Nikola Touts Truck That Will Run 900 Miles on a Tank of Hydrogen
By: David Welch and Edward Ludlow
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Nikola’s Two FCEV Sleeper hydrogen freight hauler. Source: PR Newswire
Nikola Corp. said that its long-range fuel-cell semi truck will get as much as 900 miles (1450 kilometers) on a tank of hydrogen when it comes out in 2024, as the startup works to bolster its position in the increasingly competitive field of zero-emission freight vehicles.
The company released an update Tuesday after having said that the Nikola Two fuel-cell vehicle would go at least 750 miles on a tank of hydrogen. Nikola also affirmed that its Tre shorter-range fuel-cell truck, which can run 500 miles, remains on schedule to start production in the second half of 2023.
The update is meant to show that Nikola is making progress as rivals muscle in to sell hydrogen freight haulers. Last month, established semi-truck producer Navistar International Corp. said it plans to enter the market in 2023 using a fuel-cell system from Nikola supplier General Motors Co.
Staying on schedule is vital for startups like Nikola. The company has no revenue and relies on investor confidence to raise cash. Shares of a so-called bank-check company that is combining with electric-vehicle maker Lucid Motors Inc. plunged 42% Tuesday morning after the startup said that its battery-powered sedan would be delayed and that it would burn $10 billion in cash by 2024.
Nikola dropped 11% to $18.59 at 9:42 a.m. in New York. The shares had almost doubled in the 12 months through Monday.
Nikola said that the first Tre FCEV prototypes are scheduled to begin assembly in Arizona and Ulm, Germany, in the second quarter of this year and that testing and validation would continue into 2022. The Nikola Two 900-mile truck will have a sleeping cabin for drivers and a new chassis designed for North American highways.
Nikola plans to start production of a battery-electric semi called the Tre next year. It will be built in Ulm, Germany, as part of a joint venture with CNH Industrial NV and based on that company’s Iveco S-way truck platform.
Bloomberg was first to report that the first production versions of fuel-cell trucks would also be based on the S-way platform and could use either GM or Robert Bosch GmbH fuel cells.
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The future is now...Haha
Pretty cool looking truck.
Looks like something out of the future...oh wait!
The 900 mile range is something to watch and is a good thing , what im watching over all empty truck weight , that determines by regulation how much the truck will be able to legally carry. the more the empty truck weighs , affects how much it can eventually haul.
someone said that for freight haulers that electric semis can just carry more battery to increase range , problem with that is the batteries weghts , and the road desings and limits can possibly limit load weights when loaded , still have to follow the load limits no matter where you are. so added battery weight would cut into the weight it could legally carry, making the loads smaller.
thats not even taking into account the needed infrastructure for the fuel source no matter which way it goes .
What I was wondering about was the more mountainous regions. How it could handle inclines and such.
Our terrain is all over the place.
and that is another thing to consider as well, that is often over looked . and something i contend with when ever i choose to work driving a truck , semi retired remember , and wyoming has the flatlands to the east and mnts to the west and i dont drive out of state.
another thing is it may LOOK flat , but it isnt. add in the effects of weather over differing terrain.
Years ago I use to have this little piece of shit car that could barely make it over the high rise in New Orleans.
I would be cruising along at seventy and hit the high rise. By the time I made it to the top I was down to 25 mph.
And that is just one bridge.
LMAO been there done that .
a few years back i was driving to casper from the west , there is a little town called shoshone , well once you leave town limits , the highway has a gradual steady climb for about 20 miles , i got behind one of the first model priuses going the same way.
between the incline and the wind , that poor little car worked its guts out just to stay at the legal min highway speed of 45 mph, i suspect the owner got rid of it after that trip and experience. Or at least since it was locally tagged , just used it to run around town .
Its all about torque and this model was 1,000 lbs of torque, most 18 wheeler have 1 to 2,000 lbs of torque.
The all electric Tesla also has 1,000 lbs of torque and even with the largest battery pack can still haul 21,000 tons (42,000) lbs of cargo equal to the cargo weight of the current diesel big rigs.
Must have been a Rolls Canardly like one I used to own. Rolls down one hill can hardly get up the next!😁
2021 Toyota Prius
Pros
Capable of returning 50-plus mpg
Quiet cabin, even with the gas engine engaged
Easy to see out of and maneuver around town
Available all-wheel drive
The Toyota Prius is easily the most well-known and influential hybrid sold. Over the years, the Prius has evolved and steadily gained fuel efficiency and capability. Toyota introduced the current generation for the 2016 model year and made a variety of updates for 2019. The 2021 Prius boasts up to an EPA-estimated 56 mpg in combined city/highway driving, which is excellent for a hybrid. You can even get it with all-wheel drive to help out with traction on icy or snowy roads.
To keep the Prius competitive, Toyota also fits the Prius with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone integration and a suite of advanced safety features that's standard on all Prius trims. Some noteworthy competitors on sale today include the Honda Insight and the Kia Niro. Toyota also offers hybrid variants of its Camry, Corolla and RAV4. Their fuel economy isn't as high, but their more conventional styling and/or greater practicality make them viable alternatives as well.
What's it like to live with?
To learn more about the Toyota Prius of this generation, read about our experiences from living with a 2016 Toyota Prius . After its debut, we went out and bought one and racked up more than 30,000 miles. We cover everything from this hybrid's real-world fuel economy to seat comfort and cargo space. Please note that the 2021 Toyota Prius differs from our long-term 2016 model in that the newer model has updated styling and more standard features. It's the same generation, though, so most of our observations still apply.
Cons
Offset instrument panel is out of driver's direct line of sight
Acceleration can be sluggish
Jittery ride quality on rough pavement
Standard infotainment system looks and feels dated
What's new
Limited-production 2020 Edition
Android Auto smartphone compatibility
Minor enhancements to advanced driver safety aids
Part of the fourth Prius generation introduced for 2016
Of course, the Prius is kinda outdated now.
Modern hybrids generally have more power than either their IC or electric cousins.
And that's the highest ground in Loosiana
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this is what i cut my teeth on driving a semi tractor or at least similar, notice in the pic of the cab the twin stick brownie transmission.
This is the rig I got my CDL in. 1970 White Freightliner with a DD and a 13-speed road ranger.
Just like this one.
dont see too many of those cab overs anymore , but they sure had their place they excelled.
The cab-over is nearly extinct but they were a very good truck.
I always though the Cabover Pete's were the best looking rigs on the road.
This past beet hauling season one of the other beet growers showed up with a cab over to help beat the freeze and get the beets out of the ground and delivered, he helped us we helped him. thats how it works here.
c'mon doc , admit it it was because of the song "Convoy".... LMAO
now that i planted an ear worm....
1970 Pete cab-over with sleeper.
Oh yeah!
I love classic rigs.
My grandpa used to drive a car hauler; it was a cab over, but I was little and don't remember what brand. I still love semi-trucks... I don't know why. Maybe because I can actually see above others? Being 4'11", I don't see over much of anything.
Beautiful truck!
The hydrogen fuel strategy behind Nikola’s truck dream
Water electrolysis, not methane reformation, will drive heavy-duty refueling plan
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona—The Nikola Motor Company wants to reinvent trucking by replacing diesel heavy-duty trucks with hydrogen fuel cell trucks. But hydrogen skeptics are numerous, and not without good reason. Although hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are quiet, emissions-free (with the exception of water) during operation, and relatively fast-charging compared to battery electric vehicles, they have a host of other problems.
This week, the company hoped to address those concerns during a two-day conference in Arizona. And in a 45-minute talk, Nikola's vice president of hydrogen technology, Jesse Schneider, joined Jon André Løkke, the CEO of Norwegian water electrolysis company Nel Hydrogen, to outline Nikola's plans to fuel hundreds or thousands of hydrogen fuel cell trucks per day.
Making the hydrogen
Nikola's early partnership with Nel Hydrogen is a positive sign. Nel has been around for 90 years , supplying water electrolysis machinery to industrial and commercial companies in Europe. Løkke told Ars that the company has never made hydrogen from methane; water electrolysis is its primary business. Though the company has primarily built systems for industrial use, it sees its partnership with Nikola as a valuable way to expand its market into transportation, building the many refueling stations that any serious attempt at a hydrogen freight network will need.
After his presentation, Schneider told Ars that the company would be targeting areas like Arizona, where low-carbon sources of electricity like solar and nuclear power make up a significant portion of grid energy, and areas like the northeast, where hydroelectric power is dominant. But Nikola won't avoid setting up shop on more carbon-heavy grids—Schneider said where fossil fuel is a major source of power, Nikola will likely buy carbon offsets to keep its fuel "green."
(Of course, carbon offsets have their own issues . But as more and more utilities move toward renewable and low-carbon portfolios, the number of offsets that Nikola would have to buy in, say, Colorado or Idaho is likely to fall over the years.)
Storage and stations
Nikola's plan to create hydrogen at every station that it opens also potentially solves a problem that has plagued hydrogen fuel: transportation and storage. Nel will be providing the storage facilities, which it says will ultimately be able to store up to eight tons of H 2 per station.
AdvertisementThere is some hope that such a massive station would be feasible. Recently, Nikola built a private, one-ton/day station on its property using equipment from Nel, which Schneider said is currently the "largest gaseous H 2 vehicle station in the USA." The company is using the station to conduct heavy-duty fueling testing.
Nikola says that producing and storing hydrogen on site improves its efficiency, especially compared to diesel and gas, which must be produced in refineries and trucked out to stations around the country.
"Fuel cell vehicles are twice as efficient as fossil fuel vehicles," Schneider told Ars. "Though electric efficiency is higher, the issue is range. With [all-battery] trucks you have to add about seven tons more weight, and if you produce hydrogen from renewables or low carbon, there’s no CO 2 or low CO 2 ."
In response to an audience question, Schneider said an eight-ton-per-day station would require access to 17.6 megawatts (MW) of power, although he didn't elaborate on annual capacity factors of various types of renewable energy that might service such a station. (That is, 17.6MW of solar energy produces far less electricity in a year than 17.6MW worth of electricity from a nuclear plant running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.)
Nel CEO Løkke added that "the vast majority [of that electricity]... is going into splitting water." He said that up to 95 percent of the electricity that Nel's systems use is dedicated to H 2 formation. "The rest is almost negligible in compression and cooling," Løkke said.
Heavy-duty
In addition to building hydrogen stations the size of which have never been built commercially before, Schneider said that Nikola is currently building a research and development lab. This lab will help a team of engineers not only stress-test the hydrogen tank and fuel cell that goes onto a Nikola truck, but it will also help the team develop heavy-duty hydrogen fueling standards, which doesn't exist today.
Light-duty hydrogen fueling stations exist around the world for passenger vehicles, but massive freight trucks need different equipment, Schneider says. Nikola trucks will be able to carry 80 kilograms of hydrogen fuel at once, and the new stations will fill the trucks at 70 megapascals (MPa). That, Schneider hopes, will bring down refueling time to 10 minutes.
Schneider, incidentally, said he worked on the light-duty fueling standard for hydrogen passenger cars "in a previous life." He said that during refueling, the pressure ramp rate is extremely important for gaseous fuels, and more testing needs to be done to key-in the right pressure ramp rate for heavy-duty vehicles.
According to Nikola's plan, an eight-ton station would be able to service not only 150 Nikola trucks per day, but also 200 cars per day (the company intends to outfit its heavy-duty stations with the more common light-duty refilling stations for passenger vehicles). "Hydrogen will be cooled according to standard and piped out to the dispenser bay, with separate dispenser bays for heavy duty and light duty," Schneider elaborated.
The case for putting in light-duty stations is not as well-defined as the case for creating heavy-duty stations, though. There are just over 6,000 hydrogen-fueled passenger vehicles on the roads in California, which is by far the largest market for passenger fuel cell vehicles in the US currently. Nikola doesn't seem to have any plans to build a hydrogen passenger vehicle, so fueling 200 passenger cars a day seems optimistic for any stations outside of the state.
AdvertisementCost
Another major concern around hydrogen fuel is the cost. Currently, Nikola intends to sell its trucks with heavy-duty fuel contracts in place so that fuel is less of an unknown for potential buyers. But at Wednesday's presentation, Schneider and Løkke gave a little more insight into this. They said that if Nikola and Nel could procure electricity for less than $0.04 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), out-of-contract customers could buy hydrogen from their stations for a little less than $6 per kilogram.
Speaking to Ars after his presentation, Schneider added, "four cents a kilowatt-hour is not a pipe dream. You can get that here in Arizona at scale. On the Northeast coast, Niagara Falls has a huge grid over there that we hope to utilize."
Currently, the California Fuel Cell Partnership says that "hydrogen fuel prices range from $12.85 to more than $16 per kilogram," with the most common price being $14/kg or what is "equivalent on a price per energy basis to $5.60 per gallon of gasoline." If Nikola can cut that price in half, it could come close to being competitive with gas and diesel. Unfortunately, Nikola's numbers are theoretical at this point, so we'll have to wait to see if producing hydrogen onsite is really as cost-effective as Nel and Nikola claim.
For another potential source of cost reductions, Nel's Løkke told the audience that the company has a large facility in Denmark that can supply the kind of equipment that Nikola will need. However, the company is currently working on finding suppliers in the US that can make the same components closer to the customer.
AdvertisementIs it safe? What about water?
Hydrogen fuel seems to come with a number of standard questions about safety and water availability that Schneider and Løkke addressed. Both men drive fuel cell vehicles to work, and both men said that they believed hydrogen to be a safe fuel.
An audience member asked if people resisted hydrogen storage in their neighborhoods because of "Hindenburg" images . "Hydrogen safety is at the top of our list of priorities," Schneider responded. "What people don't realize is that the Hindenburg… was covered in a highly flammable coating." (That said, the theory that the Hindenburg explosion was caused by the flammability of the airship's outer material, rather than the flammability of the hydrogen within it, hasn't been definitively proven and is not universally accepted.)
Still, Schneider added, "hydrogen is 14 times more buoyant than air," meaning that the threat of explosion is minimal with proper storage that doesn't trap errant H 2 .
As for water, Nel's CEO said that the alkaline electrolysis method that the company employs does require filtered, fresh water, but the filtration necessary is minimal. Unaffiliated researchers have recently proposed ways to derive hydrogen from salt water, but these processes are very novel at this stage.
For a fuel network that is still very much a theory, Nikola has an aggressive schedule when it comes to hydrogen fueling station build out. This year, the company hopes to complete some demo stations, and by 2020 it hopes to have a demo heavy-duty station. By 2021, it intends to build its first eight-ton-per-day station at an undisclosed location in California, and it hopes to start its 700-station build out in earnest by 2022.
That's in the future... maybe.
Here's the present:
Why a sleeper ? While 900 miles is pretty good we don't have Hydrogen infrastructure so refueling could be a problem. It seems it would be smarter to go with a regular cab and pursue fleet sales where the company can invest in a onsite fueling station. My Dad worked for a Dairy for many years and they had hundreds of straight jobs and tractors but not one sleeper and they fueled them all on site. It just seems to me this technology would be a better fit for short haul regional outfits most of whom would be comfortable with the 900 mile range besides the regular cab tractor and straight job market is much larger than the sleeper market. It just makes sense to go for the biggest market possible when you're just starting out, more potential customers means increased chance of success.
Looking at the maps Bob supplied , it appears they are targeting the OTR long distance segment as well as other segments .
where this type of fuel system might do well, just as fully electric , is the short haul and local segments where we usually see tractors that do not have sleeper compartments . those drivers are usually home every night to sleep in their own beds . thats a pretty big target market right there .
something else to think about is a truck with a sleeper , can be used in either the long or short haul aspects , if it can do either , it has the potential to continue to make money for the owner, meaning its not sitting idle and not making any money , if the wheels are not turning , its not earning , is the old saying .
truck/ semi drivers can be worked legally 14 hrs a day ( exempt from over time regulations and pay) but can only drive 11 hrs a day. If they are not in the yard or at home by the end of their legal allotted premitable driving time , they need someplace to take their 10 hrs off that is mandatory by regs, and a hotel room , comes out of the drivers pocket , not the companies .
afterthought , longer wheel based tractors ride smoother than shorter wheel based daycab trucks , sleeper s are usually on a longer wheel base , the smoother the ride , better driver comfort and less driver fatigue, less fatigue , less accidents and safer driving. or so the theory is.
I know in my area, a lot of local delivery services that already use hydrogen fuel cells. Roush or Bosch are the ones that usually fit the vehicles with it.
Example: a dairy farm in Monroe, MI [called Calder Dairy] has a convenience store in Lincoln Park, MI (about 30 miles north of dairy), which also acts as one of the distribution centers [the farm acts as the other distribution center]; there's a semi truck that takes product from the farm to the convenience store, but they also have a home / small grocer delivery service.
All of the home delivery service trucks run on hydrogen even though the semi takes it to the convenience store / distribution center. Those home delivery trucks were fit with hydrogen cells by Roush and are filled at the distribution centers, just like you're talking about.
This area actually has several small distribution centers for a variety of products that do similar. If the distribution center cannot have filling stations, they can purchase from the installer of the system; so, Roush or Bosch becomes a hydrogen distributor too.
So are these companies (Roush or Bosch) retrofitting diesel engines in existing fleets to run on hydrogen ?
That's exactly what they're doing.