Wondering who I should expect to collapse in 2030.

How many people who own stocks actually give a shit about the company they invest in (for about 5 seconds)?

Nikola did not build their own vehicles. They bought their vehicles from Iveco in Europe and made small modifications including putting their names on them.

Dozens!

are there Nikola trucks on the road right now?

It's easy to see through this showmanship when the product is a car. So why not when the product is software?

You have a bunch of people who consider themselves "the smart money" who have been had, and if they pull out, that's an acknowledgment that perhaps they're not that smart.

Ah yes. The Nikola Gravity Drive™ has been a roaring success and is now powering millions of trucks worldwide. This bankruptcy is merely a blip in their continuing success.

I have no doubt it's entirely possible to make an electric truck, but you still have to spend a year in the trenches actually doing it and solving all the little design problems before you have something to show off.

Especially if you weren't previously making ICE trucks. Then you have to learn how to make a truck from scratch, instead of just the new electric parts. You can of course buy an ICE truck and convert it for your prototype, which I think is what Edison Motors did, but then you'll be showing off a rusty old truck that won't get any venture capital or journalist attention because it's nowhere near shiny enough.

The "pusher" truck was not supposed to be EV. It was supposed to be a Hydrogen truck. In reality it was neither.

This is literally all energy storage... Lithium-ion batteries lose about 10-20% during charging and another 5% during discharge.

How do you figure any energy storage medium would give you more than 100% of the energy you put into it?

The problem is, there are applications that for the foreseeable future cannot be made to work on batteries - airplanes larger than bushcraft and large-scale maritime shipping (the large ocean liners carry upwards of a million gallons of fuel).

Assuming we want to convert these away from fossil fuels - which we have to! - there are only two renewable alternatives: biofuels, which carry serious ethical implications given world hunger and soil depletion, and synthfuels made from hydrogen and sequestered CO2 as base chemicals. The problem is, synthfuels are absurdly expensive because there is no hydrogen market yet so there isn't much happening in scaling up from lab-scale.

https://www.liebreich.com/hydrogen-ladder-version-5-0/

On top of the storage problems, and the problems of the energy needed to create the hydrogen, you then have to have a massive hydrogen distribution network that's on par with the current gas distribution network. With battery EVs, it's just a matter of building chargers that connect to the existing power grid, with many (possibly most) EV owners charging at home.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody pushing for hydrogen fueled vehicles is simply falling for marketing bullshit. Producing a hydrogen-powered car would likely become cheaper than a BEV, but they'll never be better for the environment in the long run, and will never be cheaper to operate. It's always going to be cheaper to just put electricity directly into a battery rather than use it to create hydrogen, distribute it, and then pump it.

> It certainly does not! (At least, not in any meaningful sense).

I was speaking to the use of hydrogen for ammonia production. When we experience grid imbalances from when there's too much solar or wind energy for the grid to absorb it would be nice to put it to use in that regard rather than dumping it.

I understand and do not contest the problems that working with hydrogen creates, it makes a lousy option for a battery.