Could Hydrogen Energy Revolutionize the Trucking Industry?

Although hydrogen energy still hasn't made much progress in personal transportation, it could be a big winner in heavy trucking. In this Fool Live segment from "The High Energy Show," recorded on Feb. 15, Motley Fool contributor Jason Hall talks about the potential benefits of hydrogen energy for the trucking energy. 

Travis Hoium: We are starting to see some products move into the commercial trucking market as well.

Jason Hall: Yeah. It's funny because Nikola Motor has kind of been a meme for a lot of bad reasons. The co-founder of the company, whose name escapes me right now, but I followed Nikola for a very long time because of following heavy-duty transportation, commercial transit, and the entire industry looking to change its emissions profile. I lived in Southern California for a long time, started following clean energy fuels. The reality is that a massive amount of emissions that happened in urban areas are produced by heavy-duty trucking. Where you have ports, you have manufacturing facilities, you have buses going to airports, all of those things. The industry started looking at natural gas a number of years ago and has made some progress transitioning to natural gas and now transitioning to renewable natural gas. But you still see emissions.

Why is natural gas winning over batteries generally? Because it answers some of those energy density problems. If you have a Class 8 tractor hauling a 50-plus foot trailer, the maximum weight of that vehicle, the gross weight is 80,000 pounds. You can't take 15 or 20,000 pounds that's normally cargo and add batteries because that's less cargo you can carry and that's how you make money. That's the energy density part of it. To get the full range and operate in all the areas that need operate, it's the way. But then time is money.

Travis was talking about, we've seen the big advancements in the current of charging stations, and the battery's ability to get at 80 percent of your range in 15 or 20 minutes. If you're a class A truck, or you're a dump truck or one of these heavy vehicles, it's not 15 minutes. It's three hours to get half your range. That doesn't work for those industries. Natural gas in the interim, has become this bridge fuel, and now with renewable natural gas, it's really a compelling thing. By the end of the day, you still have range limitations. You have extra weight, and hydrogen, interestingly enough, as much as it's not made any progress in personal transportation, it could still be a big winner in heavy trucking and commercial transportation because you get that energy density. You can get enough hydrogen on the vehicle in liquid hydrogen to get 800 miles of range. Then when you do need to refuel, it's minutes to refill your tank.

By the way, you also get all of the other benefits that make electric vehicles so attractive. Why was Tesla successful 0 to 60 in three seconds. That's why Tesla was successful. You get the great power and torque in those heavy-duty vehicles that need that power without any emissions besides water. It's really compelling in that area of onroad transportation.

Travis Hoium: What you're seeing is from drive train perspective. You effectively have the same drive train as you do in electric vehicle.

Jason Hall: Yeah. You just have a fuel-cell that's producing the electricity instead of batteries. You have hydrogen, combine it with air, oxygen, you get water off the tailpipe and you've got electricity to run the vehicle. It's really compelling. Travis, I know the marine applications, because you think about global emissions, the container ships, cruise ships, massive source of pollution. Santa Barbara, California, Nick, just south of where you are, a good bit south of where you are, but the channel that comes right through there between Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands, the largest source of Santa Barbara's air pollution is container ships going up and down the coast, going to Southern California to the ports down there. It's a massive global problem.