With just barely three months to go until its anticipated rollout of the world’s first electric-powered Class 8 commercial semi truck, Salt Lake City’s Nikola Motor Co. is working hard to be ready while answering questions about a recently announced major competitor.
With just barely three months to go until its anticipated rollout of the world’s first electric-powered Class 8 commercial semi truck, Salt Lake City’s Nikola Motor Co. is working hard to be ready while answering questions about a recently announced major competitor.
The company, founded by visionary entrepreneur and CEO Trevor Milton, has scheduled an event on Dec. 2 where the first operational vehicle will be shown to potential buyers, fleet operators and the press. The truck is called the Nikola One, after the first name of Nikola Tesla, a late-19th-century/early-20th-century inventor, electrical engineer and physicist, and developer of the AC induction motor.
By all accounts, Nikola is flying high in advance of the unveiling of its prototype. Milton reported in June that the company had booked reservations and received deposits for more than 7,000 units, representing $2.3 billion in sales of the truck. Milton also reported his company has completed a seed round of funding and will close on a second $300 million to $500 million round of funding by the December event.
But the company that took inventor Tesla’s last name, Tesla Motors, announced last month that it, too, is jumping into the electric truck business. Tesla’s founder and CEO Elon Musk released his company’s master plan in July, which among things like his company’s proposed acquisition of residential solar energy company SolarCity, calls for Tesla to develop electric big rigs and pickup trucks.
Musk didn’t offer a lot of specifics but said Tesla will build “heavy-duty trucks and high-passenger-density urban transport,” both of which are in the “early stages” of development and should be unveiled in 2017.
“We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate,” Musk wrote on the Tesla website.
Tesla first gained widespread attention with its production of the Tesla Roadster, a fully electric sports car, in 2008. The company now also produces the Model S luxury sedan and a crossover called the Model 3.
But Tesla’s plan puts it in direct competition with Nikola Motor and its Nikola One, which has earned the nickname the “Tesla of Trucks.”
Milton told Trucks.com recently that Musk’s announcement can only help his company. “This brings legitimacy to Nikola Motor,” Milton said. “It brings people to the company and says this is a legitimate market and a legitimate idea.”
Milton said engineers have designed the Nikola One truck from the ground up, something he feels puts his company 15 years ahead of his competition because traditional truck builders can’t simply put a hybrid engine into an existing chassis. Milton said he’s skeptical about some of Musk’s claims — specifically the plan to introduce Tesla’s truck next year. Development likely will take several years rather than several months from the early stages to completion, Milton said, so he’s not sure how it’ll be unveiled next year.
Milton has said he respects Musk because of what he’s done to bring legitimacy to the electric vehicle market. Without Tesla Motors, Nikola would be having a more difficult time convincing investors that an electric vehicle is not only possible but affordable, said Milton. He said even if Tesla were to get a truck on the market next year, there’s enough market share to go around. The same is true if the industry’s largest companies develop electric trucks in the near futures.
All-electric trucks are rare. BYD, a Chinese electric car company, is developing a model, which it started testing recently in a pilot project at the port of Los Angeles, but it is still a small, almost nonexistent, business.
“The market’s huge, it’s massive,” Milton said. “There are going to be a lot of people forced to get into this because they have shareholders and they want to raise capital.” But he also said that Nikola Motor is far enough ahead of the competition that the company will secure a foothold before others can even enter the market, he said.
Tesla’s announcement and increasing competition from companies such as BYD, Paccar, Volvo and Daimler “don’t keep (him) up at night,” Milton told Trucks.com. “This is good news for us. It’s going to be easier to raise money and build our company and it brings legitimacy to the industry. We’re going to be the leader in electric trucks for 10 or 20 years, hopefully longer. We have our money, we have our trucks, we have no debt.”
By the time Nikola One is unveiled in December, Milton predicts, his company will have a valuation of about $3.5 billion.
“Our technology is 10 to 15 years ahead of any other OEM in fuel efficiencies, MPG and emissions,” said Milton. “We are the only OEM to have a near-zero-emission truck and still outperform diesel trucks running at 80,000 pounds.”
Nikola will have a truck leasing program that costs $4,000 to $5,000 per month per unit, depending on which truck configuration and options the customer chooses, the company has said. The first million miles of fuel is included with every truck sale, offsetting 100 percent of the monthly lease for every owner. An average diesel burns over $400,000 in fuel and racks up over $100,000 in maintenance costs over 1 million miles — costs that are eliminated with the Nikola One lease, the company claims.
“We believe we will pass the current market leaders like Daimler, PACCAR, Volvo and Navistar in sales orders within the next 12-24 months,” said Milton. “Just imagine the orders that will come in once we begin taking dealer applications. We have shown other OEMs and their shareholders why they should be nervous about Nikola Motor Co. Some of the top Class 8 dealerships in America have reached out and are willing to either add our brand or move away from their existing brands,” he added.
Privately held Nikola designs and manufactures electric vehicles, vehicle components, energy storage systems and electric vehicle drivetrains.
While the majority of the semi truck’s components are being developed by Nikola, the company also co-designed the industry’s first-ever independent suspension with Meritor, a Troy, Michigan, automotive components manufacturer.
The 2,000-horsepower Nikola One has been developed in secret for the past three years and features a 150-gallon dHybrid storage system stacked behind its cab that fuels a turbine generator, which, in turn, charges a 320-kilowatt-hour battery pack that drives six motors, one for each wheel. With individually driven wheels, it works much like a diesel-electric locomotives seen on the railroad.
The vehicle is not a conversion of another truck. The chassis was engineered specifically for the project and features a unique independent rear suspension system designed in conjunction with Meritor.
Nikola has also announced plans to build a nationwide network of refueling stations to support its customers, much like Tesla’s electric supercharger network. Nikola owns its own CNG wells and will sell the fuel for the equivalent of $1.50 per gallon.
Meanwhile, Nikola will have its first vehicle on the road well ahead of the new trucks. The Nikola Zero is a 520 horsepower, all-electric 4x4 side-by-side UTV designed to run off-road — even under water. The four-seater is being designed with 14.5 inches of ground clearance and 20 inches of suspension travel. Its on-board computer can operate each of its four motors independently to maximize grip and handling, the company says on its website. Solar panels on the roof keep its 12-volt battery charged so its systems don’t need to draw from the main drive battery, which has a 100-mile to 150-mile range.
If everything goes according to plan, the era of the electric over-the-road semi truck will begin in December in Salt Lake City.