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akamaka commented on The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck   mikeayles.com/blog/hydrog... · Posted by u/mikeayles
mikeayles · 17 days ago
Fair point that a full TCO comparison would be more complete, and it's something I'm planning to cover in a later post. But the capital cost argument actually reinforces the conclusion rather than undermining it. Hydrogen fuel cell trucks are currently 2-3x the price of diesel equivalents, roughly comparable to battery electric. The infrastructure CAPEX is dramatically higher for hydrogen (£2-5M per station vs. transformer upgrades for depot charging). And the fuel cost gap means hydrogen has higher opex too. Diesel wins today on upfront cost, yes, but hydrogen doesn't beat BEV on capital or operating costs in any current scenario I've seen. Happy to be shown numbers that say otherwise.

The big thing I haven't covered yet is HVO, which provides the WTT CO₂ saving at a slight fuel cost surcharge, which matters if a fleet is mandated to reduce their CO₂. The TCO assuming a £100k diesel truck and £200k lifetime fuel cost, a 10% HVO surcharge brings the TCO to £320k, versus a £250-350k BEV truck that costs maybe £80k in electricity over the same life. That's £320k with an 80-90% CO₂ reduction from a drop in fuel you can put in your existing trucks tomorrow, versus £280k for battery electric with zero tailpipe. Both of those are available now, with existing infrastructure. Hydrogen is asking you to spend £300k+ on the truck, £150k+ on fuel, and hope someone builds a station within range of your routes.

akamaka · 16 days ago
It would be a stronger argument if you first tried looking at the cases where hydrogen has an advantage. The port example you brought up, where hydrogen is produced on site, is a good one to analyze. If you can look at cost projections of fuels cells and electrolyzers vs. batteries over the next 20 years and demonstrate that there’s no chance hydrogen will catch up, that would be a very strong argument, since it doesn’t rely on the hand-wavy “fueling infrastructure will never happen” argument.
akamaka commented on The Hydrogen Truck Problem Isn't the Truck   mikeayles.com/blog/hydrog... · Posted by u/mikeayles
akamaka · 17 days ago
This is a very poor analysis, since it doesn’t account for the capital costs. Even if hydrogen is inefficient compared to batteries, it could win if the upfront investment was low enough to offset the additional fuel cost. This is quite obvious, since that’s why diesel trucks are winning today — the upfront cost of a diesel engine is cheap enough that it offsets the higher lifetime fuel costs.

I do think that batteries will win, but the correct argument is one that shows that capital costs of batteries are going down faster than the cost of hydrogen production.

akamaka commented on U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded   nytimes.com/2026/01/13/cl... · Posted by u/fleahunter
fny · 2 months ago
I'm a huge green energy supporter, but the data belies the headline. These types of headlines are often leverage to discredit the transition.

1. US emissions didn't jump. See the first chart. The 2.4% increase easily falls within 1 standard deviation of typical changes. In that line, US emissions have remained flat since 2019.

2. The caption over that chart uses more neutral language "U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2025" instead of jumped. Which is it?

3. The 2.4% increase in emissions matches 2.4% increase in energy use nationwide.

4. The title is structured to make it sound like coal power is primarily causal of the emissions increase even though that's clearly not the case.

Unrelated point: Coal quite literally poisons the air. Why are activists so fixated on the abstract specter of climate change to convert others? I'm pretty sure we could win over lots of MAHA types with that framing.

akamaka · 2 months ago
Great analysis.
akamaka commented on Microsoft to replace all C/C++ code with Rust   thurrott.com/dev/330980/m... · Posted by u/ape4
akamaka · 3 months ago
Great to know that all of the existing bugs in Microsoft’s code will be faithfully translated into Rust using LLMs.
akamaka commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
whimsicalism · 3 months ago
You keep switching between flows and stocks and what you want your numerator and denominator to be, why wouldn't I just look at real spending and real debt numbers - ie. the number we ultimately have to pay interest on?

GDP % is only relevant if we are politically able to raise taxes.

akamaka · 3 months ago
Both of the charts I posted have GDP as the denominator (although I incorrectly said the first was “share of budget”).

I think it’s very important to use GDP as a denominator, because otherwise you’ll be stuck crying wolf, saying “debt always keeps going up” even during the good times.

There are a lot of people who simply don’t believe that the government budget needs a trim right now, because people have been continuously saying there was a debt crisis even when the financial situation was relatively favorable.

akamaka commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
pants2 · 3 months ago
If we're going off of a "share of budget" metric then the fastest way to reduce debt share is to increase spending in other areas!
akamaka · 3 months ago
I was mistaken to say “share of budget”, because the chart I linked to is actually share of GDP, which hopefully isn’t affected by the problem you pointed out.
akamaka commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
whimsicalism · 3 months ago
Share of budget is actually a terrible way to look at this because the budget itself has exploded, and that ratio hides most of the real modern risk.

Interest costs in the 80s spiked because high rates were applied to a much smaller debt base. Today we have the opposite problem: rates that are high compared to the 2010s are now rolling onto a massively larger stock of debt. We’ve only just started to refinance that debt at the new levels, so the full impact hasn’t even shown up yet. We are still seeing significant inflation (meaning rates still have upwards room to grow), beginning signs of an economic pullback, are beginning to see signs of a Fed unwilling to raise rates sufficiently due to the impact on the fiscal environ, etc.

akamaka · 3 months ago
If you compare government budget as share of GDP, you can see that is hasn’t “exploded”, outside of crisis periods. Current spending rate is elevated about 25% over the 1990s period of restraint, but quite close to the 1980s.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

akamaka commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
mapleoin · 3 months ago
> can mostly likely be managed with the same level of spending restraints we saw in response to that.

so... austerity? Like the article suggests?

akamaka · 3 months ago
Was the 1990s austerity “severe”? I remember a lot of complaining at the time, but it doesn’t seem too bad in hindsight.
akamaka commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
akamaka · 3 months ago
Rather than reading this opinion piece, you can learn more about the “debt crisis” by just studying this chart which shows what percentage of the federal budget goes toward paying off the debt:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S

The situation is similar to what it was in the late 1980s, and it can mostly likely be managed with the same level of spending restraints we saw in response to that.

u/akamaka

KarmaCake day3932April 16, 2009View Original