Featured Sandy Munro And Nikola

I watched the five part series. It looks like Nikola are really making progress on hydrogen fuel cell trucks. Not addressed is the 3x cost of hydrogen per mile versus battery. Sometimes an experiment has to be honestly run and it looks like the new Nikola is making an honest experiment.

Bob Wilson

 

Another experiment leading to the same conclusion? Great
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But if the government pays for the hydrogen then it costs less than electricity. Its magic.

Forbes just carried an opinion piece titled "Hydrogen is not a fuel, It's a cult". It was criticizing policies in the UK and EU that were pushing green sources to produce subsidized hydrogen, when there are better uses for green electricity.

Nikola's founder has been indicted for securities fraud. Its fine to do these experiments but when the money comes from fraud, well, I'm not going to trust the results. Current Nikola CEO is working with the SEC to get the company free from the previous fraud, but I would take any rosy fuel cell predictions from the company with a lot of skepticism.

 

Other than that, did you enjoy the play, Mister Lincoln?
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The anti-hydrogen movement is a bigger and more vocal cult with deeper pockets.

 

They have physics and chemistry on their side. We still see 3x cost per mile for hydrogen compared to BEV.

Bob Wilson

 

Oh for sure - yea - there's no doubt it's those evil anti hydrogen folk that have deep pockets .....
we see anti hydrogen ads all over the place, all the time.



Just kidding

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I hear the anti-jump-off-buildings movement meets in their back room!

 

Really? The government of japan and california have extremely deep pockets and have been pushing hydrogen to a great extent. The EU, UK, and South Korea also.
Lobbying blitz scores big wins for hydrogen - E&E News
Could Big Oil Be Lobbying For Hydrogen Cars To Delay Electrification? - CleanTechnica

I'm not sure who is providing much anti-hydrogen funding, but perhaps you could provide a link or two. Yes people against huge government incentives for hydrogen is much bigger, but there is a reason for that, people don't want to pay higher taxes for the hydrogen lobby.

I have no problem with Toyota, Hyundai, and Daimler funding hydrogen fuel cells, but give me a break the fraud at Nikola was huge. No made up anti-hydrogen lobby should be an excuse for what they did.

 

Yea - and no one twisted daimler's arm to quit trying to make hydrogen work. At least for cars.
https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/daimler-ends-hydrogen-car-development-because-its-too-costly/

Daimler seems to "know your audience", as John likes to say" .... meaning no one wants to buy a car that has to be fueled for & $10 or $15 a gallon (equivalent) - only to have to replace metal Parts - as a hydrogen fuel begins its embrittlement process.

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Yes they did .. however it was written by a 'contributor' who runs his own EV website and provided the link at the end of the article. In my view that is not independent journalism.

 

The fraud relates to the BEV truck I think .. and yes it's wrong .. but Tesla have been recently accused of fabricating videos of self driving cars, so Nicola are not the only ones.

In my view this is a side show .. the real issue is whether they can make BEV & FCEV trucks that people will buy instead of diesel.

 

If that were true, Dr. Chu wouldn't have given hydrogen cars a life line with federal funding.

Opinion pieces aren't journalism.

BEV trucks might be available now. Tesla isn't the only one making them. BEV buses are out selling the hydrogen ones.

 

I guess you like security fraud then, or have an excuse for it.
SEC.gov | SEC Charges Founder of Nikola Corp. With Fraud

Nikola says ex-chairman made 'inaccurate' claims as legal costs mount

They towed a non working fuel cell semi up a hill, then filmed it rolling as if they actually had a working prototype and used this to get investment. They claimed last year that they would make and sell the hydrogen for $2.50, which I guess you can do if you own magical natural gas wells, but of course they didn't even own any real wells.

I think its more like securities fraud. I don't think it rises to the level of thanos, which has its fraudster in criminal court right now, but its pretty bad. The question is now that you know the past do you trust the predictions of the future. Should you trust the lobbyists that work for Nicola, and subsidize their trucks and fuel with taxpayer money based on their projections. Nicola did refund all the deposits on their fuel cell semi truck in 2018 after depositors realized the truck was no where near ready.

As I said in my pervious post I would rather have Toyota and Daimler make proof of concept fuel cell semi trucks. So should California outlaw diesel semi's based on lobbying?

The Toyota fuel cell semi is part of the ports of LA and Long beach experiment. Diesels will be outlawed in 6 years, and only zero emissions allowed in 2035 and beyond. These regulations work with both short haul fcev trucks and bev trucks. Doing long haul is different and requires many more hydrogen fueling stations. Here 82 million can go along way (government money) and shell is doing the hydrogen stations. Price of the hydrogen is not important as these will be just moving them from the port, not across the country. Shell does make hydrogen cheaply for its oil refinery, and can simply truck in the liquid hydrogen or can build a pipeline if volume really exists. We are not at the stage where real customers will buy fuel cell semi trucks unless the government is paying for them ;-) but this is a cheaper experiment than the additional $300M that California says it needs for hydrogen fueling station subsidies for cars like the mirai. Lets check back in 2025 and see how the tesla bev semi and toyota fcv are actually working at the port, and they have had time to iron out the problems.

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36924/if-it-works-toyotas-fuel-cell-semi-truck-could-doom-the-startups

Fuel cells do work for fork lifts and space craft. IMHO if you have excess green hydrogen which we don't transportation would be better off using it to make green methanol than building hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

 

Yes I have seen a few of these on Forbes ... and in my view it degrades the standing of publication if they publish opinion like that when there

Yes Toyota's strategy is lower risk as they can harness existing truck brands ... however the more competition the better and if Nicola can make a decent product then good for them in my view.

The US (as do Europe, Japan) are all for subsidies and funding of new technology experiments (like this one) and yes that is expensive on the Government purse. The problem with this approach in my view, is that on the one side you are mandating/funding ZEV's ... but on the other side its open slather with large trucks. In my view the CAFE side needs to be much tougher, with strict emission limits and also with carbon pricing and then you let the manufacturers work out the best technology to meet that. The likely solution is probably a mixture of hybrid, PHEV, BEV & FCEV and the market will work out the best mix.

 

What publications don't have opinion pieces, or even sections dedicated to them? Forbes has a section, Forbes - Opinion Information and Opinion News - Forbes.com

Publishing them is only a problem when the publication tries to pass it off as something besides an opinion piece.. Forbes, nor austingreen, did that.

CAFE only covers passenger cars. Anything larger than a F150 is exempt from it. Those do have emission regulations, but not fuel economy standards, which is the measure of carbon emissions.

Market solutions alone don't work. With them, you might get hydrogen, but it will be hydrogen from fossil fuels as that is the cheapest path. Which doesn't reduce carbon emissions.

 

Yes CAFE needs to be extended for all passenger/vehicles.

Also all forms of energy need carbon pricing on their CO2 content .. electricity, petrol, hydrogen ... that is the big one that people have to accept if we are to make progress.