Nikola Reveals Electric Sleeper Semi-Truck

I know the costs are very prohibitive, but this could be a game changer somewhere down the road. The video presentation link below runs about 45 minutes.

"On December 1, 2016, Nikola Motor Company unveiled its electric sleeper semi-truck, the Nikola One. In addition to unveiling the Nikola One, Nikola made several other monumental announcements including: a partnership with Ryder, granting Nikola owners access to their over 800 service and warranty locations across the United States and Canada, 364 planned Nikola Hydrogen Stations across the United States and Canada, a $1 Billion manufacturing facility, the Nikola Shipments software, and The Nikola Two, the electric day cab semi-truck."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLidTCqAAtY&feature=youtu.be

Look pretty cool. Id like to wait till they work out the bugs and get more of their stations working before i buy one lol. But first i need my cdl.

Look pretty cool. Id like to wait till they work out the bugs and get more of their stations working before i buy one lol. But first i need my cdl.

Ya think...

Nikola had their version one about a year ago - it was supposed to be gas turbine powered (or a generator powered by a gas turbine).

They are also TAKING DEPOSITS - which means they are trying to CROWD SOURCE FUNDING for this project.

It'll be cool if they actually get it to work - but I'm not putting down $15K, until there are a bunch of them passing me on the highway.

Rick

Electric trucks are definitely sexy future toys, but, honestly, I am very surprised that nobody has imply created a triple axle drive truck where one axle is a bogie electrical motor like what is on a train.

The extra axle can either act as a brake, in which case it charges batteries, or as a drive, where it would utilize energy stored when braking.

This would replace jakes, and be safer than jakes, since electric drives could be wired into the ABS system, while Jakes cannot. This would also reduce the cost of the motor, since there would no longer be a Jake. It wouldn't compensate for the cost of the regenerative brakes and drives combination, but that would pay for itself with fuel savings in a second way, beyond the electric motor and regenerative brakes.

On downhills, not only would the trucks be generating power for use on uphills, but trucks with automatic transmissions could stay in neutral far longer when in cruise control on downslopes, which would add a second fuel-saving to the electric motors. For those of you with manual transmissions, you might not be aware that automatic trucks are allowed to coast downhills in neutral. That's a big reason why automatics are more fuel efficient in a lot of situations, especially on long low hills.

There's also the potential of using electric drives for reverse. Automatics, in my experience, act stupid and horrible in reverse, jumping and bucking excessively if you are backing in a hard turn or uphill. Electric reverse would be awesome and not have any bucking and jumping.

What you are describing is basically the ERS system used on formula 1 cars. When on the brakes, the system harvests energy that can be used for output later.

While I don't think that you could harvest enough energy to continually give boost to the truck, it does have merit for when the engine is under load, such as when climbing hills. Once the engine begins to sustain a certain amount of exertion, the ERS system.could kick in to give the truck a little extra boost going up the hill.

Now that I read you whole post, I said basically the same thing you did lol....sorry.

Now that I read you whole post, I said basically the same thing you did lol....sorry.