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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.
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.
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/...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
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.