Hyundai Motor Company celebrated the official launch of the NorCAL ZERO Project, which utilizes its hydrogen fuel cell technology promoting zero-emission freight transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Central Valley.
The dedication event held at Oakland’s FirstElement Fuel Hydrogen Refueling Station brought Hyundai Motor together with the project partners, including the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE), GLOVIS America, Inc. (GLOVIS America), East Bay Municipal Utilities District, FirstElement Fuel (FEF), Papé, the University of California, the Port of Oakland, the City of Oakland and the community of West Oakland represented by the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP). Representatives from the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and the California Energy Commission (CEC), all of whom provided grant funds to make this project possible, were also in attendance.
Hyundai Motor deployed thirty Class-8 XCIENT Fuel Cell tractors with a 6×4 drive axles in California, in commercial operation since last year. The delivery marks the single largest commercial deployment of Class 8 hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric trucks in the United States.
The NorCAL ZERO Project is publicized as creating a zero-emission regional truck operation utilizing hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks. The “electric” and “zero-emission” parts have garnered criticism from experts who say using the two phrases used together is disingenuous. Electric cars and trucks require batteries. Hybrid cars and trucks require smaller batteries, whereas plug-in electric cars and trucks require much larger batteries. The production of batteries requires rare earth minerals. The mining of these minerals, the transportation of the raw materials, and the smelting, the refinement of the minerals, the manufacturing of the batteries, and the delivery of the batteries to vehicle manufacturers all currently rely on coal and fossil fuels.
The XCIENT trucks are by design hybrid. The vehicle’s hydrogen power plant creates electricity stored in ‘ batteries which power the vehicle’s electric motors.
The experts add, since the United States does not posses the needed rare earth minerals, or the capacity to smelt and refine them: the U.S. instead relies on nations, primarily in Africa, which are allied and trade partners with China for the needed raw materials, and then China for it’s capacity to smelt and refine the minerals and manufacturer the batteries, all of which is being done in China powered by coal plants.
China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023, according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The batteries which are used for nearly all battery powered vehicles require five critical minerals: lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite. Africa has approximately 21 percent of the world’s graphite reserves; 47 percent of cobalt reserves; and 85 percent of manganese reserves. Forced labor and child labor has been used in the mining of rare earth minerals in impoverished but resource-rich African countries such as Congo and Ghana.
As the United States continues to mandate the use of electric, thus battery vehicles, opponents to the policy state we are inadvertently benefiting from and perpetuating forced and child labor, while financially enriching China who is currently one of the world’s worst polluters.
Below is a debate in the U.S. Congress regarding rare earth mineral mining and child labor: