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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A new report states that Tesla will pause part of new Model Y production at Gigafactory Shanghai for 3 weeks to upgrade the lines.
The shutdown will extend beyond the regular Chinese New Year.
The Chinese New Year is technically 2 weeks long, but the official holiday lasts a week, during which significant parts of the country’s industries shut down.
That includes the auto industry and Tesla, but it looks like the American automaker plans to do things a bit differently this year after having just started production of its updated Model Y at Gigafactory Shanghai.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Tesla plans to shut down part of its new Model Y production lines from around January 22 to February 14.
In comparison, Tesla only plans to shut down production of the Model 3, the only other vehicle produced at the plant, from January 26 to February 3.
Tesla only recently started production of the updated version of its best-selling electric SUV. The report states that the automaker will take advantage of this extended Lunar New Year shutdown to upgrade parts of the production lines in order to streamline and ramp up production capacity.
The automaker delivered about 480,000 Model Ys in China in 2024 – up about 5% year-over-year.
Reports claimed that Tesla received over 50,000 orders for the updated vehicle version in the first 24 hours of the unveiling.
Electrek’s Take
It makes sense. Over the last few weeks, Tesla has basically been running a pilot of production of the upgraded version, which is entirely different from the previous version, but there are enough differences that new parts and processes can create bottlenecks.
Tesla likely found ways to optimize production during that time and now will implement it during this extended shutdown.
We will try to keep track of the Model Y production and rollout in China as any delay or production issues can be extremely impactful, considering the Model Y is the world’s best-selling EV and China is the biggest EV market.
Any kind of issue there can be extremely impactful on Tesla and the broader EV market.
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American Honda shared a business outlook for 2025 during a recent briefing with the media. In terms of electrification, the next 12 months for Honda will be much of the same: facelifting tried-and-true ICE models like the CR-V and Passport. However, there was one exciting piece of news from Honda on the BEV front—the automaker has confirmed it will begin US production of an Acura RSX EV.
Honda and its premium sub-brand Acura, for that matter, are getting more and more coverage on Electrek’s homepage thanks to the combined efforts in adding new BEV models… although that transition has still been relatively slow compared to other OEMs.
Nevertheless, Honda launched the all-electric Prologue, which has found quick success with US consumers. Shortly thereafter, Acura launched the ZDX, which sits atop the same Ultium platform as Prologue, provided through a partnership with GM.
Honda has since backed out of that partnership—at least the part where GM provides vehicle architecture—and has been developing its own in-house platform that will one day power its new 0 Series lineup of BEVs. These originally debuted at CES 2024 and remerged at this year’s event as prototypes—and now they’re white! They will also feature a new proprietary vehicle OS called ASIMO (more on that below).
While we await the arrival of those Honda BEVs, we can expect to see a new Acura model hit the market first, based on an SUV called the Performance EV Concept, which debuted at Monterey Car Week this past August. At the time, the Acura Design Studio described the concept as “the evolution of Acura’s performance-focused design direction and the brand’s next all-electric model.”
That new production model didn’t have a name yet, but we did learn it would be the first BEV to debut on Honda’s new bespoke platform and the first all-electric model to roll off its assembly lines at the new Honda EV Hub in Marysville, Ohio.
Today, we learned that the Performance EV Concept has evolved into a full-fledged passenger model with a familiar name – the Acura RSX EV.
Acura brings back the “RSX” nameplate as an EV SUV
During a media briefing earlier this week, American Honda shared its 2025 outlook, led by vice president of sales, Lance Woelfer. This year’s strategy includes the production of its first original BEV in Ohio using domestically and globally sourced parts as a new hybrid model and several ICE vehicles (boo).
Woelfer confirmed that the first bespoke all-electric model coming out of Ohio will be the Acura RSX EV. This move marks the return of a notable nameplate in the Acura lineup that evolved from the original Honda Integra. The Acura RSX was sold in North America from the early- to mid-2000s and still has a decent fanbase, especially amongst fans of the Honda Integra and Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) enthusiasts.
Acura revived the Integra nameplate in 2021 as a Honda Civic-based liftback, and although that model is sharp, it remains combustion, hence why Acura has revived the RSX name as an EV model. Per Mike Langel, assistant vice president, Acura National Sales.
The nameplate pays homage to the Acura RSX with its coupe-like silhouette, but it truly represents a forward-looking approach to fun-to-drive performance. Our second all-electric SUV will solidify our EV credentials even as its ICE stablemates, the all-new ADX, RDX, MDX, TLX and Integra continue to attract new buyers to the Acura brand.
The Acura RSX EV, seen in a unique camo wrap above, looks quite sleek, but I predict Integra and RSX purists may reject this new model out of the gate because it’s undeniably an SUV, not a sporty compact like the vehicle(s) it’s named after. This reminds me of when Ford introduced the Mustang Mach-E, and brand loyalists argued, “That’s not a Mustang.” Just like the Mach-E, the Acura RSX EV represents a new generation of performance models, no matter what you call it.
The new SUV also represents a massive step for Honda and its premium brand, as the Acura RSX EV will be the first model to utilize Honda’s new EV platform and its new ASIMO OS operating system introduced at CES 2025. At the time, Honda said ASIMO will constantly update its in-vehicle software via over-the-air (OTA) updates for both the digital UX and integrated dynamics controls that will allow the automaker to deliver “a personalized ownership experience that will enhance the joy of driving.”
Acura says the RSX EV is slotted to begin development testing in real-world conditions this week ahead of planned production in Ohio later this year. We plan to visit Honda’s EV Hub later this month, so perhaps we can capture some images of where this new SUV will be built or, better yet, look at the prototype up close.
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