Nikola & Bosch: Changing The Hydrogen Game Forever.

today's video is going to be a very special one I had the unique opportunity of attending CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week and it's safe to say that I got a lot of new insights into new technologies breakthroughs as well as Innovation particularly in the e-mobility space and well folks at least for me the most Innovative and most interesting Booth out of all these was Bosch energies and Nicolas hydrogen fuel cell demo right in the heart of CES 2024 so sit back folks relax grab some popcorn and enjoy this video of me in person with the Nicola and Bosch team hydrogen is obviously the talk of the century but one company that is under talked about in this race is Bosch now I've already talked about how nickola Motors leverages Bosch's technology for building their fuel cell electric truck which is basically the very first commercialized such truck in North America but sometimes it's easy to overlook just how complicated a hydrogen system is and here BOS lases out pretty nicely here it's es you have thermal management you have gas purification units you have control units for fuel cell pressure recirculating the air compressing the air and also obviously safety sensor things such as a hydrogen injection system hydrogen exhaust sensor as well as an anode recirculation blower all these as you can see are clearly developed by mosan house along with this fuel cell power molecule right here which is based on proton exchanger membrane technology all these pieces basically come together to develop what is known to be a fuel cell electric vehicle and you really need one system integrator to tackle all these problems at once and it's pretty clear to me that Bosch is that company headed in the right direction not only do they have the hardware nailed down with all the manufacturing the testing and the validation but they also have a lot of the software the connectivity and end to Solutions also nailed down in the form of modivation sensing as as well as data collection so reporting live from the Bosch CES 2024 Booth I have to say I'm very impressed with the company here has to a govern I mean BS are expensive any of these alternative new technologies are expensive yeah uh but it's partially offset by government incentives so right got it got it that makes sense and from a from your perspective like as BOS what are the main things that you guys are responsible for on the vehicle cuz Nicol obviously is like the company that's marketing this right yeah yeah um so BOS is a key supplier for niola for these products um so I guess the most expensive and most important part of this system is the the fuel cell right so this is this is a Bosch component um purely a BOS component like a majority of the parts are Bosch like the compressor the ECU um and then we also Supply like this got BOS stickers on it this is a hydrogen distribution block got it okay um and then apart from that we also do the uh inverter for the motor sure okay BOS is yeah BOS is heavily involved in vehicle um got it got it so a lot of more of the core technology right like the power train and stuff like that so Nicholas still does the um the motor okay right right um as well as like yeah every part on this is is important yeah it wouldn't work like like this airbag here if it didn't um but the tanks um Nicola has sourced from another supplier oh okay okay got it I think that name is hexagon purus right he hexagon nice okay yeah I saw that right there that makes sense that's cool that's cool and from like a manufacturing perspective does hydrogen complicate things for like assembly or scaling it up to a high level cuz obviously that's what you need to reduce the cost right of the vehicle so what are the main challenges associated with that you think right now I mean the main challenges are just you know getting demand from the market right when fuel availability is relatively low no right right um so if we can find an available Nicola so see it I'd like for them to explain to you what they're doing there so they have a they have a sub brand in their energy unit called hila yeah and what hila does is responsible for is um building out that hydrogen Network in the United States right um you know a lot of companies just do the trucks right and they're like oh we have a truck buy it Nicola you know understands that they need fuel too it seems like a really dumb simple problem but it's a big one that some companies don't want to tackle right um and and Nia is going head long into trying to solve that right right for sure for sure uh if your phone is hooked up it'll all be controlled through here this is our uh well that's our hydrogen capacity ignore the range uhh you know we've been flying around the block yeah starting stopping Doing Hard accelerations the truck is very confused right now about how far we can go cuz we've driven it not very far um kind of the home screen you know we can we have frontal cameras we have rear cameras Oh wow okay nice we can see our axle weights and then also you know like our HVAC is all here uh all of our settings traction control stuff like that all handled through here wow okay and this is all like it's pretty seamless here like it's not that hard to understand where what's we so exactly so you know I spent a bunch of time in rental cars and every every OEM has their own you know interface like this they're all terrible they're all so bad and uh this one is is really really good uh comparatively uhhuh no for sure and then uh you can also see the the truck GPS so like no truck route on the boulevard uh no Hazmat down here on uh desert in Boulevard you know we have some low bridges stuff like that oh okay so it updates real time basically with the data wow you put your your load information in and uh it'll only route you where you can go interesting yeah wow and is this also be a could you control this through app like a an EV yep so wow let's see here yeah so here's our like we're in gamma 7 we can turn lights on we can prep the interior you know hot cold we can lock the truck stuff like that can see its location wow okay things yeah nice is there more maintenance required with this guy compared to a regular much much less mainten much less maintenance okay there's uh there's very few moving parts right right right and I mean even even the parts that are moving have such reduced friction that um we don't we don't anticipate or and we don't um design for replacement got it okay so like um this is it's a cool technology actually is uh compressors here don't have bearings don't have mechanical bearings oh really okay the uh the bearing is designed so that you know once the compressor starts spinning up it's designed to ride on a thin cushion of air so there there is no mechanical friction between metal oh wow okay okay interesting so that's an innovation from Bosch is is that is that correct wow Bosch developed y specifically for fuel cells okay because um yeah the in the bearings there's uh grease usually to keep things lubricated right um and uh that grease can be a poison for the Catalyst and the fuel cell yeah so to get rid of that we have this air bearing there's no material or anything it's just you know air right right right that's interesting that's interesting and in terms of like fluids involved with this system like in a diesel you have oil you have you know coolant or whatnot are there less number of fluids with a fuel cell uh that could reduce like maintenance or damage or whatnot I'd say like from a purely number stand point is about the same but the cooling system is significantly more complex complex got it okay like the cooling system there's a special coolant that runs through here that is low conductivity okay um so the coolant has to flow through the fuel cell uhhuh and you know if you can imagine each cell is there's like a positive a negative yeah um if the fluid's conductive uh right it's not good there's an issue there you'll lose electrons or ions to that fluid right right um so this is a special low conductivity fluid specifically designed for fuel cells F fuel cells okay got it then there's you know there's depending on the temperature of each component there's a different coolant Network so there's really two main coolant networks there's a a fuel cell coolant Loop and then like a Power Electronics heat exchanger coolant Loop okay okay um that and that uses just regular gly call coolant is that the coolant right there that is the low temperature low temperature cool got it okay and do the the cathodes and the anodes inside the fuel cell do they wear out faster than like I don't know gaskets in a diesel engine or whatnot or are they designed to run for let's say like I don't know 200,000 Mi or whatnot I mean our customer requirements were that this is a diesel replacement right right so from the power standpoint it's designed to pull like a diesel engine and is this vehicle lighter than a diesel truck or is it equivalent to like a diesel like in terms of gross weight yeah so so the truck weighs about 26,000 lb oh okay okay yep and conventional diesel is like right around there like a little bit higher like 29 something like that no no a conventional truck is probably going to be depending on configuration like between 16 to 19 oh okay got it it's heavier it's heavier right right sure so you know being a little heavier on the truck means that we can't quite put as much on the trailer sure sure okay okay no worries no worries so a conventional diesel is only allowed to load to 80,000 so we have a being zero emissions we have a 2,000lb exemption we allowed to load a little bit heavier okay okay got it and compared to like the the fully battery electric trucks this is this lighter than those the Tesla around 3,000 lb lighter than the ah got it truck got it okay okay cool cool it's lighter and it has more range more range right right got it no that's great no this is fantastic I'm uh really excited about hydrogen electric technology so you guys are doing the right thing I would say so for sure for sure it's a modern marble yeah is yeah I'm excited to see more of these on the road you guys are the enablers so you guys are doing a great job to appreciate it

Channel: Visceral Ace

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Id: T3LhO1w70m8

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2024