Hyundai's XCIENT Adventure: Overtaking Tesla in a Hydrogen Truck!

Goodness, Hyundai has just overtaken Tesla in the green eco-truck stakes. The XCIENT hydrogen truck has, apparently, fired shots at the Semi, in California.

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Hyundai has done what the Tesla Semi production facility deep in the Nevada Gigafactory seemingly cannot. 

A proper carmaker, with proven technology, has pulled off a daring overtaking manoeuvre, and it’s going to happen more often.

A lot has happened for fuel cells in the last year or so, including Hyundai’s hydrogen distance record breaking effort into the outback. Here is my separate report answering audience questions about fuel cells generally >>.

Just don’t think for a moment using brown coal to make hydrogen is a good idea.

In this case, 30 Hyundai XCIENT hydrogen fuel cell class eight trucks, have daringly beaten the Tesla Semi into production, in an entirely disrespectful public display. The clean air pilot programme even has government support. Not in Australia, of course.

This pilot program is supported by the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission.

So far, 46 XCIENT fuel cell trucks - the first wave of 1600 to be deployed in Europe by 2025 - have been delivered to Switzerland, and that was in 2020. 

They’ve already racked up more than one million clean-air kilometres, collectively, actually in service, in Europe, doing their heavy-hauling thing. That’s impressive. 

And now, the company has done it in the United States. Audaciously, Hyundai will deploy 30 of the damn things - with double the range of the ones already rolling in Europe - right on Tesla’s front doorstep. The term ‘insensitive’ doesn’t cut it. It’s aggravated heresy, at the absolute minimum. 

This is especially ironic considering Musk’s criticism of hydrogen and fuel cells in the past. He’s been quite clear that he thinks hydrogen for transportation is “mind-bogglingly stupid,” as well as a “load of rubbish”. He also said of hydrogen that “success is simply not possible”.

But the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission disagree, apparently. They’ve kicked off the pilot program with a USD $22 million injection.

Looks like 30 of these ‘not possible’ yet fully operational XCIENT 6x4 prime movers will roll out in southern California, on or before the 6th of June, 2023.

Unlike Tesla's Semi, Hyundai's hydrogen truck exists.

If you’re an actual truckie thinking of getting yourself into one of those Tesla Semi ‘TBCs’ (to be confirmed), which have been pending for five years now, here’s the hydrogen fuel cell alternative. 

XCIENT is driving, hauling, on the roads, with government funding, and a genuine business usage case that doesn’t have a battery pack so heavy it defeats the payload economics of a heavy-rigid truck. Might be time to reconsider that ‘futuristic’ battery-powered shitbox which only runs on hype, and financed by the deposits of the gullible - in my view.

However, if you’re a Tesla fan-boy, thumping your self-righteous keyboard, I know this is a touchy subject. Breathe deeply. These are just facts

It’s in the terms and conditions when you sign up to my mailing list. Also, this is just what happens when a real carmaker starts to compete.

Elon Musk has had ample time, too. At least five years. He announced the Semi five years ago, in the 2016 Tesla PR event. More hype came and went again in 2018. Again in June 2019, he made a firm commitment to begin production by the end of 2020, and that worked out well. Consistency is absolutely key here. If you’re incompetent all the time, people will notice. Ask ScoMo.

Tesla has even reaffirmed that the Semi rollout has been delayed, again, this time until 2022, as reported in Electrek. The crazy-ambitious Chinese Swedes at Volvo and Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart are also on the cusp of deploying their own actually existent electric trucks, inconveniently.

But the Tesla Semi, like fusion power, is always years away - just you wait, they tell you.

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HYUNDAI FUEL CELL TRUCK FACTS

Reading the XCIENT specs from Europe, it makes 350 kilowatts - being 190 kilowatts using two 95-kilowatt fuel cell stacks and 160 kilowatts from 73 kilowatt-hours in onboard battery capacity.

Fuel cells make electricity, and they need a battery for intermediate storage, and regenerative braking, a bit of brief extra urge, getting going, powering uphill. It’s how they roll. They’re quite versatile.

The XCIENT cab-chassis weighs just under 10 tonnes, so the payload as a rigid truck is about nine tonnes, and as an articulated truck, like a semi-trailer, it’ll carry about 26 tonnes. (36 tonnes is the GCM in ‘articulated’ configuration. Here are the XCIENT specs if you’re interested >>

In the US, the XCIENT will run hydrogen fuel tanks at 700 bar (which is 700 atmospheres, about 10,000 PSI), whereas in Europe it runs 350. That’s essentially half as much fuel. So, this is a major difference between those markets. Which means the range in Europe is about 400 kilometres, whereas the range in the US will be 800, or roughly 500 miles.

If I were in charge, I would phase out all diesel garbage trucks and short-haul public vehicles of that nature, and force local councils to take out the trash using hydrogen. Might as well market the tech to every house at the same time as deploying it.

Your average garbage truck is the worst application ever for a diesel engine. Stop-go-stop-go, repeat, endlessly, always in first gear. It’s such a waste of diesel’s inherent thermal efficiency. It’s perfect for a fuel cell, however. And it would be quieter, not to mention no tailpipe toxicity outside the kids' bedroom windows. 

And then I’d just incentivise electrolysers and filling stations to get the infrastructure to critical mass. And then the market could just pick it up and run with it.

Meanwhile, in Australia, with Scott Morrison’s coal-humping, bushfire uselessness and vaccine mis-management leading us into a technological doomsday, hydrogen fuel cell transportation is hopeful, at best. Personal opinion. Scott Morrison is like Elon Musk, minus the charisma and the cash; just an empty suit, in my view.

Here in Australia, Hyundai has one lone hydrogen refueller in leafy Macquarie Park, Sydney. Toyota has one, just 901 kilometres away in Altona, deep in Victoria. You can’t fuel up at Hyundai and drive to Altona on hydrogen, because desert.

As for clear and unequivocal governmental direction on clean alternative energy infrastructure, paving the way to a better world, using the US and Europe as a template, deafening silence from all governments, state and federal. There’s a whisper here and there from Albo’s crew, and Queensland, but it’s always a ‘see it, believe it’ thing.

I recently spent four days driving a hydrogen-powered Nexo. It’s kinda like a pumped up i30, only with a fuel cell. It was great. Interesting, too. Let me know if you want a full review. It was just like driving an EV, only you can fill it up in five minutes. 

Just need to find a hydrogen fuel bowser, which you can’t because: Australia.

This is one small way we could Make Australia Less Shit. With available tech; no innovation required, just political will. 

We might have to exterminate the current government (at the next election, of course), after fully funding the CSIRO and getting more technically qualified people into politics - physicists and chemists and engineers.

And I think I speak for us all when I say, at this point, making the nation incrementally less shit is the loftiest ideal to which we could all collectively aspire, without moving to Fantasy Island. 

I could get that hydrogen-garbo thing up and running, kick-starting the infrastructure, in the first week in office, dead easy. Without once putting on a pair of pants.

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