Demonstration Event: On June 27, 2025, on the outskirts of Charlotte North Carolina, First Ammonia Motors (FAM) demonstrated the world’s first pure ammonia-powered vehicle running on a spark-ignition internal combustion engine. Unlike previous ammonia engines, it does not require a co-fuel such as gasoline, coal gas or methanol to speed up combustion. Rather, FAM uses waste heat from the engine to crack ammonia (NH3) to produce hydrogen co-fuel onboard as needed. The exhaust is steam and nitrogen.
Driver Experience: The initial FAM vehicle is a 1993 Chevy Silverado 1500 with a modified 2024 6.6-liter Chevrolet L8T V8 engine. This demonstration vehicle is indistinguishable to the driver from a gasoline powered truck. It complies with existing safety standards for road vehicles.
FAM CEO James Wall: Prior to founding FAM in May 2022, Jim was Director of Powertrain for Hendrick Motorsports where he led a team of 120 people who developed engines and produced more than 600 race engine builds annually. During his 33-year tenure, the Hendrick Motorsports engine program won 16 NASCAR Cup Series championships and 20 Mahle Clevite Engine Builder of the Year Awards.
Refueling: A FAM vehicle can be refueled in about the same amount of time as a gasoline car or truck, using a similar approach to LPG in Europe. Since ammonia’s energy density is half that of gasoline by mass and volume, the fuel tank will need to be about twice the size of a comparable gasoline vehicle to go the same distance.
Economics: FAM believes that its vehicles powered by blue ammonia (produced from natural gas with carbon capture) are competitive now with gasoline. Over time, blue ammonia can be replaced with pink (nuclear power + water) and green (renewable energy + water).
FAM Technology: Engine exhaust heats some of the incoming ammonia in a heat exchanger catalyst that breaks down ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen. Fuel flows sequentially through the heat exchanger catalyst and then through an electrically heated catalyst. Electric heating produces hydrogen upon startup and at low RPM. FAM’s fuel system continuously delivers a mixture of ammonia and hydrogen for efficient combustion. FAM’s IP is protected by 10 granted and 2 allowed U.S. patents, as well as 8 pending U.S. patent applications across 7 patent families. International patent applications are pending in Japan, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Great Britain, and China, with a granted patent in Japan and an allowed patent application in South Korea.
Safety: A 160-page study, “Safety assessment of ammonia as a transport fuel,” by Risø National Laboratory in Denmark concludes, “the use of ammonia as a transport fuel wouldn’t cause more risks than currently used fuels (using current practice).” “Comparative Quantitative Risk Analysis of Motor Gasoline, LPG and Anhydrous Ammonia as an Automotive Fuel,” prepared for Iowa State University draws a similar conclusion (p. 52).
Ammonia: Ammonia is liquid at room temperature at 10 atmosphere pressure, similar to propane in a tank. It is routinely transported on trucks, pipelines, trains and ships. The second most-produced inorganic chemical in the world (by volume), ammonia has been synthesized since the early 20th century when Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch
“invented a way to turn air into bread…
[i.e., combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen gas] Their work stands, I believe, as the most
important discovery ever made.”
The Alchemy of Air
Thomas Hager
Ammonia vs. Hydrogen: The use of hydrogen in vehicles, either used to produce electricity via fuel-cells or burned in combustion engines, is limited by the inherent properties of hydrogen. Stored as either a cryogenic liquid at -253 C or as a super-high pressure gas at 350 – 700 atmospheres, hydrogen requires complex and expensive infrastructure to store and deliver — filling stations alone cost $3 million. Hydrogen poses a considerable explosion hazard and requires a tank 3× larger than an ammonia tank to store the same amount of energy. In addition to the demands of high pressure or cryogenic temperatures, hydrogen poses substantial materials challenges, embrittling metal and leaking prolifically. Because ammonia is safer and easier to handle than pure hydrogen, ammonia is often called the “workhorse of the hydrogen economy”.
Why ammonia for road transport?
Tech: Here and now
Operating cost: Competitive with gasoline and diesel
Vehicle production cost: Similar to existing gasoline and diesel vehicles
Use of rare materials: None
Internal combustion engine: taps into 100+ years of learning-by-doing
Ease of transition: Filling stations readily adapted
Efficiency: Repurposes engine waste heat to crack NH3 into N2 and H2
Additional efficiency: Ammonia acts as engine coolant before combustion
Safety: Mature infrastructure for transport and handling
Climate impact: None (with NH3 that is green, yellow or blue)
Energy independence: NH3 can be made from renewable energy, water and air
First use cases: Likely to be fleet vehicles or heavy-duty trucks
Other applications: FAM technology could be adapted to ships, planes and stationary power.
Affiliates: FAM was spun off from First Ammonia, LLC.
Contact: info@firstammoniamotors.com