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The plan still does not make economical sense without massive reductions in the cost of hydrogen or massively more valuable carbon credits. However, if carbon c

The plan still does not make economical sense without massive reductions in the cost of hydrogen or massively more valuable carbon credits. However, if carbon credits become more valuable, synthetic gasoline will become economical as well. Those are all big ifs. As far as I can tell, Nikola is bringing nothing to the table but hot air. No breakthrough in hydrogen production nor batteries nor engines, nothing that existing car makers do not already have.

cwhiz 6y ago
We could increase gasoline taxes so that roads, bridges, and tunnels are not falling apart. We could further tax gasoline to offset the emissions damage. Nothing is ever going to seem reasonable so long as we keep comically underpaying for gas at the pump.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  This is unlikely to occur because your average citizen doesn’t believe in paying the full costs of consuming fossil fuels. The only path to success is driving renewables and electric vehicles below the cost of fossil fuels.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    It won’t happen because trucking won’t allow it. Practically speaking the vast majority of road damage is done by semi trucks, your average minivan isn’t doing much damage comparatively. Forcing them to pay their fair share for road cost would in effect be ending a multi billion dollar per year subsidy, and would drastically affect the cost of shipped goods for consumers in the short term.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      That too.
liability 6y ago
For trucks you'd want synthetic diesel rather than synthetic gasoline. Biodiesel seems better though; AFAIK the feedstocks for synthetic fuels are still fossil fuels (gassified coal or natural gas.)
reitzensteinm 6y ago
It doesn't make sense today. But once the grid is mostly renewables, when the wind and sun are at their peak, power is going to be very cheap, and you can run your hydrolysis intermittently to match. An apples to apples comparison to BEV is storing that power in stationary batteries and then charging vehicle batteries from those. I don't know if hydrogen wins that match up, but I don't think it's clear that it doesn't.
- nickik 6y ago
  In some hypothetical future that doesn't actually exist that might be true that we have 'unlimited energy' that is 'to cheap to meter'. However this reality does not yet exist and will not for many, many years. Until then, having a system that end to end is only half as efficient is crazy. And if in the 10-20 years electricity is actually that cheap, in the years we will have batteries that are WAY better then what we have now and the single advantage of hydrogen will have been reduced by a huge amount.
  - Hypx 6y ago
    Batteries are likely reaching the end of their progress. Chances are there are no meaningful improvements left in batteries without some kind of major breakthrough.
    - nickik 6y ago
      I'm sorry but what are you basing this on? From all the research on batteries I have done this is complete nonsense. Its the opposite actually, the amount of research and commercial opportunity is exploding. You now have many university, governments and commercial all investing in batteries. And its not just startups, but its massive investment by starups and large companies. There is the Battery 500 consortium that is lots of universities working together and some of those labs are commercially sponsors by Tesla and so on. They are focused on doubling the density with amazing lifetime and safer. This is mostly incremental work. There is the Li-Sulfer program that the DoD has, its specifically at super high density that is another huge effort. You have large scale improvements moving into current Lithium Ion, Single Cristal Cathodes, Dry Battery Electrode Technology, Tabless Cells, Lithium Doping, synthetic graphite anodes, silicon anodes are in the early stages of development. I could go on. But on every level from incremental engineering and production improvements all the way to breakthrew chemistry is being worked on massively. The amount of work on batteries is probably 100x or maybe 1000x higher then on fuel cells.

cwhiz 6y ago

We could increase gasoline taxes so that roads, bridges, and tunnels are not falling apart. We could further tax gasoline to offset the emissions damage. Nothing is ever going to seem reasonable so long as we keep comically underpaying for gas at the pump.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
This is unlikely to occur because your average citizen doesn’t believe in paying the full costs of consuming fossil fuels. The only path to success is driving renewables and electric vehicles below the cost of fossil fuels.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  It won’t happen because trucking won’t allow it. Practically speaking the vast majority of road damage is done by semi trucks, your average minivan isn’t doing much damage comparatively. Forcing them to pay their fair share for road cost would in effect be ending a multi billion dollar per year subsidy, and would drastically affect the cost of shipped goods for consumers in the short term.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    That too.

liability 6y ago

For trucks you'd want synthetic diesel rather than synthetic gasoline. Biodiesel seems better though; AFAIK the feedstocks for synthetic fuels are still fossil fuels (gassified coal or natural gas.)

reitzensteinm 6y ago

It doesn't make sense today. But once the grid is mostly renewables, when the wind and sun are at their peak, power is going to be very cheap, and you can run your hydrolysis intermittently to match. An apples to apples comparison to BEV is storing that power in stationary batteries and then charging vehicle batteries from those. I don't know if hydrogen wins that match up, but I don't think it's clear that it doesn't.

nickik 6y ago
In some hypothetical future that doesn't actually exist that might be true that we have 'unlimited energy' that is 'to cheap to meter'. However this reality does not yet exist and will not for many, many years. Until then, having a system that end to end is only half as efficient is crazy. And if in the 10-20 years electricity is actually that cheap, in the years we will have batteries that are WAY better then what we have now and the single advantage of hydrogen will have been reduced by a huge amount.
- Hypx 6y ago
  Batteries are likely reaching the end of their progress. Chances are there are no meaningful improvements left in batteries without some kind of major breakthrough.
  - nickik 6y ago
    I'm sorry but what are you basing this on? From all the research on batteries I have done this is complete nonsense. Its the opposite actually, the amount of research and commercial opportunity is exploding. You now have many university, governments and commercial all investing in batteries. And its not just startups, but its massive investment by starups and large companies. There is the Battery 500 consortium that is lots of universities working together and some of those labs are commercially sponsors by Tesla and so on. They are focused on doubling the density with amazing lifetime and safer. This is mostly incremental work. There is the Li-Sulfer program that the DoD has, its specifically at super high density that is another huge effort. You have large scale improvements moving into current Lithium Ion, Single Cristal Cathodes, Dry Battery Electrode Technology, Tabless Cells, Lithium Doping, synthetic graphite anodes, silicon anodes are in the early stages of development. I could go on. But on every level from incremental engineering and production improvements all the way to breakthrew chemistry is being worked on massively. The amount of work on batteries is probably 100x or maybe 1000x higher then on fuel cells.