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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.
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.
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.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
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.
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.
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.
Be relentless!