Absolutely, it can be done; I'm just arguing that the economics won't work. Trucks are used for making money, so the cost to acquire and operate them is a major part of the decision factor in what equipment to use. I think the high cost of a turbine (where it is not needed for power-to-weight ratio) will make it unfeasible from a business standpoint.
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Nikola Motors Semi Trucks
- Thread starter heysteveh
- Start date
I disagree that the idea of using a turbine automatically makes the whole vehicle un-feasible since there are so many design parameters that can be tuned for vehicular use. Anyway, that's not the important point. There are so many possibilities for range extenders that are better than hydrogen fuel cells. Honestly, they should have launched with the CNG extender as previously announced, then offered the hydrogen version later as an alternative configuration. If the turbine is not the answer, the a CNG piston engine would work too. I admire their desire to provide a Zero Emission alternative, but it's better to build a foundation of a business building vehicles first, before tackling the whole hydrogen infrastructure problem.
+1 Cosmacelf: it's a venture capital scam. Don't beleive a word of any of it.
Edit - have a look at this post from Seeking Alpha:
Read down a few entries to Miro Kefurt
He's done the research; looks very much like its a fraud.
Edit - have a look at this post from Seeking Alpha:
Read down a few entries to Miro Kefurt
He's done the research; looks very much like its a fraud.
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I really hope that Nikola succeed, but the scope of their plan is in some ways even more challenging and difficult than what Tesla is trying to accomplish.
Nikola is going to build 364 H2 fueling stations in the US and Canada and supply them all by producing their own H2 then liquefying it for transport to all the stations. That sounds like a half a billion dollar project right there. Then there is the investment required to build the trucks (they say that this existing truck manufacturer will build the "gliders" Fitzgerald Glider Kits | About Fitzgerald ) and then they have to install the battery/power train, which they will have to build, somewhere. And that is a lot of batteries at 320kWh per pack.
Wow. Impressive ambition. I wish them the best. If they succeed it would not bother me at all if Tesla decided not to move forward with the Tesla Semi project. There are many other worthwhile new EV vehicles they can devote their energies to.
BluestarE3
Active Member
Building hydrogen stations for fuel cell powered trucks (likewise for buses and delivery vehicles) traveling along fixed routes makes a lot more sense than using that technology for private vehicles, where a much more extensive network of fueling stations is necessary. I agree that Nikola's plan is going to be daunting and expensive. There's no one else in that space now, so they may have a better shot at success than the me-too-Tesla-killer-concept-cars that seem to pop up like weeds. I hope they do well.
I am by no means an expert, but at first I was skeptical of the fact that it was hydrogen fueled. Now, though, I kind of see the benefits, at least for the foreseeable future. How long would it take to charge a 320kWh pack? Even at supercharging speeds you're looking at 2+ hours, no?
You can scale charging power with the size of the pack. So, with the cells Tesla uses, 50% in 20 minutes can scale infinitely. (It will however get harder and harder to find a sufficiently high-powered socket.
)When it comes to this company, I'm just not seeing the economics panning out.
The business model is to charge 5000 USD/month for 72 months. In that time, the depreciation on the vehicle is around 95%, plus the fuel for 1 million miles is covered. At the end of the lease, you're supposed to be able to start a new lease with the same terms.
Okay, so let's look at what they get in: 5000 USD/month x 72 months = 360k USD Additionally, they can probably collect 10k USD in incentives, plus nine CARB-credits, worth 22.5k USD. So, the total income is 392.5k USD.
Then, how much should the vehicle cost to make?
Well, we know the rough pricing on some of the components used, and optimistically, I think we can use the following numbers:
320 kWh battery: 320 kWh x 200 USD/kWh = 64k USD
300 kW fuel cell: 300 kW x 300 USD/kW = 90k USD
100 kg liquid hydrogen tanks: 100 kg x 75 USD/kg = 7.5k USD
1000 kW drivetrain: ~40k USD
Glider: 50k USD
Other: 20k USD
This is a total cost of 231.5k USD. Leaving 161k USD for everything else.
Lastly, what will the fuel cost?
1 million miles will require a of minimum of 74,000 kg of hydrogen. So the price will need to be less than 2.18 USD/kg to break even.
With a required input of a minimum 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen, and the cost of natural gas being 2.7 USD/million BTU, the absolute minimum cost of hydrogen produced from natural gas is 4.7 USD/kg. Right there, Nikola Motor Company has guaranteed a loss 148k USD per truck they sell. And this doesn't include the fueling stations, hydrogen production equipment, engineering, sales, administration, management, etc.
The business model is to charge 5000 USD/month for 72 months. In that time, the depreciation on the vehicle is around 95%, plus the fuel for 1 million miles is covered. At the end of the lease, you're supposed to be able to start a new lease with the same terms.
Okay, so let's look at what they get in: 5000 USD/month x 72 months = 360k USD Additionally, they can probably collect 10k USD in incentives, plus nine CARB-credits, worth 22.5k USD. So, the total income is 392.5k USD.
Then, how much should the vehicle cost to make?
Well, we know the rough pricing on some of the components used, and optimistically, I think we can use the following numbers:
320 kWh battery: 320 kWh x 200 USD/kWh = 64k USD
300 kW fuel cell: 300 kW x 300 USD/kW = 90k USD
100 kg liquid hydrogen tanks: 100 kg x 75 USD/kg = 7.5k USD
1000 kW drivetrain: ~40k USD
Glider: 50k USD
Other: 20k USD
This is a total cost of 231.5k USD. Leaving 161k USD for everything else.
Lastly, what will the fuel cost?
1 million miles will require a of minimum of 74,000 kg of hydrogen. So the price will need to be less than 2.18 USD/kg to break even.
With a required input of a minimum 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen, and the cost of natural gas being 2.7 USD/million BTU, the absolute minimum cost of hydrogen produced from natural gas is 4.7 USD/kg. Right there, Nikola Motor Company has guaranteed a loss 148k USD per truck they sell. And this doesn't include the fueling stations, hydrogen production equipment, engineering, sales, administration, management, etc.
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cgiGuy
Active Member
Another factor is lost hydrogen. Hydrogen is such a small molecule it leaks out of any container. At a fueling facility, any hydrogen in storage is leaking out constantly. In the truck, it's leaking out of the tanks too. If the truck sits idle overnight while the driver sleeps, some of the hydrogen will leak away. If the truck is down for service, the hydrogen tanks are leaking.
It's hard to quantify how much. Better quality hydrogen tanks will leak slower than cheaper tanks and who knows what each fueling facility has for tanks. Additionally different trucks are going to have different downtime patterns. All that is guaranteed is that some of the hydrogen will be lost.
Well, there's no guarantee that operators will rack up the full million miles during the course of the lease, but you're definitely on the right track. Certainly the equipment for hydrogen production and dispensing will push them into the red in any case.
The other thing you need to consider is that there are significant incentives beyond what you included above. For example, a BYD 35' all electric bus gets a $101,000 CARB incentive. I would expect that the Nikola truck would qualify for a similarly substantial amount. Details available at the HVIP site. "Year 4" incentive amounts are here. The Year 6 implementation manual is available at the link above and you could probably figure out the approximate amount it may qualify for. I just didn't spend the time to look into it.
The leakage problem is hyped. There's almost no leakage with a correctly designed tank and hydrogen system. We're talking grams per year.
However, in this case it's a valid point. Nikola intends to use cryogenic hydrogen. This is liquid hydrogen that's cooled to under -253C/-424F. It has to be kept at this low temperature or it will evaporate, and once it evaporates it needs to either be used then and there, or a safety valve will kick in and release the overpressure.
I guess the above is why the Nikola One has such a big battery. It will try to maintain state of charge at something like 25%/80 kWh, and once parked for the night, it must charge the battery using the evaporated hydrogen from the storage tanks. The next morning the battery might be charged to 75%/240kWh, and you will have 8 kg of hydrogen less in the tanks.
And if you leave the truck sitting for a week, the hydrogen tanks will be empty, while the battery is fully charged. Then you need to make your way to the closest hydrogen fueling station on battery power alone.
There will be losses when there is evaporation going on while the battery is fully charged. But most probably we aren't talking about a huge percentage of the total.
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1 million miles requires 166k miles per year. The average mileage for a truck is something in the area of 125k miles per year. But when fuel is included in the lease, those who drive furthest per year will be first in line to get one. There's also no incentive for saving on fuel. Today, trucks may stick to 65 mph even in 70, 75, 80 and 85 mph zones to save on fuel, while if fuel is free, they will be going as fast as possible. That means that the average consumption will be significantly higher, plus they'll be able to stuff more miles into a day.
I have no doubt the trucks will be driven more than 1 million miles in six years. (Unless the trucks spend more time at a service center than on the road, or doesn't have access to hydrogen. Both of which are certainly possibilities.)
Interesting, thank's for the info. Seems like it should get a subsidy that's somewhere in the 100k USD area. So I need to adjust my income figures up by something like 70k USD.
wallet.dat
Member
they claim they the work on the Truck is finished but I am yet to find any video on youtube of the Truck driving in any way, with or with our a load
They also claim they will produce there Hydrogen using Solar power, does anyone know how many acres of PV you need to produce enough Hydrogen to drive just one Truck 1 million miles
I actually wish them the best of luck, because I agree with their claim that Fuel cells are twice as efficient as Diesel and I suppose have less emissions depending on how the Hydrogen is produced
They also claim they will produce there Hydrogen using Solar power, does anyone know how many acres of PV you need to produce enough Hydrogen to drive just one Truck 1 million miles
I actually wish them the best of luck, because I agree with their claim that Fuel cells are twice as efficient as Diesel and I suppose have less emissions depending on how the Hydrogen is produced
As I said earlier, you need 74,000 kg of hydrogen, if their efficiency numbers are correct. Cooled to cryogenic temperatures, and including transportation, 5 GWh total is a pretty good conservative estimate. This consumption will be over 6 years, so you need an annual production of 830 MWh per truck. And to produce 830 MWh, you need a PV system that's around 500 kW. Such a system would take up something in the area of 2-3 acres, depending on technology.
Bottom line: 2-3 acres of solar per truck. 10,000-15,000 acres for the initial production of 5000 trucks.
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I've also been looking into this. Let's just say I won't be investing in it.
Reading through some studies on articulated / 18 wheeler trucks, firstly the trailer typically accounts for 60% of the aerodynamic drag and secondly with a full load, rolling resistance is still the dominant factor for most of the speed range. My calculations also show the latter up to 56 mph.
It has also been found that the teardrop shape trailers you sometimes see actually don't do as much as claimed (M&S in the UK apparently reported to one study that they will keep the ones they have for "environmental advertising" but wont order any more). Side skirts help but there is not much you can do about the gap between tractor and trailer. Clearly Nikola Motors has little control over what type of semi-trailers their tractor units are going to haul. The large box that I think holds the fuel cell behind the cab on their design also forces a large and undesirable gap between the corner of the cab and front of the trailer.
I've therefore used Cd = 0.6. I also saw a presentation from Nokian tyres that shows for truck tyres, the Crr is a bit lower than car tyres. It obviously depends on the axle configuration but driven wheels are around 0.007 and trailer wheels 0.006. I've put the latter in for simplicity as most of the weight is over the trailer wheels and there tends to be more of them anyway. I am also being a bit generous with the cross-sectional area as I am using 10m^2 but looking at a few trailer dimensions around 11 is more usual. I used 40 tonnes in my calculations but I see from other sources since that 80,000 lbs (36.3 tonnes) is the typical GVW for such trucks in the US. It is this that Nikola states they can haul over 1000 miles in their press release.
Now, taking Nikola Motors' claims at face value, they say they have an *up to 70% efficient fuel cell and *up to 95% motor. They don't state anything about reduction gears efficiency, but in the video presentation their CEO states it has 6 motors (one on each wheel) and gearing gives a 5x multiplier on torque. They have shown some simple gearboxes on their Twitter feed..
Therefore, if I take 95% for each of the motor, voltage upconverter and inverter, and 70% for the fuel cell, I get the following.
Now, the claim of 95% efficiency for the motor with no gearing loss is frankly a bit unrealistic, so I will set that to 90%.
Also, and for me this is the killer, 70% for a fuel cell efficiency - even when using LHV of hydrogen - is <ahem> a big improvement on other manufacturers. I googled "300 kW fuel cell" and found this, which is a static hybrid energy recovery type of installation running on natural gas, where waste heat is fed through a turbine.
Given that their CEO doesn't even know what PEM stands for - the object that is pretty fundamental to the working of your product (check the video) - and given that Nikola suddenly switched from a gas turbine range extender to a hydrogen one not long before their big reveal, I might suggest that they put a similar amount of research into this thing.
For manufacturers already making larger fuel cells for commercial vehicles, such as Hydrogenics, they claim around 53% efficiency (LHV) for their cells in the up to 200 kW range. If anyone can point me to a real mobile fuel cell that is getting 70% efficiency then please let me (and every other manufacturer) know.
So, if I go back to 53% efficiency for this, like other mainstream large fuel cell applications, then I get the following:
Interestingly if you put in a more sensible weight just for the tractor unit (say 8 tonnes), then range is 999.8 miles with the 53% efficiency fuel cell...
Perhaps if they are not trying to pull a fast one, then someone else is pulling a fast one on them. It's a shame, as the idea has merit, but give it closer to 200 kg of hydrogen and it might actually reach the numbers they claim with a full load, albeit without the "2x the fuel economy of a diesel".
Looking at their claim that they will build 100 MW solar farms to generate the hydrogen through electrolysis - I've already shown why that is a bad idea on the hydrogen vs battery thread. There I linked to a recent study showing that for a real world, 350 bar electrolyser the energy required is 62.2 kWh/kg.
I took a site in Southern Spain as an example of somewhere analogous to Utah (the EU has a nice solar output calculator) and at 100 kg per truck, that's 69 trucks per day output.
Toyota has an array that is 9 hectares and 4.1 MWp at their Derby plant in the UK. They state this is designed to produce 4.3 GWh per year, just a bit less than one truck's worth of electricity. I therefore recon a 100 MWp peak array would be 220 hectares. The Toyota plant is 235 hectares including the test track, or 2.5 by 1 kilometres in size. You can see the size of the PV array relative to the whole plant in the bottom picture - the array is in the north west corner.
I also can't figure out why they need 320 kWh. That's >2 tonnes of batteries in addition to approximately 2 tonnes of hydrogen tanks and 1 tonne of fuel cell. I reckon that 320 kWh is enough to climb 2500 metres with a full load or accelerate from 0-60 mph more than 30 times on battery. If you look at their twitter feed they state they are using 32000 individual 18650 cells and they show them packed into what looks like 19" racks, so I doubt they have the energy density of a 100D pack.
Obviously I have made some assumptions here as they have not been completely forthcoming with the spec, but I doubt I am that far off. I frankly don't believe the 70% efficiency claim and the CdA is probably in the right ballpark. They don't specify what speed their range claim is at, so I can't see it being near 60 mph.
Reading through some studies on articulated / 18 wheeler trucks, firstly the trailer typically accounts for 60% of the aerodynamic drag and secondly with a full load, rolling resistance is still the dominant factor for most of the speed range. My calculations also show the latter up to 56 mph.
It has also been found that the teardrop shape trailers you sometimes see actually don't do as much as claimed (M&S in the UK apparently reported to one study that they will keep the ones they have for "environmental advertising" but wont order any more). Side skirts help but there is not much you can do about the gap between tractor and trailer. Clearly Nikola Motors has little control over what type of semi-trailers their tractor units are going to haul. The large box that I think holds the fuel cell behind the cab on their design also forces a large and undesirable gap between the corner of the cab and front of the trailer.
I've therefore used Cd = 0.6. I also saw a presentation from Nokian tyres that shows for truck tyres, the Crr is a bit lower than car tyres. It obviously depends on the axle configuration but driven wheels are around 0.007 and trailer wheels 0.006. I've put the latter in for simplicity as most of the weight is over the trailer wheels and there tends to be more of them anyway. I am also being a bit generous with the cross-sectional area as I am using 10m^2 but looking at a few trailer dimensions around 11 is more usual. I used 40 tonnes in my calculations but I see from other sources since that 80,000 lbs (36.3 tonnes) is the typical GVW for such trucks in the US. It is this that Nikola states they can haul over 1000 miles in their press release.
Now, taking Nikola Motors' claims at face value, they say they have an *up to 70% efficient fuel cell and *up to 95% motor. They don't state anything about reduction gears efficiency, but in the video presentation their CEO states it has 6 motors (one on each wheel) and gearing gives a 5x multiplier on torque. They have shown some simple gearboxes on their Twitter feed..
Therefore, if I take 95% for each of the motor, voltage upconverter and inverter, and 70% for the fuel cell, I get the following.
Now, the claim of 95% efficiency for the motor with no gearing loss is frankly a bit unrealistic, so I will set that to 90%.
Also, and for me this is the killer, 70% for a fuel cell efficiency - even when using LHV of hydrogen - is <ahem> a big improvement on other manufacturers. I googled "300 kW fuel cell" and found this, which is a static hybrid energy recovery type of installation running on natural gas, where waste heat is fed through a turbine.
Given that their CEO doesn't even know what PEM stands for - the object that is pretty fundamental to the working of your product (check the video) - and given that Nikola suddenly switched from a gas turbine range extender to a hydrogen one not long before their big reveal, I might suggest that they put a similar amount of research into this thing.
For manufacturers already making larger fuel cells for commercial vehicles, such as Hydrogenics, they claim around 53% efficiency (LHV) for their cells in the up to 200 kW range. If anyone can point me to a real mobile fuel cell that is getting 70% efficiency then please let me (and every other manufacturer) know.
So, if I go back to 53% efficiency for this, like other mainstream large fuel cell applications, then I get the following:
Interestingly if you put in a more sensible weight just for the tractor unit (say 8 tonnes), then range is 999.8 miles with the 53% efficiency fuel cell...
Perhaps if they are not trying to pull a fast one, then someone else is pulling a fast one on them. It's a shame, as the idea has merit, but give it closer to 200 kg of hydrogen and it might actually reach the numbers they claim with a full load, albeit without the "2x the fuel economy of a diesel".
Looking at their claim that they will build 100 MW solar farms to generate the hydrogen through electrolysis - I've already shown why that is a bad idea on the hydrogen vs battery thread. There I linked to a recent study showing that for a real world, 350 bar electrolyser the energy required is 62.2 kWh/kg.
I took a site in Southern Spain as an example of somewhere analogous to Utah (the EU has a nice solar output calculator) and at 100 kg per truck, that's 69 trucks per day output.
Toyota has an array that is 9 hectares and 4.1 MWp at their Derby plant in the UK. They state this is designed to produce 4.3 GWh per year, just a bit less than one truck's worth of electricity. I therefore recon a 100 MWp peak array would be 220 hectares. The Toyota plant is 235 hectares including the test track, or 2.5 by 1 kilometres in size. You can see the size of the PV array relative to the whole plant in the bottom picture - the array is in the north west corner.
I also can't figure out why they need 320 kWh. That's >2 tonnes of batteries in addition to approximately 2 tonnes of hydrogen tanks and 1 tonne of fuel cell. I reckon that 320 kWh is enough to climb 2500 metres with a full load or accelerate from 0-60 mph more than 30 times on battery. If you look at their twitter feed they state they are using 32000 individual 18650 cells and they show them packed into what looks like 19" racks, so I doubt they have the energy density of a 100D pack.
Obviously I have made some assumptions here as they have not been completely forthcoming with the spec, but I doubt I am that far off. I frankly don't believe the 70% efficiency claim and the CdA is probably in the right ballpark. They don't specify what speed their range claim is at, so I can't see it being near 60 mph.
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