Clean Trucks, Clean Cement and the long view on OBBBA and what's next

Kurt Neutgens isn’t thrilled that the 45W tax credit for electric trucks will disappear after Sept. 30, but the co-founder and chief technology officer of electric truck maker Orange EV doesn’t think his business will suddenly go through the floor either.

The Kansas-based company delivered its first electric truck to international shipping giant DHL ten years ago, Neutgens told me, and since then, about “50% of our vehicles have been sold without an incentive. 

“That means customers who have experienced the Orange EV trucks over time have realized they don’t need an incentive for this to make sense,” he said.

Orange EV sells to a specialized niche market for trucks called “yard hostlers,” which are used to move containers or trailers around limited areas, like ports or warehouse distribution centers. The company’s flagship truck, the e-TRIEVER, has a hydraulic “fifth wheel,” which allows it to lift up one end of a trailer and move it around a space quickly (see Orange EV picture above). 

The vehicle’s top speed is only about 32 miles per hour, Neutgens said, but “it’s got an amazing turning radius; it’s got better visibility.”

For the second installment in E/lectrify’s What’s Next series, I spoke with two companies, Orange EV and zero-carbon cement startup Sublime Systems, on how they have been planning for the seismic changes coming to the U.S. clean tech sector.

Spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sublime’s game-changing technology makes cement from non-carbon minerals processed with electrolyzers powered by clean energy. 

Both companies are still working their way through the budget reconciliation package – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law on July 4 – to figure out how its clawback of clean energy tax credits and other incentives might affect their businesses. 

I was expecting to hear concerns about crashing markets and lost sales, similar to the predictions of turbulent times ahead for solar, wind and energy storage.

Instead, the focus here was more long-term, on the companies’ ability to continue innovating in domestic markets and to compete globally.

Joe Hicken, Sublime’s senior vice president of business development and policy, hinted that the company might be open to taking its cement technology to growth markets outside the country. “Is it the United States that wants [Sublime’s] innovation?” Hicken said. “Or is an international actor interested in scaling an entirely new method of manufacturing cement? …

Neutgens similarly argues that developing a competitive EV industry is critical for the U.S. “If we’re not building an infrastructure for electric vehicles, the country is going to suffer; financially it will suffer,” he said. “This is not a scam. This is building an industry that is better.” 

The market builder

The question of domestic support has been a dicey one for Sublime, following the recent cancellation of an $87 million federal grant that was supposed to help finance its first commercial plant in Holyoke, Mass.  

Since its founding in 2020, the company has been upending traditional arguments about cement’s hard-to-abate carbon emissions. The world’s most widely used building material, cement is typically made by firing high-carbon limestone at super-high temperatures – around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit – generating 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

But the success  of Sublime’s pilot plant in Somerville, Mass. has led to market-building deals with Microsoft and some of the nation’s top construction companies. So, the administration’s decision to pull the company’s grant appears bewildering, if not politically motivated. 

The company was “surprised and disappointed,” Hicken said, but “very robust contingency planning” is part of its DNA.  “For every plan and story that you hear us talk about publicly, we’ve got 10 backup plans waiting for their day to shine,” he said.

The contract signed with Microsoft in May is for more than 620,000 tons of clean cement – the rough equivalent of 30 stadiums, Hicken said – over a six- to nine-year period.

The network of general contractors – all major construction companies – announced in June is another sign of the pent-up demand waiting for Sublime’s Holyoke plant to come online in 2028, if not before. Each company will stand up a “Sublime-ready” team to prepare for deployment of the clean cement.

Joubin Hassanein, president of DOC, a Massachusetts-based construction company, says he is not seeing any retreat from his industry’s commitment to emissions reduction and green building in general, so he believes clean cement eventually could become an industry standard. 

A founding member of Sublime’s contractors network, Hassanein says the biggest challenge could be meeting demand, “to supply all the clients, whether it’s public or private. Everyone has pretty sizable goals from the climate action standpoint, and if there’s no barrier to them taking it, there’s no reason this isn’t going to be kind of a replacement.”

The ability to compete

Talking with Sublime and Orange, what I heard was that clean tech companies with superior, cutting-edge technologies, growing markets – whether niche or specialized – and strong customer relations will be able to ride out any immediate loss of tax credits or incentives. 

Of course, Neutgens said, Orange is encouraging customers to get orders in as soon as possible to cash in on the electric truck tax credits – up to $40,000 per vehicle – before they run out in September.

Sublime also has a second grant from the Department of Energy – so far, still on – for further research to improve electrolyzer efficiency and explore other materials that could be turned into clean cement, such as steel slag or demolished concrete, Hicken said.

Both companies’ main concerns about OBBBA and Trump’s war on clean energy in general center first on the waning ability of the U.S. to compete in global markets.

While Orange EV manufactures its trucks and battery packs in the U.S., the company still imports battery cells from China; so, it could have to navigate the law’s complicated provisions on “foreign entities of concern” – FEOCs – as well as higher tariffs on Chinese goods. (For a deep dive on FEOCs – China is one – here’s an explainer from the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery.)

Neutgens said the less-rigid FEOC provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act provided “a path to start building batteries here. … Right now I don’t have that path. That path has been lost. …

“If this country does not have a vehicle manufacturing base; if this country does not have a solar manufacturing base, a wind manufacturing base, a battery manufacturing base,” the U.S. may no longer be a world-leading, industrialized nation, he said. 

Sublime is looking at potential markets in Africa, India and Southeast Asia, “where infrastructure is being built the quickest and [there’s] not a lot of local cement production,” Hicken said.

The company still sees the U.S. as the best place to grow, while keeping an eye on which countries are offering incentives to help clean tech companies innovate and “go faster,” he said.

The clean energy connection

One further point of agreement, both Hicken and Neutgens see their companies’ future prospects tied to clean energy – and OBBBA’s impacts on the growth of renewable energy in the U.S. 

Producing clean cement means using clean electricity, Hicken said. “The faster that we can produce more clean electricity in the United States, the better and faster we’re able to scale our technology.

“It’s really just a question of investment and priorities. Does the U.S. want to be competitive in clean, innovative energy production?,” he said. “If we decide to slow down …  where do users of [that] energy end up going?”

Neutgens views clean energy as part of an ecosystem that ultimately leads to lower costs for consumers.

“[When] electricity is less, the truck costs less. … Every time you get your package at the door, you reduce the cost of that,” he said. “Inflation goes down because we’re using electric vehicles. That word needs to get out.”