Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader writes: Last month, Nikola Motor unveiled the design of its first product -- an electric truck with a natural gas range extender called 'Nikola One.' The 'Nikola One' comes equipped with a massive 320 kWh battery pack that the company hopes can allow it to travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender. Today, the company announced it has received over 7,000 pre-orders with deposits for the electric truck since its unveiling. CEO Trevor Milton says the pre-orders are worth over $2.3 billion. Milton said in a press release this morning: "Our technology is 10-15 years ahead of any other OEM in fuel efficiencies, MPG and emissions. We are the only OEM to have a near zero emission truck and still outperform diesel trucks running at 80,000 pounds. To have over 7,000 reservations totaling more than 2.3 billion dollars, with five months remaining until our unveiling ceremony, is unprecedented." Some other features of the truck include: 6x6 100% electric drive, zero idle, many times cleaner than diesel engines, half the fuel cost per mile compared to diesel, 3,700 FT. LBS Torque, 2,000 horsepower, one million miles fuel free, regenerative braking, and never plug-in feature as the turbine charges the batteries automatically while driving. This may sound familiar as the Tesla Model 3 received over 115,000 preorders worth $115 million in just 24 hours after its unveiling.

Comments

Great technology, but what about the energy?

[NotInHere]

Its great to see electric cars to be leading, but what about the energy generation? It has to become "green" as well in order for there to be an impact.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot easier for a massive power plant to sequester it's CO2, instead of trying to capture the output of every tailpipe.

Plus, if new tech emerges and we replace fossil fuel plants (entirely or even just partially), that benefit is transferred to every electric car.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[idji]

Electric energy generation is always more efficient than internal combustion engine. You watch, the supply will quickly come as they see demand ramping.
Norway said if every car in Norway was electric it would consume 2-3% of their current electricity!

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[TooManyNames]

From the article, the plan is to use a natural gas powered turbine as the means of electricity generation; it's designed to never plug-in to the grid to recharge. The economies of scale that might apply to power plant level CO2 sequestration do not apply here.

Re: Great technology, but what about the energy?

[mspohr]

You might try at least spending a minute with Google before you spout your made up "facts".
California gets 6% of its electricity from coal, 20% from renewables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way the press release is worded is rather disingenuous. They call the gas turbine a "range extender", when in fact the turbine is the prime mover. If it weren't for the turbine, the truck would have a 100-200 mile range, and a tractor-trailor with that kind of range is basically as useful as tits on a fish.
What a load of marketing horse-hockey.

The electrics are used for power transmission, and allowing the turbine to run at a speed conducive to high efficiency, in other words, it's a semi with an turbine-electric hybrid powertrain, and if it works as intended that's AWESOME. However, it is not in any conceivable way, a fuckin electric truck, so why not call it what it is; a fuckin cool hybrid truck. Excuse my trucker-ese.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[amiga3D]

Greens nice but I believe the big selling point is fuel savings. In the end it's all about the bottom line.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Martin Blank]

Apparently, the batteries can be "topped off" through a recharging port, but even using a 240V/60A connection (which is probably not what they mean by "topping off"), refilling 256kWh (figuring 80% of battery capacity is actively used to prevent over- and under-charging) is still going to take nearly 18 hours with perfect efficiency, and no trucker wants to be idle that long unless they're doing a reset.

So yeah, even with that, the turbine isn't really a range extender, but the actual power generator except for certain minor exceptions.

Re: Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might try at least spending a minute with Google before you spout your made up "facts".
California gets 6% of its electricity from coal, 20% from renewables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

To be fair, California power companies did operate several coal power plants in the Rockies.

Four Corners, Intermountain, San Juan. It's not an uncommon bit of confusion.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[fnj]

There is no scale in gas turbines.

Please don't spread falsehoods. Large gas turbines are vastly more efficient than piddling little ones.

GE LM-2500, 25,000 kW output, 227 g/kWh specific fuel consumption
Allison 250, 186 kW output, 468 g/kWh specific fuel consumption

There is no such disparity with, for example, diesel engines. In the same power range, specific fuel consumption is within around a 15-20% variance top to bottom.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[mattack2]

Its great to see electric cars to be leading, but what about the energy generation? It has to become "green" as well in order for there to be an impact.

Why? Obviously it is *better* to do that, but *even* if it were coal based, the ONE coal-based plant could have far better air cleaning capabilities than every single car on the road...

and as the energy production DOES get more green, all of the cars "magically" become greener too.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[pointybits]

Tesla superchargers are 120kW max and it looks like the future standard will be 150kW, so refill time for 256kWh could be two hours or less, but that's not going to be available for non-Tesla (last name!) vehicles in the short term.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Hylandr]

Everyone is focusing on the positive benefits of 'sequestering co2 at the power plant', but is forgetting the cost of making the batteries, disposing of dead batteries, and the harmful effects of a battery on fire, or the extra chemical reaction of putting the fire out, where all the poisonous contaminants will find their way down the to the sewer, and into our rivers and oceans.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Allison 250 (252 lbs) is aimed at primarily at single engine flight applications (eg: small aircraft and helicopters) and sacrifices efficiency for reliability and lower weight. While the GE LM-2500 (9400 lbs) is based on an aircraft engine, it is primarily designed for static duties and doesn't make the same sacrifices. With the most obvious difference being much greater weight and size allowing more efficient multi-stage compressors.

The LM2500 is considered best in class for efficiency. The latest version lowers the specific fuel economy further. (LM2500+G4 214 g/kW-hr)

I don't know where you get the Allison 250 figure from, but it's quite high. The worst I could find was for an early production 250-B17F with 399g/kW-hr, but more modern versions like the 250-C40 do 349g/kW-hr.

The 12kW Bladon Jets micro turbines will do 340g/kWh in a very compact footprint.

However comparing an Allison 250 with a GE LM-2500 is an apples to oranges comparison and says more about the variability of gas turbine designs than it does about scaling. The LHTEC CTS800-4N is another helicopter engine, and that has a SFC of 279g/kW-hr which is within 23% of the original LM2500, which is very close to your diesel variance. And I'm sure if I looked further I could find diesel engines outside that variance. Particularly since we're comparing engines with 2 orders of magnitude output power difference and very different applications.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Wärtsilä W31 4-stroke trunk piston diesel engine 165 g/kWh, turbines just suck (fuel).

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck actually achieving that, it'll be in a narrow RPM range at around 80% of power. The ISO conditions figure is also quite optimistic. Actual figures outside of the narrow max efficiency range will be closer to 180-200+. The turbine figure will be much closer to the actual figure at maximum output. There's also TCO issues with differences in maintenance requirements.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

where all the poisonous contaminants will find their way down the to the sewer, and into our rivers and oceans.

You mean like oil, fuel and lead-acid batteries that alredy exist in cars?

Make lithium battery recycling more profitable and more battery will be recycled.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrocarbons photooxidize to harmless substances (water, co2) in the natural environment, metalic salts and toxic shit from batteries DO NOT.

Re: Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that giant pool of crap sitting at the bottom of the ocean from the BP disaster? Balls of oil still come on shore.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[drinkypoo]

There is no such disparity with, for example, diesel engines. In the same power range, specific fuel consumption is within around a 15-20% variance top to bottom.

In that power range, sure. But diesels suffer from economies of scale or lack thereof as well. In a car, your turbo diesel might be 25% efficient. The most efficient diesel is over 50%, but it's in a container ship.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...]is basically as useful as tits on a fish."

I would have to disagree with you about the merits of tits on a fish.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like trains have since the 30s-50s, except, wait, trains use diesel engines not gas turbines for generation. The gas turbine thing was experimented with in a number of places, looks like most recently by the Russians.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[LifesABeach]

I don't see to many animals hanging around oil, and living much. But what about Light Duty Trucks? Did Nikola Motor miss a spot?

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[s122604]

The economies of scale that might apply to power plant level CO2 sequestration do not apply here

from a sequestration standpoint, yes. Although using methane as the energy source instead of diesel cuts down on C02, and virtually eliminates the other nastiness that comes from burning diesel.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

150kW??? That's a lot. That's like burning a 150,000 Wat lamp for one hour. Who has the network to power that supercharger? What country is ready to have 15% of its car market replaced by Tesla's that get supercharged every day? We already have problems in winter with the high demand for electricity. Will Tesla be the one who solves the electricity crisis too? Or will tax payers have to solve this? Or will we have to rely on the free market who will chose the most economical way to generate electricity: coal plants? Electric cars, I like the idea, but I fear the socialism that it requires to make it work.

Until today the government is subsidizing electric cars. They are all expensive luxury cars and the people who can afford them get tax payer money to buy them. People who can't afford expensive cars get nothing but a higher tax bill. Whenever electric cars become successful new power plants will have to be built. But again free market fails in this regard, and tax payer money will be needed. Either through subsidizing 'green' power plants or by building power plants with taxpayer money. The result is that the poor will pay most to get the rich get their toys. The rich can look down on the poor because they still drive old, non electric, polluting cars and the higher middle class will demand a complete ban on non electric cars in city centers, banning poor people from having a well paying job in or near cities (this already happens with old cars in city centers and politicians plan to extend this practice to entire agglomerations and electric only cars).
 
I fear this kind of green social political progress that has made an unholy alliance with economic capitalistic liberalism. Socialism for the upper middle class while destroying the lower middle class and keeping the poor poor, and letting the rich get even more rich. This seems a repeat of the 19th century in Europe where the Catholic church worked together with the libertarian industrialists: The Catholic church keeps the people stupid, the Libertarians keep them poor. Now it is: The cultural Marxism of the socialists/green keep them brainwashed through political correct propaganda, the libertarian tech companies keep them presenting cars and toys they'll never be able to afford.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[DriveDog]

Seriously. This is the only information I found in the post:

...6x6 100% electric drive, zero idle, many times cleaner than diesel engines, half the fuel cost per mile compared to diesel, 3,700 FT. LBS Torque, 2,000 horsepower...

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla superchargers may become available for others - they just need to make a deal with Tesla for that to happen.

But this is a truck. Charging equipment for it will be on truck stops, a Tesla charging station is too cramped for trucks. And why would they want to use a charger at all? Because electricity tend to be cheaper than natural gas. So when the truck stops - for the weekend or whatever, it stops on a charger.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck actually achieving that, it'll be in a narrow RPM range at around 80% of power.

An RPM range you can use all the time, if you use diesel-electric. Having the engine turn the wheels directly is silly. The engine should power a generator, electric motors turn the wheels in a easy all-wheel drive setup. The engine will be running at the perfect RPM & power all the time (and simply shut down if the load is too light - very light loads can be left to the batteries alone.)

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Martin Blank]

Or will we have to rely on the free market who will chose the most economical way to generate electricity: coal plants?

You really should get caught up on new plant construction. According to Sourcewatch, only four coal-fired plants are even in the planning phase right now representing less than 2GW of capacity. The same page shows more than three dozen canceled plants over the last 13 years or so. Compare this to hundreds of plants either retired or converted (or planned for retirement or conversion). Only 34 plants were built from 2000-2009. The main reason for this is that coal is not the most economical, having years ago ceded that position to natural gas.

Meanwhile, a recently released report by Bloomberg has the cost of solar and wind dipping below coal and gas by about 2027, and forecasts that 60% of 2040's installed capacity will be zero-emission of some sort.

The rich have always had access to newer technology. They had cars while poor people had horses or had to walk. They had planes while poor people had to take trains or just not travel. Even in cars, they had airbags, fuel injection, rear-view cameras, and other things we now consider essentially standard long before the riff-raff. With GM rolling out the Bolt and most other car manufacturers working on their own electric cars, the costs will come down dramatically, enough that middle class and even poor people will eventually get relatively easy access to them.

Re: Great technology, but what about the energy?

[mspohr]

Yes, you are uncommonly confused.
These power plants were never owned or operated by California power companies. They're not even on the same grid as California.

Re: Great technology, but what about the energy?

[Hylandr]

Still didn't address battery creation, from mining to manufacturing.

Re:Great technology, but what about the energy?

[azav]

> Its great to see

It's* great

        it's = it is

You're old enough to know this.

Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag. That's over 110kW, or about 3 hours on battery, or 190 miles. That means the remaining 1000 miles of range are going to come from fossil fuels. Hardly impressive.

2,000 Horsepower is nearly 1.5 MEGAWATTS. 250,000 watts per motor. Even if they were 90% efficient, that's still 25kW of heat to dissipate. So, I imagine the 2000 horsepower is only available for a very short time, if it's even real.

The math just seems to fantastical to be true.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[HornWumpus]

The 'Natural Gas Range Extender' reduces their useful load to zero. It's a CNG tanker trailer.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[MouseR]

Read up on regen braking. It does a lot for serial hybrids like this truck and the Chevy Volt.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Verdatum]

Parent is talking about highway driving....65MPH. Regen braking doesn't help you if you don't need to stop. And honestly, not stopping is going to be more efficient than even the most efficient regenerative brakes.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[whoever57]

A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag. That's over 110kW, or about 3 hours on battery, or 190 miles. That means the remaining 1000 miles of range are going to come from fossil fuels. Hardly impressive.

Apart from the benefits of regenerative braking, a serial hybrid has the advantage of running its engine over a much narrower set of load/speed conditions.

Much of the inefficiency of a gasoline engine is due to the compromises that are required to make it operate from 1000 to 6000 rpm and over a wide range of loads. That's why modern engines now have variable valve timing and other complexities: to enhance the efficiency over the whole range of conditions.

With a series hybrid, it should be possible to find the single most efficient load/speed point for an engine and only operate it at that point. Either the engine is on, operating at its most efficient load/speed point, charging the battery or it is off.

Obviously, the charge/discharge process is not 100% efficient, so gains in engine efficiency need to be offset against losses in the generator/battery/motor functions.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[mspohr]

The CNG turbine is much more efficient than a diesel. Utilities use a lot of them to generate electricity since they are cheap, powerful and efficient. A gas turbine can be up to 60% efficient compared to about 30% for diesel.
Electric motors are incredibly powerful for their size and weight. When you consider that a Tesla car has 700 HP (performance version), it's not unreasonable to have four times that in an electric truck.
These trucks are going to have amazing efficiency and much lower operating costs than diesel.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[epine]

That means the remaining 1000 miles of range are going to come from fossil fuels.

We're at least twenty years into this debate, and you still haven't figured out that "where energy comes from" depends on the production mix, not the consumption mix.

Hardly impressive.

There's perhaps 20% at stake where the efficiency term on power delivery in which the consumption mix can usefully tilt the landscape (e.g. by enabling fewer wasteful interconversions).

Plus there are other possible advantages. The 190-mile range is more than sufficient to shift emissions out of most urban areas.

Supposing this thing has a tank trailer (somehow I think it must), it could drop off the tank trailer entering Toronto, and pick another one up leaving Toronto. For comparison, the entire conurbation corridor from Buffalo to Bowmanville (the far edge of Oshawa) is about 150 miles. Even if it's not the eastern seaboard, it's not hickville, either.

Personally, I wouldn't blame the thing for not including cold fusion. I'd look for incremental gains worth having. Then I'd multiply by some very conservative number that this all pans out as advertised, without major flies in the ointment cancelling out all the paper advantages during a long and unpleasant teething cycle.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[HornWumpus]

60% is combined cycle with heat recovery steam generators.

Gas turbine is 40%.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[mbkennel]

Well, there are liquid hydrocarbon fueled racing cars which are far less than 90% efficient which have significantly more than 2,000 HP. They dissipate energy into hot exhaust and a radiator.

The truck proposed by the company has a radiator and liquid coolant, and the power is being outputted over 6 wheels, so between 3 to 6 electric motors.

Given that conventional over the road diesel trucks have about 500 HP, it seems quite unlikely that 2,000 HP would be used for any more than a small fraction of the time. And surely the competent engine management control would detect overheating in motors/coolant/battery pack/electronics and limit output if necessary.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[angel'o'sphere]

A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag.
That is nonsense.
If there is no drag: then there is no power requirement at all as soon as the car/truck has reached its speed.
Learn some physics.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[angel'o'sphere]

A gas turbine can be up to 60% efficient compared to about 30% for diesel.
No, it can't. It has max efficiency of about 42% - 45%.
You are mixing up combined cycle gas plants with gas turbines.
A "combined cycle gas plant" uses the wasted heat that comes out of the turbine to heat a traditional boiler and drive another steam turbine. That is 60% efficient in total.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

"bearing drag"
No one said "no drag"

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[MarkRose]

Ah, but regenerative braking does help you in hilly terrain. Trucks waste a lot of energy countering gravity in mountainous areas. Regenerative braking also doesn't fade or wear out with repeated use, so is cheaper in the long run. Regenerative braking is totally worth it for long-haul trucking.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Most truckers are not driving on roads where they are constantly braking. Regen braking is worthless when most of your time is on freeways.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but regenerative braking does help you in hilly terrain. Trucks waste a lot of energy countering gravity in mountainous areas. Regenerative braking also doesn't fade or wear out with repeated use, so is cheaper in the long run. Regenerative braking is totally worth it for long-haul trucking.

Trucks use engine breaks for the majority of those sorts of conditions. It would be worth reading up on how OTR operates before having a public opinion on technical points.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

98 percent efficiency is not unusual for an electric motor.
5 kilowatts of heat spread among 6 motors isn't a whole lot.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[fnj]

The CNG turbine is much more efficient than a diesel.

You are full of bull. Stick to a topic you know something about. Both gas turbines and diesels (non combined cycle) max out at about 45% to an utmost of pushing 50% thermal efficiency.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Trucks don't need to stop as much as a commuter vehicle, however they do of course have to do so regularly (traffic, fuel, driver rest periods, etc) and when they do they burn a massive amount of power off as heat (several hundred kW).

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[0100010001010011]

When you consider that a Tesla car has 700 HP (performance version), it's not unreasonable to have four times that in an electric truck.

What trucks are you using that have 2800 HP?

700 HP is more than all but the largest of on highway trucks.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[cheese_boy]

"A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag"

That is nonsense.
If there is no drag: then there is no power requirement at all as soon as the car/truck has reached its speed.

He didn't say no drag, he just explicitly removed 2 of the components.
By my calculations using http://ecomodder.com/forum/too... show 62HP needed for .0045 rolling resistance of 40 tons at 65mph.
(.0045 is based on lower end of range for truck tires from wikipedia)

100HP or even 150HP is within the range of possible requirements.
I'd expect even significantly more than 150HP needs to be available for when going up a long hill.

But I dont' see why the math doesn't "add up" - even if we use 150HP.
Even with 150HP, and a range (on just battery) of 190miles, the article says "travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender"
The point isn't that it doesn't run on fossil fuels (it explicitly does)
The point is that it can run 1200 miles between refueling and do so at much lower fuel costs. 1200 miles would be 18 hours at 65mph; and truck drivers can only drive for 11 hours within a 24 hour period, so that's more than enough from that perspective - and 1200 miles will get you pretty far - enough that you wouldn't have to have the refueling points be completely ubiquitous.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Rei]

2,000 Horsepower is nearly 1.5 MEGAWATTS. 250,000 watts per motor. Even if they were 90% efficient, that's still 25kW of heat to dissipate. So, I imagine the 2000 horsepower is only available for a very short time, if it's even real.

I guess if you write it in caps, it just can't be true! ;)

A truck burning diesel getting 6mpg is burning about 23MJ per mile. At 65mph (just cruising) that's 41kW. Most of which must be dissipated as heat.

Cruising, not peak.

Radiating 25kW of heat in a freight truck is a nothing task. And 90% is pessimistic. And 250kW for electric motors is nothing these days. Tesla Model S Ludicrous does 568kW in a single motor that's sized for a car. Modern electric motors are amazingly compact. Here's a EMRAX 268 sitting next to the equivalent power gasoline engine that it replaces. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Dramatically less heat to dissipate means dramatically less size/mass. Much simpler design means dramatically less size/mass. And direct application of force rather than indirect through expanding gases creating linear and then rotational momentum means, again, dramatically less size/mass. Then factor in the near constant power output over a wide RPM range....

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[DerekLyons]

Plus there are other possible advantages. The 190-mile range is more than sufficient to shift emissions out of most urban areas.

Very true. And while there is an awful lot of long distance hauling... There's also an awful lot of "from the nearest [port|railhead|distribution warehouse] across the local region" hauling too. This truck would fit that niche rather nicely.

A trucker friend of mine used to have a regular route running cars from terminal in Portland to various destinations around the Puget Sound basin... Even if he ran electric from Portland to his destination and natural gas back to Portland, the 150 mile range would cut his fuel consumption 40-60% (depending on the destination).

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[fluffernutter]

Trucks brakes fail all the time in the mountains, where 'run away lanes' are still common. These regen brakes have better be bulletproof for these trucks to be safe. They sound fairly complicated, but maybe they aren't.

Re: Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't. Basically, you just change the timing of the motor controller so that instead of making the motor speed up, it tries to make the motor slow down. When this is done the motor will generate electricity, which can be used to charge the battery, or thrown away through a power resistor if the battery is full.
I know electric cars don't have a resistor, choosing instead to engage mechanical brakes in those circumstances. The trucks may have it in order to increase braking safety, I don't know.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

there is a reason why semis have jake breaks. Turns out that semis do a LOT of braking for stops, stop lights, and to deal with the traffic that is running all around them.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

but this truck will not have jake breaks. As such, no go. They need re-gen braking for slowing down when dealing with say, I-70 in Colorado.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

Tesla owners will change their brake pads about every 100,000 miles. And even then, it is not a sure thing.
Regen braking has less chance of failure than does regular brakes. So, on say, I70, when coming down from the tunnel down the mountain, the re-gens will actually add loads of energy back into the pack. In fact, when headed east, a truck like this would be wise to have their pack nearly empty upon exiting the Eisenhower tunnel. By the time an EV gets to the bottom, they will have a mostly recharged pack.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

yeah, you never see those freeways go through a crowed city and those trucks have to deal with avoiding all of the passenger vehicles that pull in front of them and then hit their brakes.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

Yeah, this approach would never be used on trains. For example, they would never run diesel engine/generators to run electric motors.
And, none of the rail companies would find it economical to switch said diesel to nat gas.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[tepples]

Interstate highways (I-xx, not SR xx or US xx) are controlled-access. They don't go through the city with its traffic signals; they go above it. The only way on or off an interstate highway is an interchange. Or are you referring to interactions with passenger vehicles at said interchanges?

Re: Math Doesn't Add Up

[jsh1972]

I-10 through Houston hits stop and go traffic all the time.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Sique]

Regenerative braking is a very old concept. The first street cars in the late 1800ies already had some kind of "regenerative" braking, they just weren't feeding the gained electricity back into the grid, but instead running it through large resistors on the roof of the car and thus turning them into heat. Every electric engine is at the same time a generator, it just depends on how you switch the power lines. If you short an electric engine, it generates electric energy until it stops running.

Most problems with regenerative braking were how to turn the electric energy gained from shorting the engine back into the standards of the grid, but these were solved at least for trains in the late 1950ies and early 1960 with the upcomping thyristor. Since then, all electric trains use regenerative braking with feedback into the grid. For cars, the problem was how to transform the energy into the right current and voltage to charge the batteries, and how to use conventional braking if the batteries are already full, and make it a smooth transition so the driver doesn't notice the difference, but the car always behaves the same.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[thegarbz]

Turns out that semis do a LOT of braking for stops, stop lights, and to deal with the traffic that is running all around them.

What a wonderful example of a poorly laid out city / country.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Trucks use engine breaks for the majority of those sorts of conditions. It would be worth reading up on how OTR operates before having a public opinion on technical points.

Engine brakes are a safety feature - they reduce brake overheating and wear at the cost of spinning the engine and increasing wear there. Engine breaks do not recover energy - the engine just heats up and dumps the heat into the air through the normal cooling system. Electric motors should not suffer from almost any extra wear being used for braking and at the same time they can recover energy and store it in the batteries.

This means that a traditional truck uses lots of energy going up hill and then throws the same energy away as heat going downhill. A regenerative braking truck will have some inefficiency, but should be able to recover a noticable portion of the energy as it goes downhill.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Mashiki]

Likely need much more then that. The reason why jake brakes work so well for highways in very hilly and mountainous regions is because it's working against the engine, transmission and everything else. There are places along the transcanada, 401, and I-75 where the use of a normal brake even re-gen brake would burn out(and turn into a pile of melted metal or glorious fire) long before the truck started coming down the other side. Even heavy morning traffic through Toronto is enough that you'll occasionally see trucks pulled over waiting for their brakes to cool, especially once it starts hitting 30C+ here in Ontario. There's places just outside of my city where you can see where trucks have nearly run away with very heavy loads, and you're talking about 0.03% over a couple of KM.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Mashiki]

When you consider that a Tesla car has 700 HP (performance version), it's not unreasonable to have four times that in an electric truck.

Trucks don't really care about HP, it's all about torque(aka pulling power). Your average truck is ~250-500HP but 1,700-4,100 lb-ft of torque at 1,200-2,400rpm. Right now that leaves diesel engines in the best pulling power class, especially with the 15-26 gear transmission ratios that exist.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[jabuzz]

Really I would have thought that an electric motor would leave a diesel engine for dead. Actually I don't think I know that electric motors leave any internal combustion engine for dead when it comes to torque, especially at low RPM where you need it more. Show me the diesel engine providing *FULL* torque at 0 RPM. There is a reason that almost all train's now have electric motors for the traction engine.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[drinkypoo]

You are full of bull. Stick to a topic you know something about. Both gas turbines and diesels (non combined cycle) max out at about 45% to an utmost of pushing 50% thermal efficiency.

Diesels have to literally be as big as a house to get that kind of efficiency. It's been said that it's possible to make even microturbines efficient, albeit at a narrow power output range. Not that I've seen it.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[drinkypoo]

Regenerative braking is a very old concept. The first street cars in the late 1800ies already had some kind of "regenerative" braking, they just weren't feeding the gained electricity back into the grid, but instead running it through large resistors on the roof of the car and thus turning them into heat.

Uh, what? Now, look here: it's not regenerative unless you are using it to regenerate the charge in the battery.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[fluffernutter]

Ok that's cool.. but you can't really compare a Tesla to a loaded truck, two totally different kinds of work. Passenger car brakes for regular ICEs don't normally fail either but it is a very real danger for large trucks. But if you say regens can better handle the abuse without breaking down then I won't disagree.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[nojayuk]

Combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) can reach 60% efficiency but they're more complicated than a simple once-through gas turbine of the sort that's likely to be fitted to a truck like this. CCGT power plants boil water to steam with the turbine exhaust and use a secondary steam turbine to generate more electricity hence the 60% figure but they are bigger, heavier and more complex than any conceivable mobile power plant.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[GameboyRMH]

The marketing of this truck as an EV is misleading, but the math makes sense. By your math, which seems correct, 25kW of waste heat is generated by each motor at full power, and that's a very easily manageable amount of heat to dissipate, far less than an average family sedan could produce at full power.

This is similar to what a 15hp ICE at 33% efficiency would produce - so at full power each motor will be spewing about as much heat as a motor scooter or a go-kart also would at full power. These often have air-cooled engines.

For comparison, let's consider an everyday 150hp car with a 33% efficient ICE - at full power it will be generating 224kW of waste heat.

Now let's consider a 700hp car at 33% efficiency - in the range of a supercar, but more than a modern semi and less than many race cars. It will have over a megawatt of waste heat to dissipate at full power.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[GameboyRMH]

True, that's called "dynamic braking" on trains. Both are forms of electric motor braking.

Modern EVs might benefit from a resistor bank that could be used to give motor braking when the battery is full or increase the motor braking power past what the battery charge system can take.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Really I would have thought that an electric motor would leave a diesel engine for dead. Actually I don't think I know that electric motors leave any internal combustion engine for dead when it comes to torque, especially at low RPM where you need it more. Show me the diesel engine providing *FULL* torque at 0 RPM

Torque at 0 RPM is irrelevant. It's the torque at the actual rotational veloctity of the engine that matters. Since lorries/trucks have gearboxes with dozens of different ratios, the engine can operate in its optimal torque range very close to 100% of the time.

There is a reason that almost all train's now have electric motors for the traction engine.

Yes, it's because electricity can be provided by the overhead lines.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[GameboyRMH]

There are places along the transcanada, 401, and I-75 where the use of a normal brake even re-gen brake would burn out(and turn into a pile of melted metal or glorious fire) long before the truck started coming down the other side.

See, now you've outed yourself as an idiot on electric powertrains.

Regen braking produces very little waste heat, comparable to what the EV would produce accelerating under full power at most. It would be impossible to cause melting or a fire through regen braking on a EV with a working cooling system.

Regen braking with a resistor bank to act as an auxiliary load dump could easily replace a jake brake. This is how diesel-electric locomotives do most of their braking after all.

Trucks pull over on the highway to let their brakes cool whenever they're heated up by repeated light braking in traffic. It's done in conjunction with exhaust braking but the repeated lighter braking raises brake temperatures anyway. On long downhills truck drivers will use constant exhaust braking combined with short bursts of heavy wheel braking. Short heavy braking gives the brakes more time to cool than extended light braking and results in lower average brake temperatures for the same deceleration. With regen brakes, downhill braking will charge the battery and with enough auxiliary load dumping the regen braking could be made more powerful than exhaust braking.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Pascoea]

I was about to be a smart-ass, and disagree with you. My thinking was that TECHNICALLY you are re-generating electricity even if you aren't storing it for future use. But my googling led me to a clarification on the OP, what he's referring to is rheostatic dynamic braking not regenerative dynamic braking. The differentiating being what you do with the power you are generating. On order to be regenerative you have to re-use the power to do work (either immediately, or stored for future use), rheostatic just "burns" the energy as waste heat through a resistor bank. The earliest systems used rheostatic only, modern systems (in trains anyway, didn't research chars) use both.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[chmod a x mojo]

You have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. Period.

An engine brake shuts off fuel and closes one set of valves, to slightly raise compression in the pistons. There is no way in hell the engine heats up MORE by only compressing air, than by compressing air + fuel and then having the fuel BURN AND EXPLODE.

About the only thing you had right was that engine brakes don't recover energy. And even there the engine COOLS and dumps remaining heat through the normal cooling system, so you were more than half-wrong.

And yeah, I know what I am talking about, I drove truck for more than 8 years. If your rig is running hot, hope you can find a hill to jake down since a good long one will dump off 60-80+ degrees from your engine easily. Hell even just downshifting to a turn from highway speed can lower higher than normal highways temps by 20+ degrees.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Google "supertruck program doe". Look at the engine requirements for BTE, then look at nikola website for stated peak turbine efficiency. Now consider energy conversion from mechanical to electrical through power conditioning and then back to electrical.again. This truck is vaporware.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[GameboyRMH]

To be fair, most race cars with more than 1500HP simply store their waste heat for a very short time (drag & landspeed cars) rather than actually dissipating it. But yes there are many race cars with 800~1500HP that manage to dissipate the heat produced at full power for sustained periods (F1, GRC, and pro drift off the top of my head).

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[mspohr]

High torque at 0 RPM (and every other speed) is what allows Teslas to beat most cars off the line and would do wonders for a truck.
Also, electric motors don't need any gearbox to keep them in the "optimal torque range". They have a very broad optimal torque range. So you can dump those expensive, heavy multispeed gearboxes.
Diesel/electric trains have electric motors for the same reason. You don't need big, heavy, fragile gearboxes.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[mspohr]

Here's a video showing the value of max torque at 0 RPM and beyond.
He blows away a sportbike.
http://www.teslarati.com/sport...

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

You obviously do not understand how regen braking work.
As you said, jake brakes DO use the engine/transmission to slow down. You are not hurting the vehicle in doing it. OTOH, you ARE hurting the ears of all those around the outside of the truck, esp. when somebody is sleeping.
Now, as to regen braking. it is nothing more than turning a motor into a generator. The ONLY way that it will be turned into a slab is IFF the motor would have been turned into a slab of metal going UP the hill. And the 401 and I-75 are little bitty moleholes. When you have 3-5 km VERTICAL to go, and 300m falls if you go off the road, and are traveling at 100-120 KMPH, then let me know about things.
As to Canada, here are your dangerous roads. Most of those are conidered easy here in Colorado.
And here America's most dangerous roads. Notice the very high roads in our mountains and the very steep drops for those couple of trucks/cars each year that buys the darwin awards?

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

you will note that I spoke about putting motors on the trailers in an earlier posting. Imagine what happens if you do regen from the tractor (which is up-front,but nothing from the rear)? You run the risk of jack-knife particularly in Colorado and other locations (you do 80 MPH down a 8% grade and then tap the brakes and you can watch the trailer go right by you).

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[WindBourne]

Actually, back in the 90s, I was teaching all around the nation. I recall several highways that had stop lights on them, BUT, I think that they were in the process of building new portions of them outside of the town, to avoid those stop lights. And yeah, any freeway going through denver, houston, chicago, etc will hit traffic so bad that you come to a stop.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Regen braking on a truck is easy enough. A train is much heavier than a truck, and they use regen braking for stopping & for limiting speed when rolling downhill. They produce much more braking power than any kind of truck - the biggest of trucks is light duty compared to what a train endures. Trucks may go steeper downhill than a train - but the train weigh so much more.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[ToddInSF]

What a wonderful example of not knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[thegarbz]

What a wonderful example of not knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

Could be, I have not idea how silly you lay out your cities. Mind you I live in a country which does the most shipping in Europe and yet every truck on the road can get from a port through to any other neighbouring country without going through a single traffic light or stop sign. We also put them in special lanes so they aren't bogged in stop start traffic.

You know... sensible stuff to solve the unsolvable problem you describe.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Mashiki]

Show me the diesel engine providing *FULL* torque at 0 RPM. There is a reason that almost all train's now have electric motors for the traction engine.

It's called a super-charger start. And any transmission allows full torque at 0 rpm, there are also a few other options for that stuff.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Mashiki]

See, now you've outed yourself as an idiot on electric powertrains.

Regen braking produces very little waste heat, comparable to what the EV would produce accelerating under full power at most. It would be impossible to cause melting or a fire through regen braking on a EV with a working cooling system.

Regen braking with a resistor bank to act as an auxiliary load dump could easily replace a jake brake. This is how diesel-electric locomotives do most of their braking after all.

Now you've outted yourself as an idiot in general. The system for trucks is prohibitively expensive since trailers need to be retrofitted for it and using two-system braking while the entire braking system isn't will increase the chances of jackknifing. FYI most diesel-electric locomotives do their braking with physical brakes(air) and engine throttling(regenerative along with rheostatic) this is called dynamic braking. But what would I know? I only have friends that have spend their life as engineers for CN & CP.

But a single look on wikipedia would have told you that much.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Sique]

That's why I used the quotes. The braking by shorting the electric engine always generates electric energy, and as the momentum of the engine was generated by using electric energy, we now re-generate that energy (minus all the waste). In a literal sense, braking by shorting the engine is regenerative braking. What we do now with the electric energy makes no difference for the actual braking. It's just a good idea to try to either store the energy for later use or feed it back into the grid, rather than waste it by heating up a resistor array. From an engineering point of view, only the energy we can use later is re-gained, thus it make sense not to call it regenerative braking without the re-use of energy.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is useful for a lorry how exactly?

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Bengie]

A breakthrough in internal combustion engines poses to make Otto cycle gasoline engines 40%-50% efficient in cars. This was recently done by F1 racers and does not require high compression.

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[GameboyRMH]

Now you've outed yourself as an idiot on tractor-trailer braking systems and a gratuitous ad-hominem user.

So apparently your friends haven't properly explained what exhaust brakes are to you. The exhaust brake only acts through the drivetrain on the driven wheels, just the same as regen braking on an EV. The trailer brakes are pneumatically driven friction brakes. An electric truck will need to have an air compressor, just like a diesel truck has, to drive these. That's another system that can take advantage of regen power. No retrofitting will be necessary on the trailers, they'll work just the same as they would on a diesel truck.

Trains use mostly electric motor braking (regen and rheostatic) and supplement it with physical brakes only as necessary, to prevent brake overheating.

I've taken more than a single look at wikipedia, that's why I know more about this stuff than you ;-)

Re:Math Doesn't Add Up

[Bengie]

And now they're doing it for gas engines.

Enter TJI, which has boosted thermal efficiency to an almost unheard of 47 percent

http://arstechnica.com/cars/20...

7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

...is about $329k per truck

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[amicusNYCL]

It looks like that's about $100k more than the new Peterbuilt extended-cab trucks.

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like that's about $100k more than the new Peterbuilt extended-cab trucks.

The break even is surprisingly short when you take into account drive train costs. Those trucks spent a lot of time starting and stopping and the gearboxes take a beating - the body lasts a long time though. This is why Mack

makes electric trucks, and why big mining companies use trucks with electric motors (power by gas turbines).

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Worth every penny.

Lifetime fuel cost for vehicles like that is more than half a million dollars.

https://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/truck_efficiency_paper_v2.pdf

According to the original post, these trucks have half the fuel cost of diesel.. So over the lifetime of the truck you'll save 150,000 dollars. Now imagine you own a large company with a fleet of thousands of these. It's easy to see while they're selling so well.

And that's just fuel cost. If there has been anything that the hybrid passenger car market has taught us it's that electric drive trains are crazy reliable and cheap to maintain. I'd be willing to bet they will save on maint too. Big diesel engines cost a lot just to keep on the road, and keep up to emissions spec. These new vehicles will have much less trouble with emissions.

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[Martin Blank]

It's more than drive train costs. Brakes are also a massive cost in big rigs, as are the pollution controls that may have to be upgraded several times over the life of the truck. The new challenge is going to be getting repairs for the gas turbine and the electrical systems, but those skills will pop up fast in the repair shops. If these can be delivered as promised and are at least as reliable as existing trucks, they're going to remake the market.

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[Rei]

They're not the first company to do this (Smith has been doing it for ages), but the tech keeps converging. And pairing it with a range extender is a good idea, it's not as much of a cost or mass penalty (proportional to total hauled mass) in a freight truck as it is in a car, so you might as well retire any range anxiety. That said, 100-200 miles range is no slouch in and of itself. It depends on what sort of charge setup they provide, but it might fit well into a role shuttling goods around town where there's some delay on each end for charging - ports, factories, warehouses, etc.

And lest anyone think that you can't provide power that fast with detachable connectors... so long as you have a good enough feed, you can provide power fast enough to fry the batteries on that thing in seconds. AMP provides power to docked ships at up to 6600V and up to the ballpark of 8MW. Enough to fill one of those trucks' packs every 2 1/2 minutes, if they could actually take it. Technically you don't even need that big of a feed from the power plant, if you get a battery buffer.

Re:7k preorders yielding 2.3 billion dollars

[CrashNBrn]

330K for the Truck sounds like a lot, except a standard 18 wheeler cab is ~130-180k, andif the fuel savings are correct, its a no-brainer.

Apples to apples

[CMU_Ken]

Their preorders are actually $1500 x 7000 = $10.5 million. If all of those translate to sales, then it would be the big $2.3 billion number. To date Tesla has over 373,000 preorders at $1000 apiece = $373 million. Tesla stands to make over $15.6 billion in revenue if all of those sales go through, assuming an average build is about $42,000 after options. I think it's still pretty impressive for Nikola, though, all things considered.

Re:Apples to apples

[Anonymous Coward]

please!

Pretty pathetic for a techie site :(

Maths is hard

With the Range Extender!

[Wrath0fb0b]

The 'Nikola One' comes equipped with a massive 320 kWh battery pack that the company hopes can allow it to travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender.

And my fart-powered motorcycle can travel 400 miles with its gasoline-powered range extender!

Cost per mile is king in transport

[Anonymous Coward]

The claimed energy costs of /half/ over conventional diesel is huge. When your company does nothing but ship those costs will affect the bottom line pretty much like nothing else.

It reminds me of the advent of diesel-electric locomotives. They were so much cheaper to run that steam vanished virtually overnight. There were literally stories of steam locomotives rolling off production only to make a single trip directly to the scrap yards. (Said machines were contracted and commissioned years in advance)

If these trucks really do half the fuel cost, diesel will be gone in less than two years. And anyone who can't replace their fleet will simply be pushed out of business. (Anyone wonder why modern companies live and die based pretty much on their ability to secure credit?)

Off the rails...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's basically a down-scaled diesel-electric locomotive, but with a battery buffer and diesel replaced with CNG?

Re:Off the rails...

[guruevi]

So, it's basically a down-scaled diesel-electric locomotive, but with a battery buffer and diesel replaced with CNG?

Pretty much, without the rails off course. Diesel-Electric vehicles don't quite exist yet for general roadway use most likely because space, cost and power would trade off and the resulting savings negligible. (Natural) gas engines can be much smaller and operate at much higher efficiencies and thus less affected by stringent exhaust and other regulations.

Once batteries exist that can supply the surges required of a rail train (currently Diesel-Electric locomotives use capacitors) we will see the switch happen quickly there as well.

It always did make me wonder why companies like Tesla or even GM don't go for the commercial market first. Savings on a vehicle used 1/24h are minimal, a vehicle used 12-24h/day is much more attractive to save even 10% in TCO.

Re:Off the rails...

[HornWumpus]

Tax credits flowing to corporations through the hands of consumers is politically acceptable.

Once the products are genuinely economic, they sell to business.

Re:Off the rails...

[myowntrueself]

So, it's basically a down-scaled diesel-electric locomotive, but with a battery buffer and diesel replaced with CNG?

Pretty much, without the rails off course. Diesel-Electric vehicles don't quite exist yet for general roadway use most likely because space, cost and power would trade off and the resulting savings negligible. (Natural) gas engines can be much smaller and operate at much higher efficiencies and thus less affected by stringent exhaust and other regulations.

Once batteries exist that can supply the surges required of a rail train (currently Diesel-Electric locomotives use capacitors) we will see the switch happen quickly there as well.

It always did make me wonder why companies like Tesla or even GM don't go for the commercial market first. Savings on a vehicle used 1/24h are minimal, a vehicle used 12-24h/day is much more attractive to save even 10% in TCO.

Well at least its an actual TRUCK not an oversized car with a huge, open-air trunk!

Nikola?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Tesla was taken.

I hope they're as successful as Tesla.

good thing that

[postmortem]

Nikola Tesla didn't have middle name.

Re:good thing that

[TeknoHog]

Actually, his middle name was Danger, but the auto industry hasn't been too keen to adopt it.

Nikola Zero...

[bobthesungeek76036]

Did anybody see this: Nikola Zero 520HP four-wheeler? Woohoo!!!!

Re:Nikola Zero...

[HornWumpus]

Bog standard 4 seat sand buggy with a currently imaginary drivetrain.

400kg battery will near double the weight of a standard buggy. So expect performance comparable to 300hp IC engine.

A 4 wheel buggy with a WRX engine is a much better buy, and real today.

but

[Anonymous Coward]

as the story goes, back in the 70s, a then leading hi tech aerospace company, Grumman, based in Long Island outside of NYC, said, hey,we are a hitech cutting edge transformative company: we can build buses for the NYC transit authority that are way cooler then the buses from GM

Said cool buses appeared, and went into service..turns out the nice folk at Grumman didn't appreciate just how much stress a NYC pothole, plus a NYC transit driver, puts on a front end...like in, broken axles on the cool hi tech buses.
moral: ya gotta make the whole thing last for a long time, over all sorts of roads, all sorts of weather, all sorts of drivers and emergencies.

fishy math here

[rraylion]

If you go to the site https://nikolamotor.com/one you will notice that the reserve price of the truck is only 1,500 USD... so take 7000 pre-orders and you have around 10.5 M USD. Perhaps they are thinking of the total price of the truck? so 2.3 B / 7000 = 329k for the truck.

Several things that they should change

[WindBourne]

The first is that they need not 1 engine, but multiple smaller engines. By going with smaller engine/gens, they can turn on-off as needed. In addition, it makes it far more durable with the redundancy, but also easy to maintain by taking them out to rebuild/fix.
The second is that CNG is the wrong fuel. CNG is far too easy to bleed off. Instead, with LNG, it will not bleed off, and this can lower the GHG.
The third is they really do need the ability to recharge the battery at a station. It is far cheaper to recharge those batteries from the grid than from the nat gas. And with 320 KWH, well, that is a lot of energy that can be grabbed.
The last is the trailers, really need to be modified. In particular, they should have a motor/axle in the rear. This will not only help to accelerate, but also for re-gen.

BUT, otherwise, that is one heck of a truck.

Re:Several things that they should change

[drinkypoo]

The first is that they need not 1 engine, but multiple smaller engines. By going with smaller engine/gens, they can turn on-off as needed. In addition, it makes it far more durable with the redundancy, but also easy to maintain by taking them out to rebuild/fix.

It also raises the cost, which is why it's not going to happen. Also, a larger engine is more efficient, which is the reason it should not happen. They have the batteries. They can run the engine in its efficient range and put whatever they're not using into those. Thus the system efficiency is higher with one large engine.

The second is that CNG is the wrong fuel. CNG is far too easy to bleed off. Instead, with LNG, it will not bleed off, and this can lower the GHG.

It's all crap, because additional natgas will come from fracking.

Re:Several things that they should change

[WindBourne]

how odd. It raises the price to have multiples made? Somebody better tell SpaceX that they need to change their falcon 9 to look more like Atlas, Delta, and Arianne, so that they can get their prices lower those groups have.
Actually, a single large engine that is forced to run at various speeds is far more INEFFICIENT. Having say 3 engine/gens run at a set speed, and being able to take them off and on is by far the most efficient that you can get on this. Otherwise, with varying speeds in the engine, your efficiencies really go all over the board. That is why all of the diesel have so many speeds in their transmissions. They are trying to run them at a single small range so as to improve their efficiency.

Absolutely nothing wrong with fracking in the right places. In fact, the far left's fear of this is nothing less than insane and shows that they are as anti-science as the far right.

Re:Several things that they should change

[drinkypoo]

how odd. It raises the price to have multiples made?

Are you being disingenuous, or are you just dumb? It's more expensive to put two engines into a vehicle than one engine. You do it for packaging reasons, or for reasons of necessary redundancy; both come into effect on boats or ships, for example. It's cheaper to build a V8 than to build two L4s of the same total displacement, oh and by the way, the V8 runs smoother. And oh yes, and also, there's a bunch of stuff that costs about the same amount no matter how big the engine is (like motor mounts) and you're going to need twice as many of them.

Actually, a single large engine that is forced to run at various speeds is far more INEFFICIENT.

It isn't forced to run at various speeds in this case. If you have a series hybrid with a battery bank broad enough to take the engine output then the engine can run at just one speed — the most efficient one.

Absolutely nothing wrong with fracking in the right places.

Where are the places it's acceptable to inject refinery wastes into the ground instead of disposing of them properly?

I went to the Nikola Motors website

[riverat1]

Unlike most of you I went to the Nikola Motors website.

While there is undoubtedly some hype here's what they said.

There are 2 electric motors on the front axle and it looks like 4 electric motors on the rear axles. The motors have 2 gear automatic transmissions. The truck has what they call torque vectoring which adjusts the wheel speed while turning or maneuvering. There is a 100 gallon CNG tank powering a nearly 400 kw turbine. The turbine if fuel agnostic running on diesel, gasoline or CNG. You can choose your fuel at the time of purchase. They claim the 100 gallon CNG tank is enough for 800 -1,200 miles depending on terrain and load. The turbine will run for 1 hour out of every 3-5 hours of pure electric driving. It of course had regenerative braking but there are also air powered disk brakes on all 6 wheels (of course they'd have to have an air system so they can hook up to the trailer brakes too). They claim the truck will stop in about half the distance of a normal diesel rig.

For the first 25,000 customers they are offering free fuel for the first million miles. They own the rights to some gas wells and are setting up 55 fueling stations around the country and Canada that are spaced close enough that you can easily make if from one to the next. You can lease the truck for $5,000/month and that includes free fuel, warranty and scheduled maintenance (I doubt tires are included) and at the end of the warranty period (72 months or 1 million miles whichever comes first) you can trade it in on a new one. They also say the Nikola-one is around 2,000 pounds lighter than the equivalent diesel tractor increasing the payload you can carry.

Lots more information at the website.

Re:I went to the Nikola Motors website

[drinkypoo]

It's all crap. What we really want are small diesels with hybrid systems. The diesels provide meaningful torque. Putting motors right on the axles is good, though. Per-wheel is the way to go. But if they are determined to use a turbine it should work on either gas or diesel, you shouldn't have to select. If not, that's a massive failure.

Re:I went to the Nikola Motors website

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric Motors > Diesel Motors for torque. Diesel Motors are subject to the same flaw as Gasoline Motors, little to no torque on the low RPM range. Electric motors have instant maximum torque no matter the RPM. This is why locomotives have been using a hybrid diesel/electric setup for decades. The diesels simply generate electricity to drive the direct drive electric motors on the locomotive's wheels.

This is no different, a turbine makes sense here as well. Turbines are excellent for fuel efficiency and generating rotational movement since they're designed to rotate. A typical piston / crankshaft engine has to convert up/down movement into rotational movement and that isn't nearly as efficient.

Some turbines can run on multiple fuel types, but that would mean having a tank for each one as you cant mix them. More tanks = more weight = less efficiency. So pick a fuel that is reasonable for your geographic location when you order. Not rocket science.

The name of the game right now is being as efficient as possible while still retaining affordability, reasonability, and reliability.

Please educate yourself before making stupid claims.

Re:I went to the Nikola Motors website

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard industrial DC brushless motors have 100% of their torque at 0 RPM, and have a power-to-weight ratio that rivals F1 racecar engines.
All trains in commercial use today are powered by electric motors.

Torque is not a problem.

Re:I went to the Nikola Motors website

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a Peugeot 3008 diesel hybrid. But I think this design makes more sense. Diesels have the nice property of a fairly flat torque curve, but that is utterly irrelevant when driving a generator. Turbines on the other hand have a horrendous efficiency except at their design RPM&torque level, but this downside is irrelevant when driving a generator. That's why powerplants have turbines but cars don't.

As for bi-fuel installs, the problem isn't the turbine. You can't find a cheap fuel tank that holds pressurized natural gas and diesel; the physical properties differ too much.

Re:I went to the Nikola Motors website

[Amouth]

it should work on either gas or diesel, you shouldn't have to select. If not, that's a massive failure.

While i would tend to agree with you, when it comes to a turbine very few can run multi fuel without changing a compressor stage or two and the ones that can take a heavy efficiency penalty for it. Note this is mainly military service turbines as they have to run no mater what, and a little more cost is never an issue for them.

Personally i am wondering how they are planning on passing emissions. While yes they are are going to be way low on CO2 compared to IC engines, CNG Turbines typically have high NOX levels. I want to know what Turbine they are planning on using, i couldn't find that information anywhere.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah well, I'm looking forward to the Thomas Motors.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me, I'm holding out for the Edison Electric Elephant.

Cabin looks huge

[Anonymous Coward]

While they don't specify cabin sizes, it looks extremely long. This will severely restrict the length of trailers it can pull, making it essentially incompatible with existing trailers. Are the battery packs really too large to fit in something similar in size to a standard lorry?

Re:Cabin looks huge

[zAPPzAPP]

Uhm, that's because there is no motor in the front and so there is no hood. The cabin starts right above the front bumper, leaving more cabin length compared to a standard lorry. I doubt the whole thing is longer.

Re:Cabin looks huge

[Anonymous Coward]

, that's because there is no motor in the front and so there is no hood. The cabin starts right above the front bumper, leaving more cabin length compared to a standard lorry

You just described almost every lorry in existence. Lorries, unlike cars, normally have their engines below the cabin. There is no engine in front.

This thing is definitely a lot longer than a standard lorry. I doubt that will go well in the market.

Re:Cabin looks huge

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lorries" and cab-over design trucks used in the USA do but most semi-trucks in the USA are a design with the engine in front.

Re:Cabin looks huge

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume from you use of the word "lorry" that you are from the United Kingdom. While almost every Lorry in the UK uses a cab-over engine design, in the US it is much more common engine to be in front of the cab. This is due to legal differences - in the UK (and most other European countries) length limits are determined by the combined length of the truck & trailer, while in the US only the trailer length is regulated. Thus, in the US engine-in front trucks dominate because they are easier to maintain, give a smoother ride, and offer more crash protection. This truck here looks pretty similar to what is on current US highways. I imagine that if this model is successful the company will produce other models designed specifically for the European market.

Recuperated Turbine means less suck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Capstone and wrightspeed make recuperated turbines that have been demonstrated for mobile applications, such as buses and trucks. Capstone's claim to fame is a rather simple single stage turbine with integrated recuperator, that uses foil/air aerodynamic bearings

Capstone has a recuperated single stage compressor gas turbine in the 30-200KW range
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/solutions/transportation
Notable is they already have a bad ass looking demo truck with Walmart
http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/news-archive/2014/03/26/walmart-debuts-futuristic-truck

Wrightspeed Fulcrum is a two stage compressor intercooled recuperated gas turbine power generator, with an 80KW version that has double the horsepower/weight ratio of a similar 65KW capstone turbine
http://www.wrightspeed.com/the-route-powertrain

Shame Dresser-Rand isn't dumping money into RamGen though. Their integrated rotary ramjet engine design is the beesknees, in both single and multi stage variants. A simple Capstone style recuperator on a single stage ISCE would be jawesome.

From the top of our mountains...

[DrYak]

...Swiss mountains with abundant hydro-electric dams and a couple of wind turbine sprinkled,
I smuggly look down on your fuel-burning CO2-vomitting electric plants~~~

Re:From the top of our mountains...

[Bengie]

Hydro-electric dams cause more greenhouse warming than coal (methane caused by stagnate water and anaerobic metabolizing of dead plant materials under water), but there's plenty of other toxins coal emits.

Nikola [Tesla] Motors

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that name a fucking joke? Something you'd expect from a Chinese B class company.

preorder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you pre-order a truck? Do people know there is limited interest on electric trucks that they need to pre-order to make sure to get one? Or is it the government spending tax payer money to give to this company?

Locomotive

[mrops]

That is what it is, its designed like a diesel locomotive, only real difference, it runs on roads and not tracks.

Hydro clean

[DrYak]

Hydro-electric dams cause more greenhouse warming than coal

Yes, but No actually.

(methane caused by stagnate water and anaerobic metabolizing of dead plant materials under water), but there's plenty of other toxins coal emits.

Long story short: A hydro dam (specially in alpine regions) has more in common with mountain lakes than with swamps.

- The water isn't stagnating that much (the whole point of a dam is not to keep the water forever sequestered, but to use its flow to produce electricity. The artificial lake forming is only a *temporary* storage of energy - like a big battery).

- Water in colder/high altitude region is less likely to encourage proliferation of anaerobic bacteria deep in the water.

- Both (water flow and seasonnal cold temperature causing currents inside the lake) increase level of oxygen in (artificial-) lake water, favorising more aerobic metabolizing compared to what is typically found in swamps.

- Colder climate among other means less water loss in normal operation. The level won't go that much down simply because it's dry and hot (as opposed to more power output needed). Depth contributes to the above effect.

- Mountain lake (and dam) configuration is different, they tend to be deeper (they happen/they get constructed in valleys which were dug by glaciers), which again contribute to above effect.

- Banks around alpine damns are steeper, meaning less vegetation forming between low and high water level, less biomass is injected to rot (and anyway it tends to rot less in this water as said above)

- Why let good wood rot at the bottom of a flooded valley ? Lots of the biomass get lumbered away as precious resource.

All the above (and much more factors) brought the realisation that the greenhouse warming caused by hydro-electric dams has been grossly over estimated. They actually end-up being more environmentally friendly than previously taught and more than fossil-fuel burning power plants.
Specially the deeper (as found in alpine regions) artificial lakes in colder/higher altitude region.

On the other hand, shallow dams in tropical area are a very bad idea (even from a mosquitoe point of view if you want to ignore the carbon impact).