Thought leaders in dialogue: Trevor Milton, founder and Executive Chairman of Nikola Motors — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:13It's the most advanced semi-truck ever built
2. 0:15and in order to do that you had to have massive computing power on board.
3. 0:19So we have central servers pretty much that run the whole truck,
4. 0:22so unlike most automotive vehicles that you would see.
5. 0:26Instead of having little tiny computers everywhere, we have more massive
6. 0:29computers that can power through any of the data that we need,
7. 0:32whether it's torque vectoring controlling the tires or whether it's
8. 0:36analog braking systems or whether it's autonomous driving,
9. 0:39that we're also working with Bosch on or there's a whole bunch of things for
10. 0:43instance the infotainment system that controls
11. 0:46everything for the driver is all done through this central gateway
12. 0:48computer as well. So to build the truck from the ground up the right way
13. 0:52we had to go to a more centralized computer to run the whole thing.
14. 1:01I believe the future is going to need a lot of different mobilities to get there,
15. 1:04it's not one size fits all. Nikola offers both: battery electric
16. 1:08trucks which really help the market up to 300 miles.
17. 1:12Anything over 300 miles or any application that's weight sensitive,
18. 1:15hydrogen makes a lot more sense. So hydrogen is a lot lighter, it's usually
19. 1:19thousands of kilograms lighter than a battery electric
20. 1:22equivalent and it also allows you to fill up within just a few minutes. The
21. 1:26advantage to both power trains are is that they're completely zero emission,
22. 1:29so there is no emissions associated with those
23. 1:32from the tailpipe of the vehicle.
24. 1:35So the additional advantage of hydrogen is that it's easier to control the supply
25. 1:39of the energy coming in to produce hydrogen.
26. 1:41So you're truly zero emission from production to consumption,
27. 1:44something that gets a little more tricky when you get into battery electric.
28. 1:56I don't know if they're necessarily afraid I think they're watching us closely.
29. 1:59Most OEMs don't have much fear they
30. 2:02just act or they react. The advantage to Nikola is
31. 2:06that we're always leading. We never react to what other people do,
32. 2:09because we're paving the way for the whole world.
33. 2:10So I don't really care what anyone else does, because normally we're way ahead of
34. 2:14them. And that's the great thing about being a
35. 2:15leader: you don't care who's behind you.
36. 2:25There's a lot of variables to a hydrogen truck. The main foundation of a
37. 2:28hydrogen truck is the fuel cell and then you have the storage that
38. 2:31stores all the hydrogen on board. Well that is the stuff that's on the
39. 2:34truck – the more complicated stuff is what's off the truck.
40. 2:37How do you build stations to supply that high pressure which is 70 megapascal or
41. 2:41700 bar to that truck?
42. 2:43So Nikola's advantage is that we actually don't just design only the truck,
43. 2:49we actually design the stations with it. So when we sell a hydrogen truck to one of our customers
44. 2:53we provide the hydrogen station that goes with it.
45. 2:56So you have all the compression, you have all the cooling, all the thermal,
46. 2:59all the electrolysis through zero emission to create hydrogen.
47. 3:03Then you pump it into the truck at 10 000 psi or 70 megapascal, so if you think about that
48. 3:10now you're holding hydrogen inside these tanks, compressed it's the smallest element in the
49. 3:15atmosphere – a molecule – and what that allows you to do is compress it very tiny and at 10 000 psi you can get a truck
50. 3:21that can go over 600 miles now without having to stop for refuel.
51. 3:31The great thing about nikolai is that as a startup,
52. 3:34you get to do things very fast. As you get closer to becoming a real OEM
53. 3:39everything slows down and the idea of building this lab is allow us to
54. 3:44continue that same speed that we have as a startup but in a production
55. 3:48element or world. So these labs allow us to test every component of the fuel cell
56. 3:53it also allows us to test the dyno and the chassis and we can also do
57. 3:56simulating driving to where the driver is actually sitting right there
58. 4:00driving the vehicle in a virtual reality room with these gigantic screens
59. 4:04and 60 feet down below him is the entire power
60. 4:08train actually running, in the same thermal climate that you
61. 4:11would have in that situation. So these chambers are heated and cooled,
62. 4:15your whole power train is down there running
63. 4:17while you're sitting here driving virtually and it allows you to get to
64. 4:20market very fast. It allows you to keep the idea of being
65. 4:24a startup while still being an OEM and that's what these labs are for:
66. 4:28full development from beginning to end all the way to production.