Nikola Motors Unveils Hybrid Fuel-Cell Concept Truck With 600-Mile Range (engadget.com) 85
Nikola Motors on Monday unveiled a concept for a new electric pickup truck called the Badger. Engadget reports: Nikola plans to offer the Badger as both a purely battery-electric vehicle and as an electric/fuel-cell hybrid. The company claims the hybrid powertrain model will feature a maximum range of approximately 600 miles, while the battery model will be limited to 300 miles. It also claims the pickup will be able to tow up to 8,000 pounds and accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in approximately 2.9 seconds. Those capabilities, if Nikola can deliver on them, would make the Badger mostly comparable to Tesla's Cybertruck. Since hydrogen fuel stations are few and far between, Nikola says it plans to build 700 hydrogen filling stations in the near future. "The company claims it has the first locations secured, but it won't announce them until later this quarter," adds Engadget.
Nikola will fully detail the Badger at its upcoming Nikola World 2020 event in September, at which point it will start accepting limited reservations as well.
Nikola will fully detail the Badger at its upcoming Nikola World 2020 event in September, at which point it will start accepting limited reservations as well.
Obligatory... (Score:3)
We don't need no stinking' badgers... [youtube.com]
Badgers? (Re:Obligatory...) (Score:3)
Thanks for the link, it saved me from looking for it and posting it here.
Also, who calls a model of truck a "Badger"? What kind of imagery is that supposed to provoke in buyers?
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It will never sell (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It will never sell (Score:5, Insightful)
this will never sells, because all trucks announced so far are much more expensive than Tesla's own, and offers little to no advantage for the added price.
Re: It will never sell (Score:2)
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I tried looking for my local Damnation Alley dealer, but couldn't find one here in Australia.
Re: It will never sell (Score:1)
Re: It will never sell (Score:1)
I better check the Monroney sticker so I know what I'm getting.
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Wait, according to so many posts I see on /. about cars, trucks, fuel efficiency, global warming, etc., people only every buy trucks for their utility. Along the lines of "well, if it
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Tesla's pricing projections need to be taken with a barrel of salt. They are more like lofty goals and in the past Tesla has repeatedly failed to meet them.
Anyway they haven't announced pricing for this truck so we can't compare yet. It certainly looks a lot more practical the the Cybertruck, e.g. the walls of the bed are level so you can reach in to get stuff at the front. It looks like it might actually pass regulatory checks and crash safety tests too.
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You have to admit, at least the Cybertruck will be easier to find in the car park.
Parking it in the first place... not so much.
Time to ship Nikola (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:1, Insightful)
Not sure I agree... Hydrogen tech is greener and cheaper than battery vehicles. I think it should have been the way we went rather than batteries.
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen tech is greener and cheaper than battery vehicles.
The round-trip efficiency of electricity -> hydrogen -> fuel cell -> electricity is about 60%.
The RTE of lithium batteries is over 90%.
So how is that "greener"?
I also disagree that H2 is "cheaper" since both the cars and fuel are more expensive.
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True, but I counter with:
a) Hydrogen can be transported more easily
b) The combined weight of fuel cell + hydrogen tank is far lower than a battery with similar range
c) Hydrogen can be filled into the car at the same speed as filling a gas tank
d) Hydrogen can be generated from wherever renewable energy is plentiful (wind farms, solar farms, hydrodams, etc) and piped like natural gas to wherever it's needed
e) Fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks use essentially zero exotic materials
f) Those round trip conversi
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:5, Informative)
And reality counters with:
a) Hydrogen does not transport as easily as electricity or any of the various liquids that we currently transport in pipelines/trucks;
b) OK
c) Hydrogen can't be filled into a car because no hydrogen filling stations exist and it's the hydrogen economy is not viable enough for anybody to invest in it;
d) Conversion of water to hydrogen is massively energy intensive to the point where nobody does it because cracking natural gas is so much more cost effective, and it's easier to transport electricity than hydrogen... why on earth would you inefficiently convert electricity to hydrogen and then inefficiently transport the hydrogen instead of just sending the electricity?
e) Citation needed.
f) Hydrogen fuel cells have been around for a hell of a lot longer than 20 years and you're banking on great gains?
and:
a) OK
b) No. "Rare Earths" is an archaic term; they're as common as dirt. We're currently spoiled by unsustainably low prices that can be traced to i) China's attempt to corner the market, in the case of lithium and ii) the fact that cobalt can be dug up in stupendous quantities BY HAND by people who survive on pennies per day. The costs for each could go up an order of magnitude and hydrogen would still be the stuff of dreams for armchair prognosticators.
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Reality eh?
a) Hydrogen does transport and pipe easily, we're already doing it.
c) There are hydrogen stations, they're about as plentiful as Tesla charging stations were 5 years ago. And you're right, nobody is investing in hydrogen infrastructure. Except Toyota. And Hyundai. And Honda. And BMW. And a dozen startups in China. But let's not worry about these nobodies.
d) Cracking NG is cheaper currently because there are already commercial operations. Tech to electrolyze seawater with high efficiency exists, b
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a) Hydrogen does transport and pipe easily, we're already doing it.
Where? How did they solve the problems of metal embrittlement and hydrogen destroying plastic seals?
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I dunno. I'm not exactly a research engineer in the field. Perhaps these guys [greencarcongress.com] might know, or perhaps these guys [global.toyota] or maybe any of the guys working in the FC vehicle departments of BMW, Audi, Honda, Grove, Great Wall Motors, or Tata.
Or, y'know, you could try Googling "hydrogen storage fuel cell vehicle" and find a bunch more references for yourself. It's a solved problem. This isn't 1997 any more.
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Everywhere on this map [h2.live] for starters.
Oh, you mean everywhere... except France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc. In fact everywhere means Germany, and even there there's only 82 stations. So peanuts compared to the Tesla Supercharger network [tesla.com], the Izivia [izivia.com] one, or the Ionity [ionity.eu] newcomer.
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f) The bulk of the losses in the H2 energy cycle is in the current low volume production of hydrogen.
That and the thermodynamic laws that mean compressing a gas heats it up, heat which is then lost because there's usually not much that can be done with it at the compression site.
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Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:4)
The combined weight of fuel cell + hydrogen tank is far lower than a battery with similar range
Not a chance in hell. If it is a pressurized tank it is much bigger. You are also driving a bomb. The working pressures you are looking at are > 500 bar.
Fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks use essentially zero exotic materials
Depends on tank technology. If it is pressurized (see above), you need to cool the tank. Basic high school physics. Compressing gas to 500 bar heats it up. If, however, it is absorbing tank (f.e. Pd doped matrix), it cannot be filled quickly, you are limited by absorption speed.
Also, there is plentiful of exotic materials in the cell. A good one will have all your fav group 8 metals same as a catalyst.
Cells make sense if you run them ON ALCOHOL. NOT ON HYDROGEN. Then most of the problems go away.
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Actually, our local train company (Taunusbahn) has ordered a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell trainsets. Apparently it is much cheaper than widening the tunnels and building new bridges to make room for the overhead catenary and also cheaper than acquiring battery powered trainsets.
Unfortunately we have to wait two more years for them and the current Diesel trainsets are shit.
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The downside of using a fuel cell WITHOUT batteries/hybrid drive for a train is that you lose all the energy from recuperative breaking. Recuperative breaking was first invented on train and it is polished to perfection on modern trains and trams. You throw all of that out of the window if yo
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a) Hydrogen can be transported more easily
Simpler than piping electricity trough a wire?
e) Fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks use essentially zero exotic materials
Sorry, you are mistaken there. Platinum elements are in relation to rare earth: rare
a) Takes friggin ages to charge up, meaning if you're late for work and forgot to plug it in, you're screwed. ...
Must suck to commute on a daily base more than 300miles
b) Uses about a bajillion exotic materials which are in short supply and highly fought over.
Nope
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So clearly your thinking points to the underlying reality, the big winner will be the first company to produce a vehicle where you can rapidly swap out the batteries. A life for service stations and chance for the auto manufacturer to get into the lucrative market of fast battery swap, the two minute recharge (they have a long term market in battery swapping, better than just spare parts, a daily or weekly buy and the capital investment and tax breaks would be really good, plus a market in reconditioning th
Hydrogen can also be quite efficient at (Score:2)
Hydrogen can also be quite efficient at demolishing your house while you're sleeping if there's any leak whatsoever, which, from time to time, there will be. Far more efficient at that than e.g. natural gas, because its molecules are a lot smaller and harder to contain.
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure I agree... Hydrogen tech is greener and cheaper than battery vehicles. I think it should have been the way we went rather than batteries.
How's it greener?
You do understand where industrial hydrogen gas comes from right? (Say it with me kids "Fossil Fuels!") Say what? Yea, the vast majority of commercially available Hydrogen comes from reforming natural gas by heating it and adding water (steam) in the presence of a catalyst. It is then "reformed" and the carbon is liberated as, you can you guess? You got it, CO2. I suppose you could claim that the vehicle emissions are less (just water) but like all vehicles you need to look at the total life cycle and include how you are getting the energy to run the thing or you are not being honest with yourself.
Cheaper?
Hydrogen runs about a buck a gallon in liquid form (buying in bulk like NASA does) so it will be quite a bit more buying it a few gallons at a time.. But a gallon of liquid hydrogen has the energy of about 1/9th of a gallon of diesel fuel. So figure on paying something approaching $15/gal for your fuel. No way that's going to be cheaper.
Of course, running it pure electric and forgetting the hydrogen part might make it cheaper to run, but you won't get the 600 mile range and you are going to pay though the nose for that fuel cell and high pressure gas storage, even though you are using it as an EV. I seriously doubt that would be cost effective.
IMHO I think you are wrong on both your major points there...
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:4, Funny)
The real benefit to hydrogen is that it would make hollywood action films much more realstic.
Finally cars going off of cliffs in action movies would resemble real life.
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Cars currently do go off cliffs containing a substance called "gasoline" which is kinda combustible.
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:2)
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"How's it greener?"
Well, manufacturing of Li-Ion cells requires all kinds of exotic materials, extraction of which is only starting to ramp up and it's looking like it's going to result in a whole bunch of open cut mines with a LOT of chemical processes that contaminate groundwater even more so than gold mines. Also, those resources are in concentrated areas, meaning we're likely to see a repeat of the 20th century wars over control of fossil fuel reserves.
Hydrogen is currently produced using hydrocarbons,
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:3)
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:1)
Nobody. Nobody at all. Except Toyota and Hyundai, who are doing just that right now.
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Actually, the ARCO gas station next to where I work is putting in a hydrogen pump. On the other hand, Hyundai's US Headquarters are just down the street a ways...
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:1)
Sweet so your next car is going to be a Nexo then? :D
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Cracking water is highly inefficient and energy intensive, meaning it's just in the end, charging another battery.
No it is not.
No idea why /. posers keep repeating that nonsense.
The rest of the post indicates you have a clue, why you don't know that creating hydrogen via electrolyzis actually is high efficient, is beyond me.
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Efficiency = Energy out / energy in
When you look at actual efficiency of charging mondern batteries, you are looking at less than 85% in theory at best, maybe on a good day, ignoring all sorts of system losses.
Hydrogen as fuel from electrolysis and going back through a fuel cell back into electricity will run under 50% in theory, at best, on a good day ignoring all sorts of other losses.
Compared to batteries, hydrogen from electrolysis burned in a fuel cell is lame efficiency wise. The thermal dynamics
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Batteries are over 95% efficient.
The parent talked about hydrolizis, not about in and out. 50% still beats gasoline engines by a factor of two. Hydrolizis btw is in the 70% efficiency range. That means: very efficient!
And you guys always forget: gasoline (or nat gas) does not appear by itself in the tank of your car.For some systems you calculate the over all efficiency, and for others not ... how do you want to get objective numbers?
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Which "LOT of chemical processes that contaminate groundwater" chemicals do you mean? the bulk of the battery is lithium and thats mainly "mined" with a brine and then thats evaporated to leave behind lithium deposits. O
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:3)
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:1)
This is a transition time (Re:Time to ship Nikola) (Score:4, Informative)
I guess that's why they need such a large battery pack: cover up the flaws of hydrogen.
The primary flaw of hydrogen as a fuel, at least as far a trucks for the general public are concerned, is a lack of places to get it.
Consider the moans and groans that come with a new computer model that has some new port on it. We can talk until we are blue about how this new port is better than the old, about how this is the future of whatever device class this appeared on, but in reality this port is going to be generally useless until it gains wider adoption. So, when USB 1.1 appeared there were plenty of computers that still had the same PS/2 ports for mice and keyboards, parallel ports for printers, and lots of people buying adapters for USB-to-whatever.
With vehicles we will have "flex fuel" cars that can burn any fuels with any ratio of ethanol to gasoline, with the hope of eventually switching to all ethanol. We have plug-in hybrids so people can ease into what they hope to be a transition from gasoline and diesel as primary fuels to an all electric fleet of vehicles. And this Nikola Motors Badger is likely their vision of a vehicle that will bridge the transition from plug-in electric to fuel cell electric.
Hydrogen is actually a terrible fuel for most any application. What the SpaceX Raptor engine might prove is that even in rocketry hydrogen might not be the best fuel for transportation. What people will discover time and time again is that the best means to store hydrogen is when those hydrogen atoms are attached to carbon atoms. I expect that we will in fact have this "hydrogen economy" that has been predicted and promoted but it will look very much like the economy of today. We will simply produce this hydrogen then use it to synthesize the hydrocarbon fuels that we are all familiar with. So long as the carbon comes from direct air capture, or by using waste-to-fuel systems, this will be carbon neutral.
Hydrogen is simply very difficult to handle when compared to so many other fuels we could synthesize. Hydrocarbon synthesis seems the most logical means to get carbon neutral fuel but we could also use ammonia or some kind of alcohol for fuel, all of which would require hydrogen as a raw product to produce. We have the infrastructure to manage hydrocarbons. We have the infrastructure to handle ammonia, though not near as vast as for hydrocarbons. We already burn ethanol for fuel. We don't have much to produce, transport, and dispense hydrogen as transportation fuel for over the road vehicles. That's a big problem to go on top of all the other problems of using hydrogen as fuel.
Re: This is a transition time (Re:Time to ship Nik (Score:1)
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Every analogy is "shit". There is no such thing as a perfect analogy. A perfect analogy is just describing the identical situation. I used the analogy to highlight one single aspect of the transition, not the entirety of the problem.
How about you come up with a better analogy then.
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I guess that's why they need such a large battery pack: cover up the flaws of hydrogen.
The primary flaw of hydrogen as a fuel, at least as far a trucks for the general public are concerned, is a lack of places to get it.
Nope, the primary flaw is not that you cannot find it anywhere. The primary flaws is that it is horribly inefficient (9 gallons of Liquid Hydrogen per gallon of diesel), costs more than $1 a gallon in bulk (This is what NASA pays, you will pay more.) and that nearly all of it comes from Natural Gas through a process that releases CO2.
So it is hugely expensive and doesn't fix the emissions problem.
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Did you not hear that Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe?
So basically one only has to scoop it up and that’s it.
Re: Time to ship Nikola (Score:2)
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Yes it is, but try finding stray H2 on Earth.
Exactly.
A star fleet level scooping operation.
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Re:Time to ship Nikola (Score:4, Informative)
Green Hydrogen? LOL..
Commercial supplies of Hydrogen come from reformed Natural Gas. There is no other economical source.
Now if you are living in the pipe dream where hydrogen is cracked from water using electricity, you are going to have to explain the economics of this. Electricity costs money, even power that comes from solar and wind costs money and electrolysis to get hydrogen consumes huge amounts of power for that you get out.
Just spitballing here, but liquid hydrogen costs NASA about $1 per gallon, and they obviously buy in bulk (Taken from the latest contract NASA has for liquid Hydrogen). We also know that *liquid* hydrogen has 1/9th the stored energy of liquid fossil fuels like gasoline or kerosene, so you are going to need 9 times more hydrogen than say gasoline as a minimum. ALSO if you use electrolysis to produce hydrogen, I'm conservatively estimating that it will cost an order of magnitude more to produce hydrogen, making the bulk price about $10/gallon.
Now comes the hard economic reality... IF you are buying $10/gallon fuel at a minimum of 9 times the rate of your gasoline vehicle... I get about 20 MPG for fuel that costs me about $2, or $0.10/mile. Hydrogen would get me a bit more than 2 MPG and cost me about $1 for reformed hydrogen, about $.50 a mile. And if we used electrolysis I estimate it would jump to about $5.00/mile.
So you are going to argue that the economies of scale will make electrolysis production of hydrogen cheaper. Thermodynamics says that there is a theoretical maximum efficiency in the process. The math is a bit fuzzy but my estimates tell me that electricity (the primary energy input to the process and thus the largest expense) will have to fall to about 1/10th of its current cost to get the production costs for hydrogen gas on par with reformed Natural gas. I don't think it's possible for electric rates to fall that much. And that only puts you on par with reformed hydrogen costs, which is still 5x the gasoline I use now.
In fact, I'd say that it is FAR more likely that we just go to a full EV fleet before we'd burn hydrogen as a motor fuel. The economics just don't make sense for hydrogen as a serious contender as a motor fuel and if you throw electrolysis into the mix, you literally make the economic problems 10x worse for a total of 50X the cost of gasoline.
How the hell (Score:1)
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Re: How the hell (Score:1)
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Milestone moment (Score:2)
I didn't expect technology to get to this point for another 15 years. Battery gets you only so far AND there's only so much lithium to go around.
Mark this moment BEV/FCV leverages two technologies to transition onto a sustainable development path OFF the petroleum based screw-the-planet economy.
FCEVs won't fix hydrogen (Re:Milestone moment) (Score:2)
Mark this moment BEV/FCV leverages two technologies to transition onto a sustainable development path OFF the petroleum based screw-the-planet economy.
People aren't buying petroleum fuels to "screw the planet". People buy it because it is inexpensive, reasonably safe, and convenient. This is not a transition from this because the vast bulk of the hydrogen produced today comes from natural gas. We use natural gas because it is cheap, abundant, and convenient.
Natural gas and petroleum are also energy sources, where hydrogen is a very difficult to handle means of energy storage and distribution.
What will get people off petroleum is a fuel that offers what
Great! (Score:3)
Step two: build it.
Step three: sell it.
Step 3: Profit (Re:Great!) (Score:2)
I believe a more appropriate step three is to see a profit.
This will not catch on unless this can be done in a way that is profitable. That means not only selling at a price which makes up for costs plus a bit extra, but it also means beating out the competition on price, performance, convenience, safety, or some other measure.
Cars are more than just a means to get from place to place. Cars sell because they offer comforts, convey status, and so much more. Because a car does not have to be ultimately pra
Looks like the Ford Raptor 2022 (Score:2)
Looks a lot like a Ford Raptor 2022 I guess their designer looks at a lot of Ford Raptors? Raptor vs Badger Hummm.
Badger badger badger (Score:3)
When you actually are ready to sell these (Score:3)
please let us know. Having these available Real Soon Now does not cut it. Where's the beef?
Re: When you actually are ready to sell these (Score:1)
Should've called it Honey Badger (Score:1)
Aesthetic Question (Score:2)
Is it less fugly than the Cybertruck?
I have spent years mocking iPhone users for choosing inferior devices because they look nicer. Now, when someone brings out something clever, all I can say about it is that it looks like Homer Simson did not know how to do curves in Autocad!
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I have spent years mocking iPhone users for choosing inferior devices because they look nicer. ... I spent more time googling how to use my tablet than actually using it, yeah, obviously that is exaggerated.
Then you made a mistake. They look the same like any other phone, but the others have inferiour software on it.
My GFs android phone has a contact book where you can not even add a second phone number or second email address to the contacts. Basically everything on Android lacks consistency
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They look the same like any other phone, but the others have inferiour software on it.
They look very dated. The interface is little changed from the poor interface on iPod Touches from 10 years ago. They don't have a back button. They don't have proper widgets and the whole system is designed to squeeze more money out of users. If you are in an app and need to change a setting, you need to come out of it and go into a different one (system settings?), make the changes to your app and then go back into
Hmmm (Score:1)
Badger is taken (Score:1)
Why hydrogen fuel cells? Why not gasoline? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gasoline fuel cells, I mean!
Closed cycle synthetic gasoline, from CO2 and water, cleanly burnt in fuel cells, is as green or more green than any other solution.