World’s first hydrogen station for commercial trucks opens – is it too late?
FirstElement Fuels has opened the world’s first large-scale hydrogen fueling station for heavy-duty commercial trucks just outside the Port of Oakland.
FirstElement is calling their new filling station, which opened to the public this week for tours and demonstrations, the first of its kind. Located near the Port of Oakland, the company claims its hydrogen pumps can “fill” a truck’s hydrogen tanks in as little as ten minutes, which works out (in their math) to as many as 200 trucks per day.
As for customers, the company says there are 30 Hyundai Xcient semi trucks using the fueling station currently, as well as a number of Nikola hydrogen fuel-cell-powered trucks.
A ceremony to mark the station’s opening was held Tuesday, and was attended by state officials including Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Tyson Eckerle, clean transportation advisor for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s business development office. Primary funding for the Oakland station was provided by CARB and the California Energy Commission.
Eckerle notes that the US federal government is handing out $8 billion to jump-start what it calls the “hydrogen economy,” and expects sufficient funding to build up to 60 more hydrogen truck stations like this one in California – which would, theoretically, be enough to serve 5,000 trucks and 1,000 buses.
All well and good, but …
What if it’s already too late for hydrogen?
MAN Trucks CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, said it best when he said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to effectively compete with BEVs.
He’s right – on a level playing field, there is absolutely no reason to believe hydrogen has any kind of future. But we don’t operate on a level playing field, and comments like Eckerle’s, along with an $8 billion federal budget and a number of supposedly genuine industry experts touting its usefulness as a fuel, mean we have to take hydrogen seriously (at least, for now).
Even so, it seems like the tide of public opinion is already starting to turn against hydrogen. Outlets that may never have questioned a manufacturer’s claims about a hydrogen-fueled vehicle a few years ago now seem more than willing to call those claims out. Here’s just one example:
Producing hydrogen itself can be very dirty. Most hydrogen produced today requires methane, which is a fossil fuel and a strong greenhouse gas contributor. The industry is working on production alternatives, including carbon capture and storage from the burning of methane, or quitting methane altogether to make green hydrogen, using an electrolyzer to split water’s hydrogen and oxygen.
Both alternatives are prohibitively expensive without government subsidies.
RUSS MITCHELL, AOL/Los Angeles TIMES.
So far, it’s not clear that FirstElement’s claims about either the sustainability of its hydrogen or the practicality of its filling station will convince many battery electric absolutists.
Take the company’s hydrogen production process as an example. FirstElement says that its supplier, Air Liquide in Las Vegas, uses natural gas as “feedstock” for its hydrogen. It buys biogas to blend with natural gas in order to create hydrogen – and that, because the gas used is more than 60% renewable, the hydrogen qualifies as “green.”
FirstElement hydrogen production
Additionally, the claim of 10 minute fast fills should come with an asterisk or two. That’s because FirstGreen is using new “cryopump” technology from Bosch Rexroth to allow for filling at 900 bar (15,000 psi). While that seems like more enough to push 100 kg into a tank in about ten minutes, cryogenically cooling hydrogen is an energy intensive technology that requires a lot of electricity to function properly. Electricity that it says will come from the stored hydrogen.
In fairness, however, Bosch has some ideas here to help station owners maximize the usefulness of all that electricity.
“Cold is like gold,” says Dave Hull, regional vice-president, Bosch Rexroth. “You’ve got all this cold energy. All my career I worked to get rid of heat. You can take that energy and run a whole station’s refrigerators for Rock Star energy drinks, or air conditioning. Bosh has a whole division of heat pumps and building technologies.”
Whether or not that added efficiency adds up to actual energy and cost savings, rather than a lifeline for the gas industry and tier 1 auto suppliers like Bosch however, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, hydrogen costs continue to rise.
Platts last assessed California’s retail hydrogen price at $33.48/kg Jan. 4, 2023, which is the weighted average hydrogen price offered at retail fueling stations across the state. The price has risen 112% from when Platts began the assessment in September 2021, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data.
Despite the high cost of hydrogen (“green” hydrogen is more expensive, still), Shane Stephens, one of FirstElement’s founders and its chief development officer, remains undeterred.
“We, at FirstElement Fuels, have a lot of confidence the market is coming,” says Stephens. “We see the regulations on the horizon, the OEMs and fleet owners are going to have to respond to that, especially when it comes to goods movement, and hydrogen and fuel cells are the best – if not only – solution that will work for many of those use cases.”
Electrek’s Take
As a light vehicle fuel – despite the efforts of Hyundai, Toyota, and (more recently) Honda – things aren’t going well for hydrogen. As a fuel for massive semi trucks and even bigger heavy equipment, however, it might stand a chance against current battery technology.
But battery tech isn’t stagnant, and lighter, better, faster charging battery news that used to come every year, and then every month, now seems to be coming every week – and I’d argue that you’d be foolish to assume batteries that are twice as energy dense at half the weight won’t be here well ahead of California’s 2035 ICE ban.
But that’s just me. You guys are smart. Head on down to the comments and let us know what you think.
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National Grid Renewables has broken ground on its 100 MW Apple River Solar Project in Polk County, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin solar farm, which will use US-made First Solar Series 6 Plus bifacial modules, will be constructed by The Boldt Company, creating 150 construction and service jobs. Apple River Solar will generate over $36 million in direct economic benefits over its first 20 years.
Once it comes online in late 2025, Apple River Solar will supply clean energy to Xcel Energy, which serves customers throughout the Upper Midwest. According to National Grid Renewables, the solar farm will generate enough energy to power around 26,000 homes annually. It will also offset about 129,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 30,900 cars off the road.
“We are excited to see this project begin as it underscores our dedication to delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy to our customers,” said Karl Hoesly, President, Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan. “This project is an important step in those goals while bringing significant economic benefits to Polk County and the local townships.”
Electrek reported in February that Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, expects to cut more than 80% – and possibly up to 88% – of its emissions by 2030, putting it on track to hit Minnesota’s goal of net zero by 2040. It also says it’s on track to achieve its clean energy goals for all the Upper Midwest states it serves – Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Michigan.
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Tesla has announced that it will finally deliver 500 kW charging as it is about to install its long-awaited V4 Supercharger cabinets.
The rollout of Supercharger V4 has been a strange one, to say the least.
Tesla has been deploying the new charging stations for two years and calling them “Supercharger V4”, but it has only been deploying the charging stalls.
Supercharger stations are made of two main parts: the stalls, which are where the charging cable is located, and the cabinets, which are generally located further back and include all the power electronics.
For all these new “Supercharger V4”, Tesla was actually using Supercharger V3 cabinets. This has been limiting the power output of the charging stations to 250 kW – although
Today, Tesla officially announced its “V4 Cabinet”, which the automaker claims will enable of “delivering up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for Semi.”
Here are the main features of the V4 Cabinet as per Tesla:
- Faster charging: Supports 400V-1000V vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertruck. S3XY vehicles enjoy 250kW charge rates they already experience on V3 Cabinet — charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.
- Faster deployments: V4 Cabinet powers 8 posts, 2X the stalls per cabinet. Lower footprint and complexity = more sites coming online faster.
- Next-generation hardware: Cutting-edge power electronics designed to be the most reliable on the planet, with 3X power density enabling higher throughput with lower costs.
Tesla reports that its first sites with the new V4 Cabinets are going into permitting now. The company expects its first sites to open next year.
We recently reported about Tesla’s new Oasis Supercharger project, which includes larger solar arrays and battery packs to operate the charging station mostly off-grid.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to all Supercharger stations, and Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
It took about 8 years, but it sounds like the pieces are now getting actually in place with Supercharger V4, Megapacks, and this new Oasis project.
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Hyundai has a new secret weapon it’s about ready to unleash. To revamp the brand in China and counter BYD’s surge, Hyundai is launching a new AI-powered EV next year. The new model will be Hyundai’s first dedicated electric car for the world’s largest EV market.
With the help of Haomo, a Chinese autonomous startup, Hyundai will launch its first EV equipped with generative AI. It will also be its first model designed specifically for China.
A Hyundai Motor official said (via The Korea Herald) the company is “working to load the software” onto the new EV model, “which will be released in the Chinese market next year.” The spokesperson added, “The level of autonomous driving is somewhere between 2 and 2.5.”
In comparison, Tesla’s Autopilot is considered a level 2 advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on the SAE scale (0 to 5), meaning it offers limited hands-free features.
With Autopilot, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, or the system will notify you and eventually disengage.
Haomo’s system, DriveGPT, unveiled last spring, takes inspiration from the OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
The system can continuously update in real-time to optimize decision-making by absorbing traffic data patterns. According to Haomo, DriveGPT is used in around 20 models as it looks to play a bigger role in China.
Hyundai hopes new AI-powered EV boosts sales in China
Electric vehicle sales continue surging in China. According to Rho Motion, China set another EV sales record last month with 1.2 million units sold, up 50% from October 2023.
Over 8.4 million EVs were sold in China in the first ten months of 2024, a notable 38% increase from last year.
BYD continues to dominate its home market. According to Autovista24, BYD accounted for 32.9% of all PHEV and EV (NEV) sales in China through September, with over half of the top 20 best-selling EV models.
Tesla was second with a 6.5% share of the market, but keep in mind these numbers only include plug-in models (PHEV).
Like most foreign automakers, Hyundai is struggling to keep up with the influx of low-cost electric models in China. Beijing Hyundai’s sales have been slipping since 2017. Through September, Korean automaker’s share of the Chinese market fell to just 1.2%.
Last month, Hyundai opened its first overseas digital R&D center in China to help kick off its return to the region.
According to local reports, Hyundai is partnering with other local tech companies like Thundersoft, a smart cockpit provider, and others in China to power up its next-gen EVs
With its first AI-powered EV launching next year, Hyundai hopes to turn things around in the region quickly. The new model will be one of five to launch in China through 2026.
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