A startup has a grand vision to make hydrogen trucks a reality by 2020 - here's its plan
Behold, the Nikola One hydrogen-powered truck. Milton told Business Insider the truck can drive 800 miles on average with a single tank of hydrogen.
The Nikola One will be powered by a stack of hydrogen fuel cells, as well as a 320 kWh battery, to achieve its range. The startup said it will have over 1,000 hp and 2,000 ft.-lb. of torque.
The startup plans to have 12 trucks driving on public roads in 18 months for testing. The trucks will officially come to market in 2020, Milton said.
Nikola Motor Company said the truck will have a refueling time of just 15 minutes, edging out plug-in EVs that take at least an hour to charge when using a fast-charging network. With a typical outlet, a plug-in EV can take many hours to recharge.
But the key factor that will determine Nikola Motor's success will be its ability to set up a hydrogen station infrastructure to support the trucks once they are out on the road.
Above is a map of the 364 hydrogen stations the startup plans to build beginning in 2018, with completion slated for late 2019.
Here's where things get tricky. Building a hydrogen station from scratch is expensive compared to setting up electric charging stations on the pre-existing electric grid. Milton said each station will cost over $10 million.
In December, Nikola said it would produce the hydrogen at a not-yet determined location and transport it to different stations. But in a recent interview with Business Insider, Milton said each station will now make the hydrogen onsite, which means solar panels and an electrolysis plant will need to be installed at each station.
(Electrolysis is a technique that uses electricity to produce hydrogen, to put it simply.)
Milton said a single station will cost $10 million to build, not factoring in the costs of the solar panels and electrolysis plant.
That seems prohibitively expensive, but Milton said "the way that we set it up, it pays for itself.” Milton said Nikola will sell retail rights to investors in each city. Nikola is still in the process of buying land and has not yet sold retail rights.
Milton said Nikola Motor has already completed a $12 million seed round with a $300 million valuation, but declined to disclose the investors. Milton said Nikola is in the midst of a $100 million series A round with Deloitte that will conclude in April.
The startup began taking reservations in December and said at the time it received $4 billion-worth in reservations for the truck. But that number factors in the cost of each lease over 7 years. Those who have reserved the truck have only paid a deposit of $1,500 that Milton said amounts to several million in the bank.
Milton told Business Insider in August that it had 8,000 reservations for the truck, but declined to provide a new reservation number.
Nikola is offering a leasing program for its trucks. Drivers can get a Nikola One for $5,000 to $7,000 a month, depending on the type of truck they want, for 72 months or a million miles. The hydrogen fuel is covered by the lease.
Nikola will need a lot of cash to get its hydrogen station infrastructure up and running. Although questions still remain on that front, Nikola has made quite a bit of progress on the truck itself.
Nikola Motor Company chose Ryder System, a truck rental and fleet management supply chain, as its exclusive distribution and maintenance partner. Ryder has 800 service locations in North America.
Nikola has partnered with truck manufacturing company Fitzgerald to produce the first 5,000 trucks. The rest will be produced by Nikola Motor Company's manufacturing facility, which will produce 50,000 vehicles a year. The location of the facility will be chosen at some point this year.
Whether Nikola's hydrogen truck can become a reality will depend entirely on its ability to set up the hydrogen stations, which is no easy feat. For now, we'll have to see if they can get the capital to pull its grand vision off.
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