Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Speaking at the Future of Freight Festival, the company’s head of global sales Ryan Clayton said Nikola has become “a lot more of a well-oiled machine” adding the company looks forward to a “really good” year.
As of the time of writing, the company has not yet reported its production and delivery figures for the last quarter of 2024.
“On a very positive note, we’re delivering trucks. We can see from a market standpoint that we’ve become a lot more of a well-oiled machine, a lot more strategic, a lot more direct understanding of who our end user is,” Clayton said. “Our order board is full with fuel cell, battery electric [trucks]. We’re coming back.”
In mid-November, the company announced a recall of 72 of its 2022-2023 battery electric (BEV) trucks due to a defect in the instrument cluster display. The trucks had been recently re-delivered to the customers following the biggest recall which forced Nikola to fix all units delivered until then.
The issue causes the display to go black, either temporarily or permanently, blocking drivers from viewing vital information, including speed, and range.
In the third quarter earnings call, Nikola‘s management said it had redelivered 78 BEV trucks to dealers and fleet customers citing “overwhelmingly positive feedback” after the largest recall.
Nikola’s executive said almost all customers have their trucks back following the November recall.
“We’ve almost by the end of this quarter have every single customer returned battery electric truck post recall,” Clayton stated before saying the company “looks forward to a really good 2025 with battery electric [trucks] as being part of our portfolio.”
“Right now today, 85%—I would say in that range— is hydrogen fuel cell focused because taking away the battery electric truck in itself, it’s an infrastructure problem, both on battery electric and hydrogen,” he noted.
Nikola’s su-brand HYLA focuses on hydrogen production, distribution, and dispensing solutions. The company’s Tre fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) “emits zero carbon, with water being the only byproduct,” Nikola claims.
Infrastructure-wise, the company closed 2024 with nine hydrogen refueling stations in the United States and one in Canada.
“And you can ask some of our first adopters that have experienced some of those bloody noses along the way too of learning of availability and fuel times and things along those ends. But now that we’ve kind of redefined, we’re gonna have nine stations by the end of this year up the California corridor. That doesn’t include a station in Canada as well. Partner stations. I think we’re going through what the customer’s asking for,” Nikola’s executive said.
The Biden administration released final rules last Friday detailing tax credits for clean hydrogen energy under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) lifting shares of industry players such as Nikola, Plug Power, and Constellation.
The Treasury Department’s final rules include a provision under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) extending tax credits to certain nuclear power plants aiming to incentivize hydrogen production with low carbon emissions.
The credit, offering up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced, can total tens of billions of dollars and aims to expand hydrogen use in industries with high emissions, such as manufacturing and transportation.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
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