Comment by heimatau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heimatau | Hacker News Reader

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> The guy certainly seems to have a problem with telling the truth.

I actually disagree with this take but it gets close to the problem with Trevor Milton. Trevor is very unpolished. I'm skeptical of how detailed he gets with all the in's and out's with the technologies he's trying to innovate and make more efficient. What's going for him is a few things, he's partnering with many companies which means he's mitigating the company's risk. Now that Musk created the market, others want to join in and try whatever route that sticks.

Musk on the other hand, speaks in more precise words when describing a topic. Musk does sell vaporware but...eventually (behind 'schedule') Musk delivers. This lazy focus on manifesting a specific vision what what Musk is doing. He'll let the entire engineering department go, if they aren't willing to work hard at making the future a reality.

Going full circle, the energy density of hydrogen fuel cell is the future. I don't see how it's not. All you need now is for Toyota to join forces with them and you'll have an unstoppable force that will help reduce emission drastically and at a large scale. The technology is very close (1, maybe 2 iterations away) and I doubt they are far away from a breakthrough. I don't believe Milton could've focused on Hydrogen semi's prior to the success of Tesla, he doesn't have that skill but...he's making due with what he's after. He's also being wise at selling electric trucks too because the market is primed for it (read: Musk primed it).

In conclusion, there are a lot of investors deep into Nikola. If Milton gets in the way of bringing this realistic engineering challenge to market, the investors will change it up. I'm not certain of how much voting say that Milton has but...it's a good sign that he stepped back from CEO role. He's way too sloppy with his words but...he brings the hype and investors are still wanting his hype. It's messy but nothing worth doing is ever blameless.

P.S. I don't own either stock. Nor any energy/battery/car/electric stocks. I'm just interested in advancing our technology.

> Going full circle, the energy density of hydrogen fuel cell is the future.

Based on what? Just looking at the density is not enough. You have to look at the whole system from generation to actually driving.

The hydrogen system is even in the best case, assume multiple many, many improvements in mass manufacturing and so on, only half as efficient as an electric system.

Battery technology is improving at a far faster rate then hydrogen technology, its not even remotely close. By the time your predicted ' (1, maybe 2 iterations away)' happens, batteries will have made 5 iterations.

The DoD for example is already sponsoring a massive program that companies lots of universities and national labs to work on Lithium Sulfur batteries that could double or triple the density of current Li batteries while also being quite a bit cheaper.

Silicon anode batteries are already in the early stages of commercialisation and they will make commercial aviation feasible.

And even if you insist on using chemical fuel, why would you use hydrogen? If you want to drive a truck a long distance at a time, you could just use dimethyl ether, methnol or something like that. That would solve tons of problem with storage and so on.

I really don't understand why people are so fascinated with hydrogen, while it continue to disappoint for 30 years. Even in the space industry, where fuel cell used to be used all the time there use has fallen out of favor.

> Just looking at the density is not enough.

On the contrary, it should be the driving force about making long-term decisions to benefit society. Hell, I'd be all for mini-nuclear in vehicles but the ability to make it safe is such a high threshold that it's not even remotely feasible.

No one thought electric cars would be where they are today. Elon made this electric car market happen by making it sexy (and selling only premium cars) which helped him double down on the real vision. There is a ceiling for the battery and it's not as high as many think.

We'll see what Tesla battery day shows but my main point is this: That to improve society with long-term thinking, we need to be more innovative and it's my opinion that attacking Milton's weaknesses is a waste of the public's time/energy. Especially when short sellers get a lot more freedom in how they deal with the market. No one is being a fair arbiter of the facts. Hydrogen is better for hauling big loads, it just is. To bring that to market is Nikola's real challenge. The upside to hydrogen is greater than the upside of li-ion, full stop. Shouldn't we want the better solution for society?

> On the contrary, it should be the driving force about making long-term decisions to benefit society.

No. Because people don't drive cross country everyday. Making an overall system vastly less efficient to optimize on specific metric that most people don't car about in a product is nonsense.

For grid storage density is also totally irrelevant.

What matters is price and scalability, not density.

> Elon made this electric car market happen by making it sexy (and selling only premium cars)

They are selling premium cars because that really whats economically feasible. As they go down the cost curve the cars will get cheaper.

> There is a ceiling for the battery and it's not as high as many think.

Even with current battery just going to silicon anodes/single crystal cathodes can and will double density.

Go look what is possible with Li-Sulfer batteries that are already being worked on to get to the next level.

> No. Because people don't drive cross country everyday.

Do you like spending a non-insignificant amount of time driving to/from a gas station (or electric charging station) and then spending even more time to wait until your local energy (car's tank/battery cells) has recharged enough for you to go again for....non-insignificant amount of time...etc..etc.

How many people have done this? How many years? etc. It's a pretty important first principle to have a system where energy density is a maximum (or at least significantly higher theoretical maximum than existing trends [i.e. Li-ion]).

> For grid storage density is also totally irrelevant.

I'm not discussing this. I'm talking about high power demands needed for semi's/trucks. The above (in this comment) is also considering the consumer market efficiency to be had.

> Go look what is possible

I'm aware but many of the efficiencies that are implemented for Li-ion [and it's variants] could theoretically compound the limit with hydrogen based. Abundance of essential compounds is a better by product than a scarce quantity of essential compounds.

P.S. This is about moving the goal posts. We're talking about innovation in a specific market. But ultimately the end goal is improving all aspects that affect society. (less destructive to the earth, doing more with less, etc)

> Do you like spending a non-insignificant amount of time driving to/from a gas station

More then 95% of EV charging happens at home. For most people a 300 miles way beyond plenty. In Europe the avg will likely be half of that.

Its seems you focus on the problems with batteries but ignore the many problems in scaling hydrogen and fuel cells. Two gigantic new industries that need to be bootstrapped and both have very significant technical and cost challenges to even get on track.

Batteries are in full ramp with 100 billions of investment in scale and 10s of billions in research. I just think they will win for the waste majority of situations.

> Battery technology is improving at a far faster rate then hydrogen technology, its not even remotely close. By the time your predicted ' (1, maybe 2 iterations away)' happens, batteries will have made 5 iterations.

I'm curious what this is based on. Last I checked, the li-ion batteries of today are basically the same from the ones we had 10-15 years ago. Sure, a little more silicon, a little less cobalt, but ultimately the same chemistry.

The biggest change for fuel cells is that they're moving from science project to mass production. There will be easily orders of magnitude reduction in cost. While this won't go forever, for the foreseeable future we should see a much faster rate of change for fuel cells and not batteries.

> I'm curious what this is based on. Last I checked, the li-ion batteries of today are basically the same from the ones we had 10-15 years ago. Sure, a little more silicon, a little less cobalt, but ultimately the same chemistry.

The batteries chemistry has not improved that much but the density still improved. We were in a period where cost and manufacturing improved far faster then chemistry. But thanks to the investment in batteries there are improvements to the chemistry coming down the pipe.

Tesla is gone have DBE technology that should improve density by 10-20% at least. Full silicon anodes are being commercialized right now. Single Cristal Cathodes are gone come pretty soon. Thicker anodes are being increasingly worked on.

I think we are going to continue to go down the cost curve, both because of engineering and chemical improvements.

> The biggest change for fuel cells is that they're moving from science project to mass production. T

Where is that happening exactly? In all the fuel cell cars Toyota isn't selling very well?

Battery energy density hasn't moved much at all. At best, we're at around 270-280 Wh/kg, and that requires a huge departure from our early understanding of battery safety. The early BEVs were relatively safe, even in a severe accident where the cells are damaged. In modern BEVs, any puncture or damage to the cell is a fire hazard. We've pretty much accepted that all BEVs are extremely flammable. Tesla has nothing of note, and ultimately they're lying or greatly exaggerating what they have.

> Where is that happening exactly?

It is happening everywhere simultaneously. Right now, tens of billions of dollars are being invested in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Anyone who pays attention knows that the revolution is happening as we speak.

What possibly could they have to offer for Toyota? It doesn't look like they did any work or even had anyone capable of researching hydrogen cells working for them.

Instead of advancing technology, they might have taken funding and credibility actual companies could have used.

The founder has so far answered just one real question on twitter, about what they were going to bring to the GM produced car: "100% a badger. We will use common parts for example; tires, window regulators, hvac, brakes & batteries to drive down cost, but the badger is completely a badger. The infotainment, displays, software, ota, app, cab, interior, user experience, sales, service, warranty etc is ours"

That's a long way to say they'll use their software and sales team.

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