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Comment by contrarian1234 | Hacker News Reader

I think the article underplays the transition. They're not just-now being sold, it's already the norm. I was in Chengdu last summer and all the huge trucks hauling sand and rocks at construction sites where electric already (and not brand new.. they'd clearly been used quite a bit). The days of trucks making huge plums of smoke at intersections are gone. As I understood it ICE trucks are extremely limited in the hours they're allowed to operate in cities.

So I'm actually a bit surprised by the BEV fraction in the plot. Maybe there are quite a few trucks between cities and in the countryside that I just wasn't seeing.

I'm curious if the batteries can be swapped. Vehicles (trucks and taxis) are generally used in shifts, so you don't want to have the car just sitting around charging half the time

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My guess is that the long distance trucks (the old blue ones) are still mostly diesel and the trucks inside cities for local work are transitioning first? Every city could also be really different in terms of where they are in adoption, CD could be further along than lower tier cities. I didn’t notice any trucks at all when I was in Beijing last April, so I’m guessing that they still aren’t allowed inside the fifth ring in the day time electric or not.

To electrify long distance trucks Bosch developed a fuel-cell power module (FCPM) it is already using for internal logistics. For long disctances f-cell and hydrogen tank are lighter than batteries would be. It supposedly can do 1000km without stops. https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/mobility-topics/fuel-cell-...

See also my other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46076161

Toyota has also been working on "hydrogen cartridges" that can be quick swapped including just delivering them like fuel cans

by betting on the wrong horse Toyota positions itself for irrelevancy

Only high speed trucks have a crew of drivers to rotate through to drive without more than a toilet break. Hydrogen is very expensive compared to just batteries. The weight savings only make up for the horrible efficiency of hydrogen once you are looking at an airplane. Just use a battery, really. And put transport over distances that exceed one driver shift on trains.

The weight reductions may reduce TCO by one fifth through increased capacity https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46078485

Plus no range reduction in cold conditions. Plus you can store hydrogen long-term for winter. And transport Liquid Hydrogen with huge energy density per truck/ship to remote places. https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/thre... Sounds like a win for northern quartersphere.

You need massive infrastructure investments to freeze it, vehicles are more expensive because the tanks need to freeze it, fuel in stations need to freeze it, tanker trucks that deliver it need to freeze it, there is a lot of energy lost in freezing snd heating it back up.

China doesn’t feel rich enough to build all of that when charging stations are pretty straightforward and cheap. Probably the only thing holding back electric for long hauls now is the lack of infrastructure (grid is needed to build charging stations, and truckers prefer untolled routes without much of that), and also sunk costs on their existing trucks (which tend to last what feel likes forever with cheap repairs).

Hydrogen trucks are mostly a solution looking for a problem.

Most countries have duty hour limits for safety reasons, as having a trucker drive for 20 hours at a time is a really bad idea. Similarly, they usually have a mandatory mid-duty break.

Combined with the speed limit for heavy-duty vehicles, this provides a clear upper bound on the range any truck needs to have, and today's electric trucks are really close to it - or even exceed this already.

This reduces hydrogen trucks to multi-driver trips (incredibly rare due to the significant additional cost) and multi-day trips without rest stops (Australia?).

Considering that the market is going to be tiny: who's going to buy expensive hard-to-maintain trucks, and how are they going to refuel them? Wouldn't it make more sense to just build diesel-electric trucks and fuel that handful with carbon sequestered diesel?

Perfect fit for platooning/self driving trucks. Also fast charging is more weary on batteries.

Fast charging is fine if they keep it between 20 and 80.

I think maybe a better solution for long distance trucks is swappable batteries like Jauns https://fullycharged.show/episodes/this-giant-electric-semi-...

There's a difference with cars in that people want elegant things for their car. With a heavy truck you can just kind of load a large battery pack onto a platform with a fork lift, or similar.

At that point just swap the trailers?

Hydrogen failed in cars for the same predictable reasons it will fail in trucking.

It’s far too complicated and too expensive, and it’s only selling point (long distance per charge and slow charging) are things that BEVs are continuously getting better at.

Hydrogen continues to be a predatory delay strategy.

All those Hydrogen programs in EU are just milking subsidies https://electrek.co/2025/11/22/daimler-ceo-just-dropped-some... and arent serious.

> All those Hydrogen programs in EU are just milking subsidies [...]

Unfortunately, "milking subsidies" has a long and (in)glorious history in the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/04/eu-sugar... just for starters, but it's a long list....

Yeah, it's going to be heavily biased towards short-distance stuff. Long-distance heavy electric trucks which can handle European work cycles just about exist as of recently, but I'm guessing that Chinese rules on how long truckers can work without rest are less stringent than European ones (American ones certainly are).

> So I'm actually a bit surprised by the BEV fraction in the plot.

Chengdu is more on the "developed" scale of China (China is big). My guess is that 3rd tier cities and below are still behind on electrification.

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