EV truck maker Nikola stalls in 2023, pulls out of Europe, hits brakes on production

Electric truck maker Nikola had an absolutely dismal first quarter, leaving it to refocus its efforts by pausing production and backing out of a joint venture to produce vehicles in Europe.  While the automaker described its first quarter of 2023 as "very solid," the numbers provided by the biz paint a very different picture: …

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Waiting until one drops on it's own seems to be the default for the business world though. not sure why.

The corpses just clog up the flow of capitol in their market segments and waste bag(I mean shareholder's) assets.

Nikola, it's leadership, staff, and VC's committed fraud, and passed the bag and the buck to public investors in the IPO. Now the fools who bought the electric car equivalent of a bad time share are trying to find someone dumber who will pay more for the privilege of holding the bag.

Nikola products are a sham, they won't be able to scale, they will never recover their costs. Their business model is bleeding the company coffers slowly while trying to perpetuate another round of thinly veiled fraud. Hydrogen missed the market window, and hydrogen fueled vehicles, fuel cell or otherwise aren't going to take over the market. Ever. It will cost too much and take too much time to build out a fuel distribution network worldwide. Electric and liquid fueled hybrids won. Nobody can build a fueling network fast enough to catch up, and fuel cells aren't ever going to yield enough advantages to justify the switch.

Put a stake in their hearts and bury the corpse. They were never more than barely-better than vaporware company that stole the name of anther company and made a fugly knock-off electric Range-Rover for way too much money. You can buy an actual electric range rover starting next year. Nikola failed. It has no reasonable prospect of turnaround. It's just holding up other companies from moving into the market space it's squatting on.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Don't forget its innovative, battery-free, zero emission truck powered solely by gravity

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

It was all downhill from there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

That extends the range at least :)

[jgarbo]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Even up hill, with a fair breeze from God's breath...

[Potemkine!]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Hydrogen missed the market window, and hydrogen fueled vehicles, fuel cell or otherwise aren't going to take over the market. Ever.

BS.

Fueled hybrids are a temporary mean, as petrol engines will be outlawed in a few years in many countries. Vehicles with batteries will reach a double bottleneck, the one of the materials required for the batteries, and the capacity of the grid to provide enough electricity. It will take a lot of investment and time to scale it up.

Building a network of hydrogen stations isn't that complicated. Self-sufficient stations already exist, and hydrogen is an easier way to store energy than using batteries. Moving X tons of batteries in a truck to make it run is a nonsense.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: capacity of the grid to provide enough electricity

If the grid cannot charge battery electric vehicles then it certainly cannot make enough hydrogen via electrolysis. Every hydrogen energy storage system is another excuse to reform natural gas. As that process cannot be 100% efficient it means increasing the amount of fossil fuel required for transportation. Building a network of hydrogen stations diverts resources away from BEV.

Moving X tons of batteries in a truck makes more sense than the hydrogen alternative. Battery discharge -> voltage conversion -> acceleration is reversed to braking -> voltage conversion -> battery charge using the same components. Regenerative braking cancels out much of the cost of dragging heavy batteries around. That does not work at all with a hydrogen combustion engine. If you try it with fuel cells you need to add water capture and storage for the feed stock. The motors can work as generators to run the fuel cells backwards but the result is low pressure / warm hydrogen that you would then have to compress. I suppose you could power the compressor from the axle (and run it backwards to accelerate using pressure from the stored hydrogen). Compressing increases the temperature so you will need some cooling system to dump unusable energy into the atmosphere (or a large block of metal to store the heat which you use to warm hydrogen on its way from storage to the compressor when it is being used backwards to spin the axle). Fuel cells require expensive catalysts. To get the required power you need X tons of them (bottle neck from precious metals instead or lithium) or smooth out the peaks in demand with a giant battery (which gets rid of the need to capture / store water, re-compress hydrogen or bother with hydrogen + fuel cells at all).

One of Milton's lies was that he could make hydrogen for far less than the price currently paid by the chemical industry. If there had been any truth to that fraud Nikola could have made a fortune supplying the chemical industry without bothering with transportable hydrogen storage or trucks. That lie was needed to fake a business case for hydrogen trucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: capacity of the grid to provide enough electricity

Re regenerative braking vs hydrogen production: have a hydrogen and electric hybrid where the (small) battery is only for regenerative braking. The energy is deployed the next time the truck accelerates.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: regenerative braking battery

There are three reasons BEVs have a huge battery. One is for a large range most people rarely need. Another is to increase endurance by reducing the frequency of full charge/discharge cycles. The last is the size in needed to supply the required current for accelerating and to survive the charge received from braking. I am being a bit unfair because BEV batteries are optimised more for range than current. A different chemistry would be able to handle the current with less size (and much less capacity). You could cheap out on a high charge/discharge rate battery big enough for traffic lights in town (might even be small compared to the hydrogen storage). Batteries optimised for endurance can handle around 1000 full charge/discharge cycles so you would not get that and you would have to replace this battery repeatedly (one cycle per red light instead of 2ish per day for a commercial vehicle). It would also be useless for long hills.

If you size the battery for the vehicle's requirements then the hydrogen fuel cell becomes a mobile charger. Your truck gets smaller and lighter if you take off the fuel cell+hydrogen storage and place chargers at the destinations. It becomes more energy efficient if you miss out the energy conversions to hydrogen and back to electricity in the chargers.

There are big advantages to hydrogen. You can make blatantly false claims about the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis and get vast amounts of money from gullible investors before you get caught and go to prison. You can get lobbying support from the fossil fuel industry because they know where the energy for hydrogen will come from for the next decade at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: regenerative braking battery

Oh, now the volume of EVs starts to register it starts to become clear that deciding to make all traffic EV was a tad premature as the problems start to show up, and there are quite a few.

The basics: raw material supply doesn't come close to keeping up with demand (nickel is but one example, but copper has completely gone for a run too) and so the prices go up. That affects the price of an already expensive replacement, but it also affects the cost and speed of what is needed to make this all work:

Infrastructure: both power generation, distribution and charging is a LONG way away from being able to carry the full ICE replacement volume. It's just not feasible.

Charging: if you've ever driven anywhere on a nice sunny day you will have eventually come across petrol stations with lots of others who also went for a drive. Yes, you may have to queue, but not for long. Not so with an EV which you literally have to park and then keep yourself busy for half an hour or more, and that's assuming it's warm.

Tax (and this is what people are not realisng yet): tax will change as a LOT of the price of a litre of fuel is tax, and that goes. People charging at home basically bypass any fuel taxes unless household power gets taxed more (not feasible), or - and this is likely - road price taxation gets introduced. The problem with that is that you have to do this on a large scale and internationally, and the public discussions about that have not even started.

I would not write off hydrogen, even though it is contingent on better/cheaper sources of power (because otherwise it's a very inefficient way to use fossil fuel). Not only is a high density source of power in hyper compressed or liquid state (and there are some developments that allow it to be carried in solution), it is also a basis of e-fuel, but the latter certainly needs cheaper power before it becomes volume feasible, and I'm thinking nuclear here.

Personally, I will at most buy a MHEV or PHEV but I really cannot spend 30 minutes or more refulelling, and I don't think I'm the only one. I love the quietness of an EV, but it still isn't a feasible replacement for the majority of vehicles out there.

[imanidiot]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

"and hydrogen is an easier way to store energy than using batteries"

False. Hydrogen is a nightmare to store (high pressures, poor energy density, requiring lots of special sealing considerations, special materials to avoid degradation, very high energy requirements to compress it), hydrogen is a nightmare to transport because of those same storage considerations added with the need for coupling and decoupling hoses) , hydrogen installations requires stringent maintenance (because even tiny leaks can sustain burning and very concentrations of hydrogen mixed in air can result in very energetic kabooms). A modern (sealed) battery setup is far more cost effective and far more efficient in the long run than hydrogen. Even if it does mean having to accelerate and decelerate a heavy battery pack over (not actually all that much lighter) hydrogen tanks that take up way too much space)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Thank you. My eyebrows went up so far when I read that claim that I gave myself a headache.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Hydrogen also scares the bejeezus out of the (sadly very large number of) drooling morons who apparently think "hydrogen bombs" work by combustion...

[Justthefacts]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

“bottleneck, the one of the materials required for the batteries”

Hydrogen fuel still requires a fuel cell, which is *also* a high-tech material, and weighs maybe 60kg for automotive. Is it obvious that battery materials are rarer / more valuable than fuel cell materials? Given that, seen from a certain level of abstraction, those two devices are *the same*: in both cases you are simply trying to manage the flow of electrons between two materials of different electropotential, separated by very small distances, and stacked up immensely. In fact, tell me what the actual difference is between a “flow battery” and a “fuel cell” other than perspective?

Once you realise this, why are people so stuck on hydrogen at all? Other than the whole “water at the tailpipe” shtick, which is just silly. Any working fluid has zero net cycle emissions, if the fuel is synthetic at the power station by renewable electricity. Including hexane or “petrol” as we normally call it. If you’re going to stick a fuel cell in the car, then hydrogen becomes just one of maybe a dozen possible working fluids, with a dozen different tradeoff parameters, on which hydrogen wins on none of them. Anything can be made to work. But why, for example, not just use synthetic LNG + fuel cell? It would be the obvious answer, and has so many advantages.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

There is hexane in petrol, but it's only a very small percentage by volume.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Why do we let these zombie shams shable around?

Building a network of hydrogen stations isn't that complicated.

This is satire, right?

[lglethal]

Considering that Europeans are FAR more likely to buy an Electric Vehicle than Americans (who remain addicted to Combustion Engines), pulling out of the EU market to double down on Americans, seems like the CEO might be, how shall I say this politely, a few sandwiches short of a picnic?

Lets focus on a market where people dont want our product! That market over there, where the majority of new cars purchased are Electric and which has an excellent network of chargers already installed? Nope lets take our electric vehicles out of their ASAP!

[imanidiot]

Not to mention that the only truck they currently actually have in production is based on a European Cab-Over-Engine chassis (Iveco S-Way) that is unpopular in the US to begin with.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe (and the UK) the majority of new vehicles *aren't* electric. There are a lot of hybrids, but there simply isn't enough battery manufacturing capacity to allow electric cars to be built to match the potential market. Oh, and electric cars are still too expensive for a very large number of people, even considering the relatively "cheap" Kias and Hyundais, because there's a bottleneck on the supply of second hand electric vehicles keeping used prices high.

Speaking for myself, I'm hoping to keep my 25 year old petrol powered van going for another 5 years or so in the hope that something miraculous will happen to reduce prices. (It does mean that to drive into greater London is going to be expensive later this year, but I only do that once or twice a year though.... )

[lglethal]

Ok I was exaggerating, but the point still stands - Europeans buy SIGNIFICANTLY more EV's than Americans.

So taking your EV product out of the market where the most EV's are being sold, to go to a market where sales are negligible remains a stupid thing to do...

[Androgynous Cupboard]

The US is the exception.

Guns and internal combustion engines. It's all there in Leviticus:

"He who does not favour the rapid expansion of gas in a confined tube over other forms of energy transmission shall displeasure the LORD"

It's not in every translation but there in the original Hebrew, honest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The US is the exception.

Is "Buggre Alle this for a Larke" in the original too? I can't read Hebrew....

[Justthefacts]

Fundamental misunderstanding

You haven’t understood the fallacy of “EU is a big market….so why don’t you want to supply us?”

Yes, the EU is a big market…..for *someone*. But can it be a big market for *your* company? The answer is: if you have to ask, then no it isn’t. The EU, as a market, is a hiding to nothing for almost everyone.

If you sell a product, any product anywhere, even if “people want it”, it always costs several years revenue investment to first build up market recognition (nobody knows your product exists), find retailers in your market prepared to sell it, build up *brand* recognition (now people know your product is possible, but have never heard of you, so won’t yet buy yours), and only then do you get to splurge millions on the consumer advertising. When you launch a genuinely new product, you are actually selling not only your own but also building up the very existence of a market for your competitors. It’s just part of the market risk you need to take to be in business.

If you are outside the EU, then what happens is simply: you launch, then an EU internal company complains it’s “unfair market dominance”, EU Commission write some compliance regulation, which you will comply to, round and round the cycle, more and more regulations designed to “level the playing field”. Eventually, from being the market leader, soon enough you find that all you *actually* did was spent a billion on creating a market for all the EU companies. And now you are one of many, still reviled as being non-European, selling fewer than them at higher taxes, and zero profit. We’ve seen this play out dozens of times now. Everybody has got the hang of it. Why would any external company want to play this game?

But actually, things are no better for companies *inside* the EU. The game looks exactly the same, except that this time when the EU Commission write their “special legislation”, they pick a Favourite based on lobbying. The Favourite gets compliance legislation that forces all end product to be very like what the Favourite already produce, but be maximally different for its competitors, maximising their re-design costs. The Favourite also get R&D grants, which are often as large as the entire consumer market revenue anyway.

As a company inside the EU, you are either the Designated Favourite, or you are pushing on a closed door with high costs and an ever-increasing hill to climb. Maybe you survive, but barely. Being Non-Favourite is a punitive white elephant, few companies can or will do it for long.

This is why “The EU is a big market” is a fallacy. The EU is indeed a big market….for the Designated Favourite. But not for *you*. You’re just wasting your time and money, so few companies even try any more. Most banks won’t even give you a business loan any more unless you can show letters of support from Commission, whether you make car parts, hats, or soap. That’s what this has become.