During the inauguration ceremony, the first truck was fueled and completed a delivery route to a Lider store in Huechuraba. Beginning in October, the vehicle will conduct regular dispatches across the Metropolitan Region, Valparaíso, and Rancagua. The pilot contemplates gradual incorporation of two trucks to analyze performance across different routes. According to Walmart, the station can fuel vehicles with over 600 kilometers of range and complete a full tank refill in approximately 20 minutes. The company estimates the technology will prevent 380 tons of annual CO₂ emissions.
The hydrogen supply originates from the production plant Walmart Chile and Engie inaugurated in 2023 at the same Quilicura distribution center. That project represented an investment near $15 million and initially targeted replacing lead-acid batteries in 200 forklifts with hydrogen fuel cell systems. Walmart subsequently reported the installation possesses daily production capacity of 240 kilograms of green hydrogen.
The truck deployed in the pilot is a Chinese-manufactured Feichi unit operated by Marval, authorized for circulation in June 2025 as the first homologated green hydrogen truck in Latin America. The vehicle stores up to 75 kilograms of hydrogen, offers an estimated 750-kilometer range, and accommodates a gross combined weight of up to 49 tons.
Walmart plans to use results from this pilot phase to expand the project at its El Peñón distribution center, where it projects a new green hydrogen plant and incorporation of up to ten trucks starting in 2028. In March 2026, Corfo awarded Colbún $6 million for a green hydrogen project at El Peñón in San Bernardo, involving Marval and Walmart Chile. That initiative contemplates total investment of $13.7 million and a 3 MW electrolysis plant, with projected demand of 195 tons of hydrogen annually for forklifts and trucks operating between Santiago and Valparaíso region.
This article was curated and published as part of our South American energy market coverage.
