A day after Tesla chose Austin, Texas, for its next U.S. Gigafactory, its new competitor in zero-emission vehicle manufacturing, Nikola Corporation, started its first manufacturing facility in Arizona, bringing its vision closer to start. to make heavy hydrogen trucks. to reality
Nikola hopes to start producing hydrogen trucks from his factory in Coolidge, Arizona, in the second half of 2023.
Its first truck will be produced in Europe in 2021, at the Iveco factory in Ulm, Germany, in association with CNH Industrial.
The $ 600 million Arizona factory will initially produce the Nikola Tre and Nikola Two trucks. At full production, the facility will be able to manufacture around 35,000 units annually.
Nikola also plans to manufacture battery-powered electric trucks for shorter transportation applications, while developing a hydrogen fuel cell truck ideal for long-haul transportation.
For Nikola, hydrogen trucks and 100 percent electric battery trucks are complementary use cases, the company said in a presentation at Deutsche Bank’s global auto industry virtual conference last month. Hydrogen-powered vehicles will have an estimated range of 500-750 miles and can be used in long-distance transportation, while BEV trucks with ranges up to 300 miles would be used for shorter transportation routes, says Nikola.
The company, created in 2015, has not yet sold a vehicle and earned no revenue, but was listed on NASDAQ last month after merging with special-purpose vehicle company VectoIQ Acquisition Corp, and its market capitalization was US $ 12.25 billion at the close on July 23.
Analysts and the media see Tesla and Nikola as rivals in the zero-emission vehicle market. But Trevor Milton, founder and CEO of Nikola, says that the real competitor is diesel trucks, and that fans and developers of hydrogen and battery-powered vehicles should focus on replacing diesel and stop hating each other.
Nikola is not rivaling Tesla in the passenger car manufacturing business – his goal is to build hydrogen and battery-powered electric trucks and vans. Its long game is zero-emission heavy transport and related infrastructure, such as hydrogen station networks.
But his new electric truck, Badger, could compete with Tesla’s Cybertruck. The badger will have an estimated range of up to 600 miles, which is 100 miles more than Tesla’s estimated Cybertruck maximum range.
Nikola has yet to manufacture, sell, or lease any BEV and FCEV trucks, but it expects the first revenue to start coming next year when it projects sales of 600 units of BEV trucks, the company said in an SEC filing of the prospectus for its list. In 2024, Nikola is targeting sales or leases of 7,000 BEV trucks and 5,000 FCEV trucks with 24 full hydrogen stations by then.
To finance the deployment of hydrogen batteries and trucks, Nikola will likely need to raise additional funding of $ 700 million between late 2021 and early 2022, he said in the SEC filing. The company also expects to issue debt in the next five years to support operations and finance manufacturing equipment and hydrogen station equipment.
Unlike Tesla, Nikola is not building the technology behind its vehicles internally. Instead, he has chosen to share the intellectual property of his R&D with high-tech engineering and technology companies that can make Nikola’s ideas work.
As for the FCEV vs. BEV rivalry, Nikola’s Milton wrote in a LinkedIn post last month:
“BEV vs. FCEV. What people don’t understand is that they don’t compete. They complement each other.”
“No one size fits all applications and in this situation FCEV is cheaper than BEV for long distance trucks,” argues the founder of Nikola, concluding:
“It’s not FCEV vs BEV, it’s FCEV and BEV. Now let’s stop hating each other and focus on getting rid of diesel trucks by offering an amazing solution to drivers to accept the change.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova forn Oilichelin
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