Westport Fuel Systems became Aetherion Technologies on Thursday, staking its future on compressed natural gas for North American long-haul fleets through the Cespira high-pressure direct injection (HPDI) fuel system. The Vancouver, British Columbia company's pivot follows its July 2025 sale of the light-duty business to an investment vehicle of Netherlands-based Heliaca Investments for a base price of $79.5 million, with the Westport name transferred as part of that deal.

Aetherion's chief executive framed the rename as a signal of a narrower strategy after the divestiture.

"The bread and butter is the original foundation of the company, the original technology, HPDI, high pressure direct injection," Dan Sceli, CEO of Aetherion, said in an interview with FreightWaves. "That's really how it all started and that's the core that we want to get back to focusing on and not trying to do 20 things part way, but do a couple of things really well."

Shareholders approved the name change at the June 30 annual and special meeting. The company expects its shares to trade under the Aetherion name on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, subject to final exchange approvals, on a date it has not announced. The name draws on two Greek roots: aithēr, the clean air of the upper sky, and ion, meaning motion or energy.

What anchors the renamed company?

Philip Hill co-founded Westport in 1995 and invented HPDI, a system that keeps the diesel engine but changes the fuel it burns. The technology sells through Cespira, a joint venture with Volvo Group launched in 2024; Aetherion owns 55% and Volvo owns 45%.

More than 12,000 trucks worldwide run HPDI, according to the company. The commercial traction shows in the numbers: Cespira posted second-quarter revenue of $27.1 million, up 125% from $12 million a year earlier, according to Westport's second-quarter management's discussion and analysis dated Aug. 11.

Sceli said the open question is how quickly fleets switch to natural gas for its stable pricing, and he dismissed competing powertrains for this duty cycle.

"There's lots of places for battery electric and fuel cells, but not on these long-haul truck fleets," he said.

Can hydrogen ride the same platform?

HPDI can also run hydrogen and natural gas blends on the same core technology, Sceli said. Most of hydrogen's cost sits in liquefying and transporting it, and he argued the fuel needs to move closer to $5 an equivalent gallon to compete. One workaround he sees: blending hydrogen into existing U.S. natural gas pipelines.

"They've been doing it in Hawaii for 50 years," he said.

Hawaiʻi Gas blends up to 15% hydrogen into the synthetic natural gas it produces at a plant built in 1974 and distributes by pipeline on Oʻahu. Cespira and Volvo signed a development agreement in June to run Volvo's 13-liter engine on hydrogen through HPDI, targeting a European commercial launch before 2030, according to the second-quarter filing.

What does the CNG push mean for US fleets?

Cespira's growth so far has come on liquefied natural gas, Sceli said. North America is the next market, and its fuel is CNG, with pipelines and infrastructure already in place.

The company showed a CNG demonstration truck at ACT Expo in May — a Volvo VNL 300 on a high-pressure storage system — reporting more than 600 miles of range and up to 10 miles per diesel-gallon equivalent. Sceli said several large fleets have shown interest, and Volvo is working through its business case for the system in North America. He told FreightWaves in April that Environmental Protection Agency certification is the primary step toward commercialization.

Fleets want price stability on top of savings, Sceli said.

"They want to know that six months or 12 months down the road, what their fuel pricing is going to be," he said. "This volatility in diesel causes headaches for all of these fleets and pricing and dealing with short- and long-term contracts."

Over the next six to 12 months, Sceli said, the two things to watch are Cespira's growth and the CNG system. "Westport is bringing a new CNG storage system to combine it with HPDI for the North American market, because the market is looking for an alternative and we have it," he said.