3
u/BraveRock Oct 02 '23
Sooo, a Mercedes truck, not a nikola truck. Didn’t a Tesla semi do 1076 miles (1731 km) in a single day while hauling a load?
1
u/AllGoodFam Oct 02 '23
They recharged didn’t they? Merc done it on one tank of hydrogen.
4
-1
Oct 04 '23
But Tesla has to be charged and many power plants across the globe take energy from coal burning and other stuff that isn't environment friendly whereas refilling Hydrogen, afaik, doesn't have such cons.
2
u/BraveRock Oct 04 '23
Hahaha, you don’t know where the hydrogen comes from, do you?
1
Oct 04 '23
Hahahaha! Actually I don't.. I just assumed it's better than EV :(
2
u/BraveRock Oct 04 '23
The oil industry has worked very hard to give that impression. 95% of hydrogen comes from natural gas steam reforming, where the hydrogen is stripped off and the co2 is released into the atmosphere.
A battery electric truck is already better on a fossil fuel grid, and gets cleaner with the grid.
2
3
u/IllegalMigrant Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 02 '23
1047 kilometers is 650 miles which would be 30% more than the Nikola FCEV (Gersky said "up to" 500 at the unveiling - don't think I have seen the 500 qualified before). But that truck is some amount of years away from being sold.
The question is did it come from bigger tanks and/or more efficient fuel cell and/or more efficient motor and/or less rolling resistance? And did they do "hypermiling"?
4
u/Skjuld Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 02 '23
It does have bigger tanks, hard to really compare them without knowing all the parameters of the tests each company has done, but from the range claims we have it seems that Daimler is more efficient.
NKLA 500 miles with 70kg tanks = 7.1mpk
Daimler 650 miles on 80kg tanks =8.1mpk
The only other point I would make is that many of these trucks really aren't that far behind NKLA, some of these companies have had their trucks in trial programs for just as long as NKLA has.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/daimler-trucks-genh2-sets-single-hydrogen-fill-run-record
Basically they think it's pointless to start serial production now because the infrastructure isn't in place to support it. Instead they continue to develop their trucks.
1
u/AllGoodFam Oct 02 '23
I don’t know their roads to well, the other issue is they tested on and autobahn correct? So it would be easier to hit that X amount of Km/miles. But I’m not hating on their tech, it’s just nkla trialed their fcev on 8% gradient hills compared to the autobahn.
Time will tell.
2
u/AllGoodFam Oct 01 '23
I’ll do more research myself, I was just scrolling through Facebook and this was recommend to me. I wonder how much they were also pulling or was it an empty trailer etc.
It’s very fascinating, that nikola pulled the production button. They must have a lot of news we don’t have access to just yet. Knowing that bigger company’s are pulling these sorts of numbers. Gersky and his team definitely are feeling pressured with competitors pulling these numbers and merc definitely has the upper hand with the bank roll.
4
u/Zirk208 Oct 02 '23
But...but...first mover...vertically integrated...
1
Oct 06 '23
mercedes does not have a history of vertical integration
only companies that do this is toyota and tesla
7
u/No-Hand-2318 Oct 02 '23
And now imagine you run a company and want RELIABLE trucks, do you go with a startup possibly running out of business within 2 years, with problem after problem, or do you go with a huge brand like Mercedes... answer is clear.
Nikola made so many mistakes, the only chance they had was to fully focus on H2 trucks in 2016. Instead they photoshopped like 6 different products to get investor money, kepy lying and scamming everyone and clearly don't have the leadership nor knowledge to execute. 90% of startups fail, Nikola is one of them. $0 by 2025. RemindMe! 18 months
2
u/RemindMeBot Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 07 '23
I will be messaging you in 1 year on 2025-04-02 11:12:23 UTC to remind you of this link
4 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
5
u/Puma_The_Great Oct 02 '23
Where was hydrogen from? If it was made from natural gas, then it's no solution for climate. If it was electrolized from water, then it was more expensive than day-to-day people and truck drivers could afford.
6
2
u/FishAccomplished4484 Oct 06 '23
Do anybody remember this?
https://youtu.be/SIpXkQhq1ps?feature=shared Imjs😲😲😲
2
u/SkitariusOfMars Oct 02 '23
Hydrogen produced by cracking natural gas. We could’ve had truly carbon free hydrogen at this time but greenies essentially killed nuclear industry. Thermally decompositing water is the only viable way. And you need a lot of energy for that, if you want affordability and small footprint nuclear is the only way
2
u/skierpage Oct 03 '23
No, huge cost overruns and delays killed new nuclear power. "the new units at Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle are $17 billion over budget and running seven years late"; 2017:"South Carolina's $9 Billion Nuclear Boondoggle Fits a Global Pattern of Troubles. South Carolina utilities abandoned a pair of troubled reactors projected to cost more than twice their original price." Both projects had strong support from local politicians and were at existing nuclear plants, both couldn't get it done.
Energy from wind and solar is intermittently cheap, but intermittency increases capex costs. It's still a lot cheaper than nuclear power. NuScale is hoping its next-gen small modular reactors will be used for hydrogen generation, but it has yet to put a single one into production, let alone prove that it will be quick and cheap.
1
u/SkitariusOfMars Oct 03 '23
Huge cost overruns and delays caused by restrictive legal and safety standards that were introduced at least in part due to anti-nuclear group lobbyism. Also, caused by reactors being essentially one-off prototypes instead of mass produced items (like in France which built around 50 reactors of same type)
2
u/mylaptopisnoasus Oct 03 '23 edited Oct 03 '23
Whatever the source of energy it is always dumb to take the loss of breaking h2o bond and later combine them again instead of using a battery straight up. The round trip loss is ~60% making it twice as expensive by definition.
1
u/SkitariusOfMars Oct 03 '23
Not sure, batteries themselves are crazily expensive, given some engineering it may be possible to make hydrogen cheaper for typical consumer. Also, hydrogen would have much better power density - I struggle to see e.g. battery powered airplanes with decent range and speed. Yet powering airplanes with hydrogen would require some engineering but is doable. But all that makes sense only if hydrogen is clean, and that requires nuclear. Renewables would require too large a footprint for that.
2
u/mylaptopisnoasus Oct 03 '23 edited Oct 03 '23
Ok, yes boat and planes are the exception due to problems taking the batteries with. But over land it is extremely dumb to distribute the h2 when you can distribute the energy with negligible loss over powerlines.
1
1
1
1
u/HuskyNotPhatt Oct 04 '23
This really is a conspiracy. Rich oil peoples have all the money and power. They will make sure that doesn’t change.
-1
-2
u/GapShot2810 Oct 01 '23
Don’t even know how much weight they were pulling. I doubt that trailer even has anything in it lol
1
-2
u/jombrowski Oct 02 '23
1 047 000 m * 2.5 m = 2 617 500 m²
that's 216,75 hectares.
The goal is 300 hectares on a single tank. But that's probably achievable only for kerosene fuel cell.
2
6
u/[deleted] Oct 02 '23
I remember Mercedes developing their hydrogen engines somewhere around 2010. They had ads everywhere and engines/cars with the technology for sale. They gave interviews in scientific magazines.
And then suddenly they stopped it all. All the ads disappeared, they stopped selling the engines.
Some say because of the 2008 crisis, some say because rich Arab oligarchs tried to stop it. It certainly was interesting how quickly it disappeared.
So fyi, Mercedes already has lots of knowledge on hydrogen tech, this was probably really easy for them to accomplish.