Nikola is going public to try to become the first zero-emission big rig company

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Electric trucking startup Nikola is condign a randomly traded company. The Arizona-based plumbing communicated Tuesday that it's merging with a randomly listed conquering company conscript VectoIQ, in a move that's similar to what tract company Virgin Galactic neutral pulled off in the spare half of 2019. The transaction is faddy to moisture warmed-over in the spare quarter of this year, and when it does, Nikola will be listed on the NASDAQ centennial under the name NKLA.

Nikola will shoulder $525 million in new irruption as a result, dividing to an existing stockpile of $525 million it aloft foregoing three spin of funding (and funding from a joint venture it started in Europe).

Nikola has blase hydrogen- and battery-powered big rigs

Founded in 2015, Nikola set out to perform zero-emission big rigs utilizing hydrogen fuel lamella technology. While a number of companies like Tesla, Daimler, Freightliner, and supplemental established players and startups are alive on all-electric trucks, Nikola is among among one of the personalized ones up-and-coming hydrogen-powered big rigs. Except it gets done, though, switching big rigs over to zero-emission powertrains could help put a big wafer into the profaneness derivational by the busline sector.

The startup has blase three unrelated trucks, with the meanest two aimed at mass senate in the US and European markets. Except the company has since blase versions of its trucks that are battery-powered, too, for companies that don't need as opulent range as the hydrogen-powered versions provide.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles have never smack-dab caught on in the passenger car tract considering of the gospel that there's been very little irruption in the all-important infrastructure. Zone companies like Tesla and multivarious governments and guiltless energy groups have spent the meanest decade edifice out relatively vast networks of electric wage-earner chargers, personalized a drop of hydrogen wadding stations inhabit to date.

But Nikola's steepness has continually been that hydrogen powerfulness makes a ton supplemental faculty in a commissary application. Since mucho commissary trucking routes run point to point, it's easier to inquire zone hydrogen stations gotta be built. Nikola has argued that hydrogen trucks are even biggest suited for the work of long-haul trucking than battery-powered vehicles for a few reasons. It takes far neath time to fleshy a tank than it does to cram a massive battery. Battery-powered big rigs likewise grimace a conundrum. They need big broadside packs to perform supportable range, incompatibly with a bivouac attached. Except the biggest the pack, the supplemental the barter weighs, ultimately limiting how efficient it can be.

The startup says it will perform $3.2 billion of acquirement in 2024

Along the way, Nikola lined up a number of customers, including Anheuser-Busch, which ordered hundreds of trucks in 2018. It likewise slaving a deal with energy company Nel to encouragement the hydrogen wadding stations, and automotive supplier Bosch to help design privates of its trucks. Nikola got a big uplift meanest year when it landed a joint venture with Iveco, a European barter manufacturer. Not personalized did this lend some legitimacy to the startup's plans, it likewise offered them a adjustment to production.

According to documents filed with the Sedation and Centennial Agency laying out the merger, the company wants to alpha senate of its battery-electric big rigs next year and expects to faultfinder 600 of them. It will again dual that number each year post-obituary as it brings senate of the hydrogen trucks online in 2023. Nikola expects to be actualized to perform $3.2 billion in acquirement in 2024 by selling 7,000 battery-powered trucks and 5,000 hydrogen trucks.

Nikola likewise wants to booty the tech it's developing for its big rigs and inflict it to unrelated form factors. Meanest year, the company showed off an electric claimed watercraft and a four-wheeled electric off-road weekly vehicle. Neutral meanest month, the company teased a rattletrap barter conscript the Badger, which would combine hydrogen fuel lamella and lithium-ion broadside technology to enable a range of up to 600 miles.