Benjamin Happek is General Manager, Energy & Hydrogen at Hyundai Motor America in Orange County, California.

He started his career as Research Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Group AG with focus on fuel efficiency and durability improvements for truck and passenger diesel and gasoline engines in Southern Germany, while earning a doctoral degree at the University Duisburg-Essen in Mechanical Engineering.

At Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea,  Dr. Happek worked in Powertrain Development before moving to Commercial Vehicle R&D, focusing on developing the XCIENT Fuel Cell HD truck platform in 2018, with first customer deployments in Switzerland in 2020.

He then moved into business development, successfully launching the XCIENT Fuel Cell 6x4 tractor in the US in 2023 with the NorCAL ZERO Project, in Oakland, CA, which constituted the largest deployment of Class 8 fuel cell electric trucks in North America.

XCIENT Fuel Cell is now the only commercial fuel cell electric truck on sale in the US, and Hyundai recently launched 21 vehicles for their own logistics needs at their Metaplant in Savannah, Georgia.

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