs through Sterling, Virginia.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Mirai is stuck in the driveway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone has been joking on the Toyota Mirai, and probably for good reason. But the issue may not be hydrogen … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-electric-vehicles-evs","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8912"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8930,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8912\/revisions\/8930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}