Nikola vs Tesla…?

Just like in an "Ironman" movie, real-life well-known Tony Stark (Elon Musk - Tesla Motors), came up with a possible rival who remembers the character Justin Hammer from the Marvel Universe, is a "potential competitor" in the zero emission trucking sector. His name is Trevor Milton, Founder and CEO of Nikola Motor Company. But why can we consider him a potential competitor to the Founder of SpaceX?.

The truth is that the competition at bottom is not about: Zero emission trucks as it seems to be, nothing further from that; Deep down, the central theme is: What will be the most suitable energy source for the future of ground transportation? Will these move to Batteries (Elon Musk) or with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell (Trevor Milton). The reality is that these questions remind me of the exciting War of the Currents between Thomas Edison (Direct Current) and Nikola Tesla (Alternating Current).

The first plays on this stage are made by Elon, who has been marking his position on the topic of: Hydrogen-powered fuel cells for some time, where he recently declared the proposal "astonishingly silly". Musk also rejected the concept of using fuel cells in general, equating them to "dumb sales." the motivations of his position can be summed up in the costly and complicated of making stored hydrogen, however there are diverse opinions such as that of Caroline Delbert columnist for Popular Mechanics who in her article Why Elon Musk Thinks Fuel Cells Are 'Staggeringly Dumb' Or, as I calls them, "fool sells." Does he have a point ?. there she proposes that there is enough space for both technologies.

Now in my research I could find a CNBC Television interview made on the program "Squawk on the Street" on June 4 to the CEO of Nikola Motor Company, on the occasion of his public debut on the stock exchange, in which they asked him : If the company's truck orders still stand, to which he responds in an extended way, explaining that "The most difficult part we have now is trying to discover how to deliver them with the infrastructure working at the same time," "We have a truck that runs on electricity, which is generated with hydrogen, which requires the hydrogen network to be built simultaneously with those orders ”also announced the purchase of 40,000 kilograms of hydrogen from Norway and the construction of the first 5 charging stations, which that makes it clear to me that they are not ready and that things are complicated.

Certainly, every start is difficult, but in this new competition for vehicle energy sources, on the side of the nascent Nikola Motor Company there are already other well-known and not-so-known companies that have been betting on hydrogen for a long time and among them the Japanese Toyota with its Mirai model, from North Korea Hyundai with NEXO and finally Honda with its Clarity model, this group of companies maintains its effort on the subject in a sustained way, despite the decline in sales of 2019 (-12%) compared to previous year, where they closed 2019 with 2,089 hydrogen vehicles sold in the US market.

But what about electric vehicles? Only in 2019, the Statista.com portal reported US sales of 245,000 units, where Tesla had the first place in sales with 192,250 units, which placed it with more than 80% of sales for the year, followed very, very far by Chevrolet with just 16,418 units.

Recalling Everett Rogers and his sociological theory of diffusion of innovations, and at this moment trying to apply it to electric vehicles, I think the speed with which the electric vehicle is accepted in a social system is an index of its acceptability in that society , which leads us to compare the sales of the year 2019 of both types of vehicles Hydrogen 2,089 units sold vs. Electric 245,000 units sold, to conclude that the team of hydrogen vehicles (Nikola Motor Company, Toyota, Hyundai and Honda) Perhaps they should work more on the strategy of their proposal.

This is just beginning, Trevor Milton is accompanied by a distinguished team on its board of directors among which are: Mark Russell, the Iveco people represented there by Gerrit Marx, Mike Mansuetti on behalf of Robert Bosch LLC, all of them giving credibility to a project that takes shape day by day and that have made risky but valid plays such as receiving $ 4 million dollars from the small business fund under the North American government's Paycheck Protection program or going out to the stock market without having requests met and products tested by your customers. Taking those actions makes it clear that they believe what they do, and this despite the fact that its founder without having registered profits in his company will spend $ 32.5 million on a ranch in Utah.

It is certainly early to know how this would end, however, Nikola Motor Company from the hand of Trevor Milton, rather than a real threat at the present time for Tesla, what it represents is a future risk, it remains to be seen that its hydrogen trucks and its station network are functional, however I do not take my eyes off this company because today it only shows trucks that will produce and that would compete with the Tesla SEMI model, but tomorrow they could go out with family vehicles and the story will be more interesting.

In the end, if in the future our streets are filled with zero emission vehicles, whether they are Hydrogen or Electric and this results in the withdrawal of gasoline vehicles, then all humanity will have won.