News releases this week about Nikola’s fourth energy division president in lower than two years, the corporate’s first Hyla-branded modular hydrogen fueler for fuel cell trucks, and Hyzon Motors’ development agreement for fuel cell refuse trucks skirted some underlying issues.
Nikola touted the power to serve as much as 40 Class 8 trucks a day with about 50 kilograms of hydrogen. It’s enough to get a zero-emissions truck from Southern to Northern California — about 400 miles depending on the destination.
On the Port of Oakland, First Element Fuels (FEF) — which counts Nikola as a customer — offers heavy-duty hydrogen fill-ups to make round trips possible. FEF primarily focuses on fuel cell passenger cars, which need far less fuel than a heavy-duty tractor.
FEF expected 50,000 passenger vehicles — mostly Toyota Mirais and Hyundai Nexos — using OEM-prepaid fuel cards at its 85 hydrogen dispensers at 40 locations in California. As an alternative its total addressable market today is closer to fifteen,000 passenger vehicles.
Pivoting to truck charging kick-starts an infrastructure for the nascent transportation selection. Hyundai’s test fleet of 30 Xcient fuel cell trucks on the Port of Oakland refuels on the FEF station. While not a science experiment, hydrogen fuel cells are rife with challenges.
Pricing and maintenance questions
The value of hydrogen is an enormous hurdle. At as much as $36 a kilogram — greater than double its historic range of $14-$16kg — filling a truck could run $1,800. At current diesel prices around $4 a gallon, a fill-up is a couple of third of that.
Irrespective of how much a fleet wants to enhance sustainable trucking by substituting a fuel cell for a diesel-powered engine, no fuel surcharge comes close to creating up for such an outlay.
In telling customers of the rise in August, FEF, branded as True Zero, blamed cost pressure on the hydrogen supply chain and low carbon credit values in comparison with historical levels. Nikola wouldn’t discuss current pricing aside from to suggest some customer-specific fuel discounts.
It plans a complete of nine Hyla outlets by midyear. They can be a mixture of modular and everlasting stations, customer-owned facilities, and partnerships with public truck stops.
Then, there are questions on reliability. In line with reporting in CleanTechnica by Michael Barnard, a climate futurist, strategist and creator — and hydrogen critic — fuel cells cost more to keep up than battery-electric vehicles. He cited studies showing about 80% up time for fuel cell buses, the primary large vehicles to make use of them way back to the start of the century.
Most fleets shrink back from from fuel cells
That makes fuel cell trucks a nonstarter for fleets. Many already shrink back due to $450,000 upfront cost of a Nikola Tre FCEV. And that price covers just the truck — no fuel or maintenance as Nikola once planned to supply in a package for a single monthly price.
California offers enormous incentives for fuel cell trucks — for now. Some fleets try them, mostly in ones and twos. Vouchers assigned to dealers reduce their out-of-pocket risk. Yet many applications for California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project expire before they’re used.
Concerning the Nikola station
The Hyla outlet in Ontario, California, doesn’t produce hydrogen on-site. The liquid hydrogen is trucked in by diesel-powered tractors a few times a day depending on demand.
Using diesel trucks to haul the liquid hydrogen tanks is unavoidable provided that the entire count of battery-electric Class 8 trucks nationwide is about 1,000 out of a complete population of three.5 million. Nikola’s goal is to make use of zero-emission vehicles in the long run.
Nonetheless, hauling hydrogen by smog-producing diesel diminishes the concept of an environmentally friendly hydrogen ecosystem. Since most hydrogen today is derived from petroleum-based natural gas, its well-to-wheel emissions profile is lower than stellar.
Back in 2020, Nikola spent $30 million to buy five hydrogen-producing electrolyzers from Norway’s Nel ASA. Originally, Nikola planned its first station to be in Arizona. The corporate negotiated special rates for solar energy to make electricity for the electrolyzers. That plan is either shelved or dead due to company’s persistent money troubles.
Nikola’s revolving door of energy presidents
Nikola struggles keeping leadership for its energy division. Ole Hoefelmann is the most recent to occupy the role. The previous global head of Hyla’s infrastructure operations succeeded Joe Cappello, who served for lower than six months.
In line with Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Nikola paid Cappello barely greater than $1 million and money for other advantages to depart. Hoefelmann and Cappello each earned a base $600,000 annual salary.
Former BP executive Carey Mendes led the energy business until resigning in August. He revealed the Hyla branding in April. His predecessor, Pablo Koziner, served within the role from June 2020.
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Hyzon Motors delivers fuel cell trucks and partners for refuse trucks
Hyzon Motors this week announced a joint development agreement with Recent Way Trucks to develop fuel cell-powered refuse trucks in North America . It’s leveraging lessons from a test program in Australia.
The corporate delivered 4 Freightliner Cascadias upfit with its fuel cell system to Performance Food Group in December.
Hyzon CEO Parker Meeks told me he expects hydrogen prices to fall to around $7 per kilogram by the top of 2025. The present inflation, he told me, far exceeds the associated fee of constructing and distributing the fuel.
Engine break: OEMs split over EPA’s Phase 3 emissions regulations
Three major powertrain and components suppliers and Ford Motor Co. think it’s time to stop quibbling over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Phase 3 greenhouse gas regulations.
Cummins Inc., BorgWarner Inc. and Eaton Corp. are ready to fulfill carbon dioxide (CO2) standards for model-year 2027 heavy-duty vehicles that transcend the present standards. The EPA also proposed an extra set of CO2 standards for heavy-duty vehicles that will begin to use in model-year 2028.
The Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA) and a bunch of trucking OEMs are looking for to push out the beginning of regulations until 2030 or later.
‘Undermining regulatory certainty’
“This administration shouldn’t set the precedent that established standards might be modified from administration to administration, thus completely undermining regulatory certainty and stability and undermining manufacturers’ needed multi-year investment plans,” EMA President Jed Mandel testified to the EPA last 12 months.
For Cummins, the acceptance of the regulations is smart. It’s paying a $1.675 billion federal civil penalty for emission-rigging in about 1 million Ram pickup trucks.
The 4 corporations on Tuesday called for stronger national heavy-duty pollution standards through a casual alliance called the Heavy-Duty Leadership Group.
Cummins and Ford previously split from other EMA members. In 2022, the EMA sued the California Air Resources Board (CARB) over providing insufficient lead time for truck and engine makers to fulfill latest regulations effective this 12 months.
EMA ultimately cut a take care of CARB that created the Clean Truck Partnership. It includes flexibility for manufacturers to fulfill emissions requirements while still reaching the state’s emission reduction and climate goals.
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Briefly noted …
TeraWatt Infrastructure is open for some electric truck charging business in Commerce, California, while it awaits its full 10-megawatt energy load.
ChargePoint data shows an 83% increase in fleet charging sessions and 54% more charging ports in 2023 than a 12 months earlier.
ZF is investing $500 million in its Gray Court, South Carolina, manufacturing facility to make transmissions for traditional internal combustion engines and electric-mobility technologies for passenger cars and business vehicles.
Class 4 electric truck chassis maker Bollinger Motors qualifies for clean vehicle credits of as much as $40,000 per truck under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Einride will use five Mercedes-Benz eActros 300 electric trucks to transport 10 truckloads a day of Heineken beer from the Netherlands to Germany.
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Truck Tech No. 53: Carlton Rose on life after UPS and the long run of Ree Automotive
That’s it for this week. Click here to get Truck Tech via email on Fridays. And catch the latest in major events and listen to from the highest players on “Truck Tech” at 3 p.m. Wednesdays on the FreightWaves YouTube channel. Thanks for reading and watching. Your feedback and suggestions are at all times welcome. Write to aadler@freightwaves.com.
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