Hello everyone,

one of the most famous songs of Led Zeppelin is called “When the levee breaks”.

The song is about a threatening flood on the Mississippi. It is about the fact that when the levee breaks, all houses are destroyed and with it the existence of many people.

I am not an expert in levee construction, and I will not become one in this life. But what I do know is that if there is a crack in it, there is only one option: run as fast as you can. It may still look intact, but in fact the disaster is already preprogrammed.

A few months ago Hyundai delivered the first hydrogen trucks to Switzerland. The first 10 out of a total of 1,600. An unremarkable event, one might think. 10 trucks. Close to nothing. However, if we have a close look, it is not 10, it is the FIRST 10. That is a big difference. Two weeks ago, Hyundai signed a contract in China for the delivery of four thousand of these trucks. The factory is up and running, and next year two thousand of them will be produced.

In the meantime, Daimler has also presented such a truck. Mr. Daum, responsible for the trucks at Daimler, said at the press conference: “Even if we had a hydrogen hydrogen truck for long-distance transport today, we would not sell a single vehicle”. You can read about this in the newspaper.

I don’t know how you think as a corporate board member. Maybe anything under a billion is in the cat food category then. But what I do know is that, purely mathematically, 1,600 is more than zero. So the statement is wrong in my eyes. 1,600 normal diesel trucks cost around 160 M. euros. These will not go to Stuttgart, Munich, Torino or Sweden, but to Asia. As I said: Perhaps 160 M. euros are something similar to zero in the perception of DAX board members. For me, that’s a lot of money, and I believe that 160 M. euros are also linked to a few jobs.

Tomorrow, November 18, 2020 at 4 p.m. CET I will be giving a free webinar on “Hydrogen – Why and why now?

I will share with you some current insights from my everyday life and try to show you why I suspect that Volkswagen’s Mr. Diess (“nonsense”) or Daimler’s Mr. Daum (“wouldn’t sell a single vehicle”) are not right.

The webinar will have some interesting content for both beginners and experts, and most importantly we will have a relatively long Q&A session

Good idea? Register here: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/mission-hydrogen-dw

Greeting
David Wenger

PS: Please don’t get me wrong: I think Hyundai is a very good company and I like to give them all the credit. But I live in an area that has hundreds of thousands of jobs in the commercial vehicle sector within a radius of 200 km. I would be very happy if these people did not lose all their jobs due to misinformed top managers. Register here: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/mission-hydrogen-dw