Image: Nicola Corporation
Nikola - Paving the Way to the Future with Hydrogen Trucks
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | MAY 19th 2020
Since the introduction of the combustion engine and its revolutionary expansion of transport capabilities that have brought us cars, trucks, planes and motorcycles, the technology has seen some significant development, though at the cost of the health of the environment. Trucks, and their major usage of diesel fuels, play a rather large part in this detriment. One company has, however, been working to change things for the better.
The Nikola Motor Company, based in America, and leading the charge in production and development of newer, and more environmentally friendly hybrid truck designs. Much like Tesla work to produce electric cars, Nikola works to solve the issue for trucks and larger-scale vehicles that often require much greater amounts of power to run.
They’ve produced four functional vehicles thus far, all of which run fully on hydrogen and electric fuel cell energy. Three of these are semi-trucks (the NIKOLA/ONE, NIKOLA/TWO, NIKOLA/TRE), and one is a pickup truck (NIKOLA/BADGER), and can be refuelled at ‘H2’ stations, or ‘Hydrogen Stations’. On their website, Nikola has expressed one of their future ambitions of implementing these Hydrogen Stations all over the world, popularising them to the point where the use of their products could become more widespread and perhaps gradually come to replace diesel and fossil fuels on a larger-scale basis.
Nikola has made statements on its official website, vocalising its intent to “Transform the transportation industry while improving our employees' lives and leaving the world a better place,” a purely environmental message and means.
Unlike normal cars, electric and hydrogen cars lack the combustion engine that works by breaking down petrol, and turning it into energy to fuel the car. Hydrogen has been acknowledged as a viable replacement for the combustion engine in the past, but early developments of hydrogen-run vehicles proved to be highly combustible, and overly expensive, until recent developments that are currently driving them to greater popularity. The hydrogen-run cars run on hydrogen fuel cells, while the electric cars run on battery-powered electric motors.
Compared to the combustion engine, which exhausts harmful emissions into the atmosphere, working to pollute the environments and harm the world’s ozone, the hydrogen and electric cells are considered entirely eco-friendly. They too have exhaust pipes, but unlike petrol-fuelled vehicles, the electric and hydrogen vehicles will only exhaust water as a by-product of the chemical reaction that occurs to power them.
The company’s seen great success in their endeavours so far, with their effective products and recent jump in news coverage. This has led to decent stock increases, as the company strives for further accomplishment, and continues to design new eco-friendly trucks.
"We know right now, we're the leaders is electrification for heavy-duty transport, and we want to make sure because we're first that we got the same type of value that Tesla saw on the automotive side," Nikola Motors CEO Trevor Milton said to FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo, in an interview explaining why the company felt that now was the time to publicise stocks.
"We want people to have complete transparency now, and we want to make sure that our money is protected," Milton added. "That money in the private sector became very difficult and you had to give up a lot, and the public was dying to buy stock into Nikola."
By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020
