I want to get a fair comparison between Tesla and Nikola on purchase and operating cost of their semi trucks. Nikola leases their truck for $0.91 per mile, based on 7 year, 1 million mile service life. Lease price includes all fuel and maintenance. They claim they can produce the H2 fuel for about $0.25 per mile or about half the going rate. The remainder goes into paying for the truck and the fuel stations. Tesla is selling their truck for $180,000 and promises electricity at $0.07 per kilowatt hour, which I believe works out to the same $0.07 per mile. Tesla has a 1 million mile warranty but does not pay for maintenance. $180,000 / 1 million miles is $0.18 per mile. + $0.07 / mile = $0.25 / mile. This makes it look like the Tesla deal as about 3 times better than Nikola's. So why would a trucking company consider the $0.91 per mile an acceptable deal and choose Nikola over Tesla?
I can't imagine why any informed person would seriously consider buying a commercial vehicle powered by hydrogen, at a cost per mile about twice that of diesel. Nikola seems to be promising to pay for the fuel (someone claimed that's only for the first two years?), which means the company rather than the customer would face ruinous expenses in fueling these trucks, especially since Nikola would have to build its own hydrogen fueling stations, for which Nikola estimates the cost at $10 million apiece. (Anybody wanna make a side bet on Nikola never building more than two of these... or even never finishing building one?) What good is a guarantee of "free fuel" if the company backing it goes out of business? Nikola is clearly a sham company, with an unworkable business plan and no significant funding. Just my opinion, but I think Nikola looks very much like an investment scam; the sort of "company" which bilks money out of investors to spend on lavish executive salaries and perks, and spends a small portion of money from investors pretending to develop a new product. Such a scam company will never put its product into actual production, because selling it would expose the reality that they don't have anything workable, and the company would go bankrupt shortly after that. It astonishes me that Anheuser-Busch would issue a press release saying they were going to buy "up to 800" of Nikola's trucks. Who at A-B was responsible for this fool's errand, and why did A-B's execs allow their name to be associated with a sham company? A couple of examples of investment scam companies are Randell Mills' "Brilliant Light Power", formerly "BlackLight Power" (name changes are common among scam companies), and Andrea Rossi's "E-Cat" cold fusion/LENR scam. Randell Mills has been touting his fake "hydrino" power generation since 1991 in various countries, and several years ago it was reported he had bilked investors out of more than $60 million! Reminds me of the end of the movie "Johnny Dangerously", where Johnny, smartly dressed in his impeccably tailored suit, gives some advice to a kid: "Remember, crime doesn't pay". Then, as he gets into his chauffeured limo to drive off into the sunset, he looks out at the audience and admits "Well, it pays a little." -
Keep in mind, that this is a no-committment, no money down announcement. I could log in and “preorder” 1000 trucks. It’s meaningless.
