Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck (electrek.co) 144
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.
Great technology, but what about the energy? (Score:2)
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.
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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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great technology, but what about the energy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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.
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Still didn't address battery creation, from mining to manufacturing.
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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 [sourcewatch.org], 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) [sourcewatch.org]. On
Locomotive (Score:2)
That is what it is, its designed like a diesel locomotive, only real difference, it runs on roads and not tracks.
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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...
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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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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Greens nice but I believe the big selling point is fuel savings. In the end it's all about the bottom line.
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Norway said if every car in Norway was electric it would consume 2-3% of their current electricity!
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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.
From the top of our mountains... (Score:2)
...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~~~
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Hydro clean (Score:2)
Hydro-electric dams cause more greenhouse warming than coal
Yes [newscientist.com], but No [sciencedaily.com] 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 (
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> Its great to see
It's* great
it's = it is
You're old enough to know this.
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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/... [wikipedia.org]
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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.
Math Doesn't Add Up (Score:2, Interesting)
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 onl
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The 'Natural Gas Range Extender' reduces their useful load to zero. It's a CNG tanker trailer.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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 p
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Most problem
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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.
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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.
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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 occasional
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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
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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
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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 advantag
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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
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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 hal
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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.
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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 (Score:2)
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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 ineffici
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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 th
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60% is combined cycle with heat recovery steam generators.
Gas turbine is 40%.
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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.
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Enter TJI, which has boosted thermal efficiency to an almost unheard of 47 percent
http://arstechnica.com/cars/20... [arstechnica.com]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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... [teslarati.com]
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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).
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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.
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"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. .0045 rolling resistance of 40 tons at 65mph.
By my calculations using http://ecomodder.com/forum/too... [ecomodder.com] show 62HP needed for
(.0045 is based on
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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 nothin
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And, none of the rail companies would find it economical to switch said diesel to nat gas. [railwayage.com]
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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
Apples to apples (Score:2)
With the Range Extender! (Score:2)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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?)
good thing that (Score:5, Funny)
Nikola Tesla didn't have middle name.
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Nikola Zero... (Score:3)
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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.
fishy math here (Score:1)
If you go to the site https://nikolamotor.com/one [nikolamotor.com] 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 (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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
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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
I went to the Nikola Motors website (Score:3)
Unlike most of you I went to the Nikola Motors [nikolamotor.com] 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.
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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.
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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
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It looks like that's about $100k more than the new Peterbuilt extended-cab trucks.
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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 pas
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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
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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.
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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 hap
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Tax credits flowing to corporations through the hands of consumers is politically acceptable.
Once the products are genuinely economic, they sell to business.
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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!
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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.