I don't see hydrogen infrastructure every being built to support widespread automotive use.

Elon has a penchant for overly optimistic hyperbole and "Elon Time" but at the end of the day he is building more EVs than anyone on earth by a large margin and he is putting more payload into space than any other company or even country by a large margin.

At this point, I think he's earned at least some measured amount of credibility.

That said, the trucking industry isn't going to virtue signal like some big city liberal.  If they start buying and running these trucks regularly, it's going to be because they work and save them money.  The proof will be in the pudding so to speak.

Makes me wonder how much does internal combustion weigh in a big rig? Plus two tanks full of fuel. That's a lot of parts.

I think if you knew more about spacex and it’s journey you wouldn’t call him a snake. His accomplishment along with the other spacex employees are history changing honestly.

Tesla and it’s journey aren’t quite as impressive since it was in its death throes for like 10 years solid! Lol. Still incredible and timeline changing. Tesla is like the first succesful start up since fucking Chrysler lol.

With the RGN in 4 axle configuration I'm 72,000 empty (truck and trailer), it's 64 1/2 feet long with the 4th axle so I'm running oversized permits even when I'm pulling an empty trailer. That Trail King is a beast of a trailer it's set up to take a deck extension (we own a 10' deck we can add in to get 42' of well) and it converts to a 2/3/2 11 axle trailer.

Videos like this annoy me.

At no point do they talk about how much power gets generated.  Reminds me of this XKCD comic:

You’re around ~6,000-6,400 pounds for:

Cummins X15
Eaton 18 speed
Twin 150 gal tanks.
Miscellaneous accessories - radiator w/ fluid,  davco system, air compressor,  power steering system,  exhaust pipe options, etc.

Add in the driveshaft and pigs, you’re around 7000lbs for a complete drive train. You can lighten it up a bit, but that’s what I would personally buy.

A light weight day cab can get below 10,000lbs with the right build.

But you can “typically” average 15k for a day cab tractor. My spec is around 17,500-18,000lbs for a day cab.

Two is one then?

If it can haul with the mileage needed it seem like a good fit to me

They have to scale up battery production. They would need far more batteries for a van line than the much smaller number of semis.

Lets go!





Get your cameras ready for the most badass battery fire evah.

I wouldn't call it a toy, for terminal to terminal and delivery trucks this will be a winning ticket item with the range. Getting chargers installed at a companies warehouse wont be that big of a deal, road infrastructure will take time for sure.

CA is all on board with Hydrogen, but again that is even more limited then electric on infrastructure as you need hydrogen hubs. This works sooner then later for say ports or rail yards, but will immediately hit the same issues that electric has with long range use.

Like you said, Mega fleets will show off these trucks first and have the large orders to keep Tesla cranking them out. It will be about 5 years before the long range trucking market even has to decide on EV or Hydrogen.

You think EVs are good for the environment?  That's cute.

It is a lot of parts. That's actually the most compelling aspect of EVs, they are relatively easier and cheaper to build.   If they can optimize the lithium mining supply chain EVs will provide greater margins.

No major auto is doing this for virtuous reasons. It's money at the end of the day, the green virtue signaling is just part of marketing to the cultists.

Objectively it's smart business.

CA and the Feds are going big money at refining lithium in the US. It is coming soon as permits are approved, fed and state funds are approved, and some infrastructure is already in. Big lithium names are buying rights to output, not the mines from what I have scene so far.

It's a cool toy because the logistics behind it aren't there.

Sure, you mentioned chargers - that's one aspect of it.  Can you imagine the amount of investment needed to bring in enough electricity to charge, 150 of these, at the same time?  The over all build out for that, to undertake for a private company, for one terminal would be massive and expensive.

So who's going to pay for that?  You the consumer is who.

Okay, next up you now have a truck that can only run 50% (or less) of the work day. Most large terminal to terminal fleets slip seat.  At least 2 shifts, which means the truck is on the road 20 hours a day, sometimes more.  How do you handle this?

Alright, you're going to have to double your fleet size.  

Who's going to pay for that? You the consumer.

Who's going to work on these vehicles? Who is allowed to? You're going to be hiring a very, very, very expensive mechanic just to be able to work on them at all.

Application issues - They're currently set up for a super niche application, of one trip a day, under 250 miles one way. Well, that is currently a very small percentage of the market. The majority of your trucks on the road are vocational trucks still.  This checks none of those boxes. Okay, over the road? Still doesn't check any of the boxes. As you said, terminal to terminal LTL.  Okay - it checks the boxes. Niche application, where UPS / Fedex / Etc. can basically charge whatever they want and people pay it. So they can afford to spend money on the super expensive trucks. There is going to be basically 0 resale value of these trucks. So, they're throw away trucks.  Again, only fleets that can do that are... UPS/Fedex/Etc.  Otherwise you can't charge enough money.


Most fleets operate on pennies per mile. There is no savings currently - even with $5.50-6 gallon fuel, because your truck costs are too high.  Forbes estimates the Tesla Semi-truck cost to be closer to $400,000.  This would be approximately 3x the current cost of a light weight medium duty semi truck. An equal application truck, which would be a Freightliner Cascadia we'll say, with probably a DD13, automatic, 12k front, 38k rears, basic fleet spec everything else - is probably around ~$150,000 today.  Assuming massive fleet bid - you can probably get it down to around ~$110,000. You'll probably get around $40,000 guaranteed residual value out of it.  And you'll do a 4 year, 500,000 mile lease, where you turn it back in at 450,000 miles. Probably a little early too.

So you have ~$1,700 per month payment on your truck. That is going to run essentially 20 hours a day, probably, 6 days a week.

It will burn around 52,000 gallons of fuel. Probably a little less.  Or around $286,000 worth of fuel. Maintenance will probably be the same as the tesla over all, I would assume the tesla maintenance costs are around 19 CPM.  But we'll say fuel costs are $300,000. You'll have about $85,000 in maintenance in the life of the truck. Tires, oil, brakes, any misc parts, accidents, etc. etc.

So $495,000 - which is a VERY high estimate, to run the truck for 4 years / 450,000 miles.   Really, you're probably more along the lines of $375,000 because of cuts major fleets can have. And I'm basing it more off my costs.

Well, first off as I said - you're going to need 2 trucks to do the work of 1 diesel truck. So right off the bat, you're around $800,000 cost assuming Forbes is right.

But let's even assume the 2017 cost estimate of $180,000 is right.

What is the cost of the infrastructure build out at your lot? Okay, what's the accounting break down per mile on that?

What is your cost per mile of electricity? What is your cost per mile maintenance?

Will it be less than $495,000 in 4 years / 450,000 miles?


I don't think so. Cool niche toy for those who can afford it. Doesn't affect the vast majority of the truck market.

Lithium and copper are the input choke points.  Electronics also but that's easier to solve than hard rock mining.

Lithium is the new coal.

This is the answer.

Does it kill motorcyclists?

Talking like a man afraid.

EV’s don’t have energy density like ICE.

That’s about it in the long term.

I think EV’s will be good day cabbers over time. Will have much cheaper fuel and maintence costs.


My family in Floridas business based out of ft laudeddale has a small podunk refinery in Miami and provides chemical clean up services for anything. Run probably 100 commercial heavy vehicles on the road.

All their runs are ft. Lauderdale, Miami, cap canaveral, Tampa bay. If they run over night it’s an emergency.

Maybe the cost isn’t their NOW but I’m certain EV overtime will be the better option for a company like ours.

More power, cheaper maintenance, cheaper fuel, easier to drive. The last three I KNOW they’d love.

No, I'm talking like a rational individual that knows the trucking industry, very, very, very well.

And has read all the trade magazines. And goes to the TMC.  Has friends that are on the TMC's council.

I got to see these years ago:




And the Cummins hybrid truck. The freightliner electric truck. Etc.



First problem with your family's case...

Where's the PTO provision?


... Oh wait, there isn't one.


Sure, another 10 years of market maturity, you could see electric trucks do more than just haul potato chips and LTL, which are under 80,000lb loads anyways.

Or... maybe Cummins knows a thing or two.

https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2022/05/09/cummins-inc-debuts-15-liter-hydrogen-engine-act-expo

https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2022/09/21/cummins-new-fuel-agnostic-x-series-platform-brings-low-zero-carbon-fuel


Fuel agnostic, fits the same foot print of a normal truck engine... Hmmmmmm...

I will leave out basic accounting of costs because we don't have hard numbers yet, it would be a guess like yours clearly is. More over, what is your return on a truck you can no longer use?
https://patch.com/california/across-ca/big-change-big-rigs-california-unveils-mandate-phase-out-diesel-trucks
Im sure you dont like the requirement, I dont, and before you say well fuck CA I wont go there. Remember how many states are using CA mandates.



So you are a long road trucker, that just cut yourself off from what percentage of the biggest ports and hubs in the US? And can't travel through CO either. That is a bit of detour for some routes.

As to getting the power, if you needed 150 chargers I would drop a dedicated transformer to your yard, which for any factory isn't something new. Normal time line on this would be about 16 months, but with COVID delays still happening lets call it 24 months to be safe. If you want that to be 100% your personal transformer, well you get to pay for it, if you are cool sharing it, then the utility pays for it.

If you needed power faster, we could run a new 60-70kV line, that would get you 50 MW, so say enough for 40 chargers and we could get that done in a few months or so. Easily covered by rates.

You mention Fedex/ups but leave out the entire food industry, walmart, costco, parts delivery. When you look at emission credits, the target is to get diesel out of the cities first. Which is clearly what this excels at and was my point.

The last time I talked with the people that worry about this, they where not to worried about copper, I didnt ask why as I was more interested in other topics in the short amount of time I got to talk.

Lithium is the new hot energy item. CA plans on having pipelines running across the desert full of it. Which is funny, want to ship gas and you will never get a pipeline approved, put lithium in it and the government will cheer you on. Pays to be trendy.

So, as you already said - this is not going to replace OTR trucking, it's for hub to hub / LTL.  

Truck garages / parking are not factories. They're often wide out in the open, with little supporting facilities. You have a truck garage, which at best needs 240. Nothing super high voltage. You don't park your trucks at a steel mill, or aluminum extruder. You park them in a gigantic parking lot near a logistically friendly highway.

So right there, you said 2 years to get charging implemented - just for 40 trucks.  I have more than 40 trucks across the street from me and in the scheme of things, I'm a small company.  The local fedex hub parks around 150 normally to me. I'm assuming larger fedex hubs and such park more.

The food industry falls under LTL.  A bit with refers - which would still take diesel, but it's LTL.  Walmart / Costco is a mix of LTL and Dedicated - they have OTR trucks, which again, this wouldn't apply to.

Right now, the logistics for electric trucks just isn't there.

Several industry resources point towards Diesel being the primary power service for another 20 years. With the rail industry looking at Hydrogen as it's next gen fuel, heavy / long distance trucking will probably mimic that. At least, this is what the industry sources are saying and predicting.

I’d also like to say that the whole of the US should deep dive on


1. Next gen nuclear
2. Solar
3. Practical use of large Mechanical batteries and any practical greenie energy creation. So long as #1 and #2 are done.

It seems like the reality is that no concept/prototype truck matters.  Only what the end customers buy AND keep will matter.

Unfortunately, the entire prototype/concept/fleet are heavily influenced by the Federal Money Printer.  It will be a very long time (if ever) that we'll be able to tell what ideas can stand on their own 2 feet.

It's highly annoying to me from an engineering perspective.

It's almost like when the SMART guns came out.  I'd like to be able to just look at it and enjoy another technology advancement.  But immediately it becomes a political pawn that is polarizing because "POLITICIANS FORCEFULLY ENTER THE CHAT".

Rail knocks it out of the park with diesel electric as it is.


I just simply don’t trust hydrogen at all.

The tech is not and has not been there for 20 fucking years since I watched Arnold swcharxennneger plug in the concept car on tv as the governor when I was in middle school in 2001-03.

Hydrogen creation is horribly bad for the environment and that’s a big isssue since it’s a simple chemistry problem which nobody can seem to get around.

Ford, Toyota, GM, ALL said hydrogen was next so they could keep dreaming of making engines forever and drag their feet. They were all wrong.

Good question. I’m paid by the ton, and lower tare weight is the name of the game.

Heavy empty truck = bad

Cummins is probably like Ford, Gm, Toyota who all want to dream about making ICE engines forever because that’s their whole business.

But Chevy, ford, Toyota all got dunked on by musk. Musk was right then and they were all wrong.

I don’t think OTR is going to be flipped but full load 500 miles is a shot across the bow.


People thought ICE vehicles were impossible and a toy compared to horse teamsters at first. That the logistics were simply impossible for the millions of Mechanics and roads and gas stations necessary for those “logistics” as well.

But necessity is the mother of invention. The capacity grew with the demand.

You do realize that your argument against hydrogen is the same argument that people use against electric vehicles 5-10 years ago?

Which is the same argument people used about the 'mechanical horse' back in the late 1800's?

Fact is - neither you, or I, know what is going to happen 10-15-20 years from now. We don't.  We can't pretend to know.

We can make a fairly good guess for 2 years from now and a decently educated guess on 5-8 years from now.

It took Tesla 5+ years to bring the Tesla semi truck to this point now.

It's going to take them at least another 2-3 years to roll out regular production at this rate, just for the mega fleet back orders, assuming it's anywhere reasonably true. Which means it's going to take another 3-5 years after that to see any major adoption just inside it's niche market, let alone expanding outside of it's niche market.

In 10 years, what other technology will there be? Who knows. I don't. What economic problems will there be?  Can we get enough lithium? Can we produce enough electric? Can we transmit that amount of electric?

What will happen when electric prices start going up and diesel/gasoline prices plummet?

What's going to happen with the 2024 election? Or the 2028 election? Or the 2032 election?

Too many questions, not enough answers.

For what we can take a pretty good stab at predicting: It's a cool toy, for the mega fleets in niche markets.

Copper won't just be in motor windings, cables and cooling gear, it will be a huge part of the supporting infrastructure.  Aluminum works also but where ampacity and size matter it'll be copper.

Look, you clearly don't follow the industry.

Cummins owns Eaton and Meritor now.

https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2022/08/03/cummins-completes-acquisition-meritor

Who's brakes and axles do you think electric trucks use?


My family opened our first gas station in 1923.

We started delivering 'coal oil' - Aka Kerosene - in 1919.

I know alllll about the transition of power from horse and buggy to ICE.  The problem you're skipping over is the economic transition we had at the time that allowed it the transition in power.  It's a lot more complicated than we predict on a forum.

You miss read me, I said 2 years for 150 trucks (or really however many you want as we are talking timeline of large scale service not a exact number), 40 trucks would be online in a few months.

You are correct that a yard has no major power, but the logistics of what to do is already there. Pepsi for example has production plants, they have engineers that know how to get service on line. This will not be a stretch for them and the kinks will get worked out. By the time they are done implementing it, there will be business built around doing it. And even then, Tesla (semi) and Rivian (commercial vans) will happily design it for you to make the sale they just roll it into the cost, granted I wouldn't advise that if lower costs is the goal. I deal with this stuff all the time and no one looks at this part of it, as hard.

Diesel being primary for next 20 years basically gets you to when they are required to switch. Which is just industry saying we plan to use up all the all the allotted time we can. That doesn't really cross me as a shocker.

I already agreed that hydrogen is coming. But if you think the infrastructure for EV is bad, boy I got news for you...

Last I talked with CARB the goal is to get a major hub online for the port of LA. That would feed ships (yes fucking ships, no dirty ships allowed in the green new future), rail and trucks. The state also wants to use it to convert Natural Gas peaker plants to clean energy. That is a lot of people wanting Hydrogen, and well we have zero current infrastructure. Maybe it comes online by 2040, maybe... But how many companies will accept some short comings of EV for the fact they need zero emission now (in 2040) and the hydrogen timeline is currently 2050.

Hydrogen has no place in industrial or commercial operations. The price to fuel density is 12-20x that of hydrocarbons.

Now I'm going to defend batteries...


https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/battery-prices-have-fallen-88-percent-over-the-last-decade/

Weird.....

Walmart will waste money on these trucks for optics because Walmart loves good optics.  But these trucks would be useful for less than 5% of the trucks we're running.   95% of us are over 500 miles a day and are not returning to our distribution center for layovers.   Walmart will buy some of these and most likely run them around Bentonville where there's approximately 17 different distribution centers.  

For these trucks to be feasible for Walmart to use it would require a completely different route planning model and probably multiple chargers at every Walmart store which will probably be blocked or broken like everything else.

What's going to happen politically between now (2022) and 2036 election?

What's going to happen when demand for fuels (Gasoline/Diesel) - drop 30-40% because of EV's coming up?  Suddenly EV's will be more expensive to utilize than ICE vehicles.

We all know the long targets and just someone throwing darts at numbers.  

Again, history teaches us that these transitions can't be forced.   There has to be an economic factor involved in this to drive it. I would highly recommend reading Crude volatility - The history and future of the boom-bust oil prices.

I find everything you said to be true.

The only thing I have to add is that from what we know hydrogen is hard and expensive and polluting to make. It’s an expensive machine to use, expensive to make the fuel, and extracting hydrogen is a very not green way to get energy.

I’ll take your word for it on everything else.

Hydrogen might have a place 20 years from now but within the next 10 years, no way.  The generation, storage and delivery price and technology isn't there yet.  It's light years behind EVs.

Even with the advancements of EVs, the battery tech for large industrial applications is still behind the benefits of hydrocarbons, by a long shot.  My industry is testing battery electric locomotives (BELs) and the results so far are negative compared to diesel in every meaningful category.

Solar is far better than wind but without solving the storage issue it's still not a viable solution.  A couple big leaps in battery tech and all of this becomes a lot more practical.

I agree with everything you said here. But knowing that it isn't certain, and knowing there are now more then one option out there. How is a large company using both and getting cost economic data on both over the time btw now and then a toy?

Actually I agree with almost everything. The assumption fuel drops is soley on demand but the only holds true if in the future refineries keep up and the gov leaves it alone tax wise. Neither is promised.

In 2002 all the car companies said they were goi my to transition to hydrogen eventually and EV’s were stupid.

Why do you think the vested interests kept throwing itself behind something that is still 20 years away today? And the people looking to change the future went with EV’s?

What does that tell you?

It isn't a replacement, but it has a place and energy diversity is good. Oil good. Solar good. Wind good. Nuclear good. Over reliance on any single source of energy does not bode well for our future.

It tells me that hydrogen is a pipe dream.

My point is, if you take the cost / know how of a technology today. Then look at it in 10 years… what is going to happen to it?

Battery technology on the level we use it today, in 2022, was straight up unaffordable. People would give you trillion dollar cost estimates.

If it was $1T in 2010. It’s now $100B or less in 2022.  

What we don’t know is:

Where is the economic price floor for battery technology?

Where is the economic price floor for hydrogen technology?

How will politics affect all this?

How will the drop of hydrocarbon prices affect the adoption rate of non-ICE vehicles?

Etc.

Remember when CNG/LNG was THE diesel replacement a decade plus ago? It was very promising and hyped up big. Fleets heavily invested putting in infrastructure and buying equipment, only to have the engines not work. Tow companies made big money off them and still do.

It’s a toy because it’s not a money making asset.  It’s done mostly, for marketing purposes. I’m sure the economic costs have been projected and shared by Tesla with their larger buyers. As they all have to justify these costs, as they’re publicly traded companies.

The boom-bust cycle of fuel / oil will continue. EVs will add to the chaos that already has started. As will hydrogen. The government has failed worse than private industry, in stopping the boom bust cycle of oil.

I’m not up on the capabilities for the economics of ramping output of nuclear to load match. If that can even be done.


But that’s why (assuming nukes can load match and save money)

1. Nuclear.
2. Solar (basically Free energy that helps load match for AC’s in most of the US).
3. Practical energy storage followed by the greeny weeny shit.



Greeny weeny shit doesn’t seem like practical use until practical energy storage allows you to store the energy.

After you can store LOTS of energy then just find the best way to gather it for as little output as possible. Wind farms, etc.  become somewhat reliable then.

CNG is still very active in its niche market.

Garbage trucks.

I sell a lot of CNG oil to garbage truck fleets. Because suburban Susie doesn’t want to get woken up at 5am by the trash truck rolling by with a clickty clackity diesel engine.

We calculated a likely 2000-4000 pound penalty for the Tesla based on the heaviest weights we saw in some testing.  We are out building the expansion in Austin now.