The parliamentary group of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) has submitted a small question to the federal government on the topic of “Promotion of hydrogen passenger cars”. Parliamentarians Cem Özdemir, Oliver Krischer, Matthias Gastel and others wanted to know what results the financial support has produced so far.
Hydrogeit
The stock exchange is also guided by interests
The daily price fluctuations of the shares in the hydrogen and fuel cell sector discussed here – primarily those from the USA and Canada – give an indication that very different interests determine events here: Thus, on many days in July 2021, there was a concurrence of price declines with almost identical percentage losses in the prices of all these shares with manageable trading volumes at the same time. In other words: The buy side held back and the forces betting on falling prices had the upper hand. However, no selling pressure could be detected, which is reflected in the amount of shares traded.
Nikola Motors – Ex-Chief Executive Officer facing charges
Former CEO, company founder and major shareholder (with an estimated 20 per cent of the company still owned) Trevor Milton has been charged with making “misleading, false statements directly to the investing public” via social media and television, print and podcast interviews, according to an SEC investigation. A court has frozen assets worth US$ 100 million belonging to Trevor Milton. However, the company has nothing to do with it. Construction work at the Coolidge plant is progressing according to plan. In parallel, there were various cooperation agreements with distributors as well as service points for repairs – now already 116. In addition, Nikola is expanding the sector of consumables – electricity supply contracts for battery-electric trucks as well as for the in-house production of hydrogen. The H2 infrastructure is being built in parallel.
Bloom Energy – a company goes its own way
What a roller-coaster ride: from US$ 5 at the low in 2020 to over US$ 44 at the beginning of 2021 and now at US$ 22. I did not expect such a sharp decline, but the upward exaggeration has now been followed by a downward one, which may have been helped along by the fact that around 18.4 million shares were sold short (July 2021).
Ballard Power – 2022 will be the year of the breakthrough
The company has now been in the fuel cell business for more than 40 years, with founder Geoffrey Ballard initially relying on lithium batteries before favouring fuel cells and moving the company in that direction. Technologically, the Canadians have always been at the forefront, optimising and positioning themselves and investing massively (over US$ 1 billion) in research and development. This will now pay off step by step.
Plug Power – new manager comes from Tesla
With US$ 5 billion in the bank, Plug can position itself perfectly in the hydrogen and fuel cell theme complex. This includes its own H2 production as well as the development of alliances, such as the most recent one with Renault. And it is advisable – in my opinion – to reduce the one-sided focus on the market for forklift trucks (material handling), since the major manufacturers such as Toyota and Kion are pursuing their own hydrogen strategy in the future and the devices of future generations will already have a fuel cell system included, so that the conversion or expansion of a battery is not necessary.
Siemens Energy – One-Stop-Shopping
Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch put it clearly in an interview to members of the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (DWV) a few months ago: The technology group wants to be a global player in the hydrogen sector – starting with electrolysis and ending with the use of hydrogen in various markets. The group is now being expanded in this direction, although in the short term the negative influence of the wind turbine subsidiary Gamesa (67 percent share, approx. 11 billion euros stock market value; that of Siemens Energy is only approx. 9 billion euros for 22 billion euros turnover) had a negative impact on their own balance sheet – a loss of minus 307 million euros.
Hyzon Motors – to the stock exchange via SPAC
A shell company has helped Hyzon Motors make its stock exchange début: SPAC (special purpose acquisition company). The current value of the company is approximately US$ 1.7 billion, based on the total number of shares. Hyzon builds trucks that run on hydrogen. The US start-up sees itself as technologically quite advanced, after all, the know-how acquired within the last twenty years by Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies in fuel cell research has now been successfully transferred to the public limited company, which has only existed since 2020.
Tesla – contradictory reports
The second quarter of this year was a very good one for Tesla, with 201,250 electric cars delivered – a record. On the other hand, more and more comments are appearing that the quality of the vehicles leaves much to be desired. In addition, the market share of this frontrunner in battery-electric mobility is falling massively. In Europe, it is only about 5 per cent in the last quarter (but 13 per cent in China), because companies like VW are gaining a lot of ground and other manufacturers are constantly launching new models. Tesla will certainly find answers, such as a low-cost variant, Model 2, which according to media reports could make its début in 2022.
DZM starts operation
Almost exactly one month before the federal election, Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer gave the go-ahead for the establishment first of the office and then of the German Centre for Future Mobility (DZM) he is planning in Munich. The kick-off event for this took place on 23 August 2021 in the presence of the Bavarian Minister President Dr Markus Söder and Dieter Reiter, the Lord Mayor of the City of Munich.