A lot of Tesla's growth has been in China and Germany though. I don't think they have big plans for US-based growth after the Texas factory. There seem to also be a lot of growing pains with Giga-Shanghai, Giga-Germany, and Giga-Texas.
When we look at European nations + Japan and even China, their strategy for sustainable green energy is shifting into Hydrogen. The technology offered by fuel cell technologies is the one that I'm frankly more willing to bet on for the future to be frank. Especially with regards to large trucks (ie: semi-trucks and busses).
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As you've noted earlier: its the large vehicles we need to focus on. And the largest vehicles (ex: semi-trucks) are not practical on Li-ion. Not yet anyway.
Tesla literally just strongly hinted that they are gone add another factory in North America, likely in Canada.
Of course GM and Ford are both building up EV factories in North America. VW is currently scaling its plant. Hyundai/Kia are opening an EV plant in the US. And so are many others.
> When we look at European nations + Japan and even China, their strategy for sustainable green energy is shifting into Hydrogen.
No its not. That is what some politicians and big oil are talking about. If you are looking what is actually happening, hydrogen is very, very little.
Japan has been obsessed with hydrogen for literally 40 years and have done everything they can to push it other then just straight up paying people per mile of hydrogen driving. And yet in reality Tesla alone outsells all hydrogen vehicles in Japan.
> The technology offered by fuel cell technologies is the one that I'm frankly more willing to bet on for the future to be frank.
So the technology that had huge amount of investment and has produced essentially no practical results is the one you want to hang your hat on? What convinced you, the total failure of mass production or the really bad end-to-end energy efficiency? With so much systematic failure its really hard to pick one convincing factor.
> Especially with regards to large trucks (ie: semi-trucks and busses).
Just a note to a comment above. The Tesla Semi was not in 'development hell'. Its simple the reality that with the same number of chips and batteries making more different vehicle types makes no sense. Semi needs lots of batteries, this is not a technology question, but a supply chain question.
For buses you have many options, traditionally trolley, you have LFP, you have high-nickel and many other already deployed like Lithium Metal Polymer. There are sodium batteries coming and many other things as well. Practically speaking 99% of bus routes in the world can be done with battery electric batteries.
For trucks, the waste majority of routes are well within reach of Lithium batteries and battery electric will be far cheaper then hydrogen for all of those routes. Hydrogen trucks architecture is far more complex, leading to far more cost. Hydrogen will always be more expensive then electricity so it will never beat battery electric on those routes. So why would anybody want a hydrogen truck?
If you have to drive some stuff from San Fransisco to Alasca maybe hydrogen has some use but practically its basically 1% of the market.
Even VW announced they will stop investment in hydrogen trucks and they were pushing that for a long time. Other truck makers like Volvo still talk about hydrogen sometimes but what they are actually deploying and commercializing is guess what, battery trucks. The same goes for Daimler, they talk about hydrogen, but they will first deliver like 4 different battery electric trucks and then maybe a hydrogen truck sometimes toward the end of the decade. Of course most of those late 2020s hydrogen turcks will never actually be deployed, they will just continue to push it back while releasing battery electric trucks.
I just can not understand why people are still in love with hydrogen. It has been a total failure for literally 50 years and is basically systematically out-competed in every field. Its bad in end-to-end efficiency and its bad for vehicle architecture as well.
If you really want to go synthetic chemical, then why not just use methanol or dimethyl ether, you can continue to use ICE. Doesn't cost that much more to make then hydrogen and has many other advantages.
> Other truck makers like Volvo still talk about hydrogen sometimes but what they are actually deploying and commercializing is guess what, battery trucks.
And the reality is BEV are better for 95% of cases and history will prove the exact thin it did for cars. Operation cost are just higher with FCEV. And of course they don't even run with green hydrogen yet.
Sure have your FCEV trucks, but lets be real, it will likely be 2% of market share in trucking.
If we're being real then let's acknowledge that in the space of two comments you've gone from FCEVs begin "total failure of mass production" to FCEVs being "2% of market share in trucking". And your claims jump around between FCEV being 1%, 2%, or 5% of the market.
All I see here is that you're overexcited and you desperately want your "team" to "win". It's not very rational.
Not sure what is hard to understand, so far FCEV have been a total failure.
And the market share will be very low. Sorry I don't have a complex mathematical and simulation model that can predict if it will be 0% or 5%. My best guess is that is likely below 2% but I could be of by 100%.
My point is quite simple, the market will be very small.
You in comparison have not really provided no convincing argument that it will have a high market share.
If you want to assign a 'team' to me then, if you want then I am on team 'lets use energy efficiently' and also on team 'lets not have the government continue to give money to automotive companies to develop hydrogen technology'.
If that were true then you'd be advocating for trains and trams, not trucks, buses, or cars. Trains and trams are more energy efficient than automobiles.
> also on team 'lets not have the government continue to give money to automotive companies to develop hydrogen technology'
But you presumably still want government handouts for BEV and EV charger development.
> If that were true then you'd be advocating for trains and trams, not trucks, buses, or cars.
I am literally doing that. I love trains and public transport. I'm a huge advocate of increase use in local cargo trains. I am even a fan of cargo trams. In the city where I work Zurich they have started using cargo trams for things like garbage and that's amazing.
I'm also a fan of electric trolley lines on highways for trucks rather then pure battery electric.
But we are not debating that right now, we are debating battery trucks verses hydrogen trucks.
> But you presumably still want government handouts for BEV and EV charger development.
Not really actually. I much much prefer that investment going into general urbanism including public personal and cargo transport. Given 75k cars a government handout is insane policy.
What I would support carbon tax and also toll booths for driving into cities.
> we are debating battery trucks verses hydrogen trucks
No, you're making your original mistake again. It's not battery trucks versus hydrogen trucks. The choice isn't BEV or FCEV, the choice is both BEV and FCEV.
I'm literally doing it in my life, not in this thread.
> No, you're making your original mistake again.
Technology is almost never 100% dominate, when we are debating 'VHS vs betamax' we don't say 'I don't think VHS won over beta-max because some people still use betamax'. Of course FCEV trucks will exists that's not a question really worth talking about, its trivial.
If we are having a quality discussion in terms of technology the debate is about witch of these technology will more fundamentally and systematically transform our society. If we are talking a "VHS vs betamax" the answer is clear and everybody in the world, other then you apparently, understand what we are talking about. And in this case, I have made and argument that battery electric will win the waste majority use cases.
And your response is to quibble with the way I'm formulating thing, even when you clearly know that I don't mean no FCEV truck will exist in the future, rather then making any real argument. Bye.
> even when you clearly know that I don't mean no FCEV truck will exist in the future
Uh huh. You've repeatedly claimed FCEVs are a "total failure" even though companies like Hyundai have been running them in Switzerland for a couple of years now:
You really are stickler for language with nothing useful to say. The goal of multi-billion $ companies when they make huge investment is not to have tiny market share and run trail programs.
When we look at European nations + Japan and even China, their strategy for sustainable green energy is shifting into Hydrogen. The technology offered by fuel cell technologies is the one that I'm frankly more willing to bet on for the future to be frank. Especially with regards to large trucks (ie: semi-trucks and busses).
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As you've noted earlier: its the large vehicles we need to focus on. And the largest vehicles (ex: semi-trucks) are not practical on Li-ion. Not yet anyway.