Oh boy! $NKLA $NKLAQ
Nikola’s Engineering ‘BTS’ fills me with a lot of questions and concerns. So, as your friendly Twitter ghost 👻, I will address them all!
[That’s right, it’s Thread Time! 💃🏼 🕺🏻]
Problem 1: it’s in focking portrait! 😡

Ok, my actual first thought is to remind you that this prototype was build by Pratt Miller, not Nikola, and a lot of it was designed by various business partners too!

Also, this is apparently not the final design so remember that.
Why they would make a video about an old design is beyond me but oh well, Trevor works in mysterious ways!

As for their claims about patents, I have not read them all but here they are: https://bit.ly/38UoO5u 

Anyway, on with the video!
Maybe Trevor’s fans thought this but I’m pretty sure everyone on this side of the argument knows that FCEVs are essentially ’hydrogen hybrids’.
I’m no expert but I don’t imagine this is too hard! Digital maps have had altitude data for ages. Surely a fairly simple piece of code could calculate the battery capacity you would need!

As for being patented, certainly not by Nikola it seems!
So I think it’s safe to say there never was a functioning Nikola One prototype. Explains why Trevor is always trying to show that his truck drives!
Now it seems like even the Nikola Two prototype is not too alike the final version!
‘Those components would be integrated into all the different... components’ 🤨🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻‍♂️

Also, I don’t see Tesla prototypes having so easily accessed circuit breakers not in the right place. Perhaps Nikola expects the truck to fail! And often!
I have searched Nikola’s patents and I cannot find anything relating to this motor setup!

I expect no better from Trevor at this point.

Also, a motor on every wheel? Ignoring the double wheel thingy, that should be 6 motors. Trevor has only 4!

Yeah, that doesn’t add up!
Woah, woah, woah, hold up!
500HP/Motor x 4Motors? That’s not what your website says!
The torque figure is also wrong according to the website (plus nearly impossible to understand in this video)!
Yeah, miraculously Trevor has doubled the horsepower and completely buggered the torque!

‘650ft lbs of torque’ ... ‘a reduction of... 14:1 ish’ ... ‘you take the 650 and times it by the 14 and it gives you the... the... the... per motor, what that torque is post-reduction per
‘... set of wheels’
What!? 🥴
None of this adds up at all! I think Trevor is trying to talk about something he completely doesn’t understand, yet again! (remember the ‘dual speed, no single speed between... low and high’ melarky?)
What? Now when you are down to a single motor, which was previously 500 horsepower, you get over 500 horsepower?
No! None of this makes any sense!
This won’t always be true. Truckers are paid per mile, true, and the more miles they cover in a day, the more they are paid, true. However, most truckers have predestined routes that can easily be completed within their legal driving hour range.
That said, it’s still advantageous
Now given that trucks can’t fly, what are the options here?
A) a failure of a Nikola truck is at least as deadly as a plane crash (plausible)
B) Nikola are as likely to fail as Trevor’s businesses (plausible again)
or C) all of the above! (It’s C, folks)
Here’s another view of the H2 tank, made by Hexagon, and battery pack.
Weirdly, despite the Nikola Two supposedly going to have a 320kWh pack, this has two 125kWh packs, or about only 80% of the total planned capacity.
Clarification at last!
The Nikola Two will be a primarily (hydrogen) gas-powered hybrid, not like a BEV with a range extender.
Question was about how the hydrogen tanks perform in a side collision.
Trevor first says they are tested by being shot with a rifle. This is only so good as bullet damage is very different from a collision.
He then talks about the testing with CNG, which isn’t hydrogen.
He also mentions that the tanks are staggered so that if a side collision occurs, they can safely move inwards.
Trevor also mentions that the gas purges out of the top of the truck and claims that they have some proprietary technology in this regard (which they don’t).
In all honesty, a hydrogen vehicle, like a Nuclear Fission plant, isn’t actually that unsafe though will be perceived as such, either as a joke or out of fear. That’s because when a puncture does occur, it can be far deadlier!

Also, whilst hydrogen isn’t too unsafe, it can never
be as safe as a properly designed BEV equivalent due to other factors, such as rollover risk.

All the same, it is still funny to call hydrogen vehicles mobile bombs so by all means, continue to say what you want!
Note here that there are 9 tanks at 7kg. Simple calculations will tell you that that’s 63kg. We were promised 80kg!
Also, as @ajtourville has found, the SEC filings show that Nikola gets 7.5miles/kg of hydrogen, meaning hydrogen range is only 472.5miles!
With a 250kWh battery, a third that of the Tre, battery range won’t be more than 80 miles. This is significantly less than the promised range of 600miles and assumes good conditions. (Interestingly, the original promised range was 1200 miles so we are now less than half that!)
Or, once you translate this from bullshit to English, Nikola has no idea how to do proper cooling and needs these huge radiators or their truck will overheat!
I guess they are hoping they figure things out before production.
Multiple things here. First one: BEV truck weight.
Trevor’s statement is a lie! As soon as investors realise this, he stock will crumble.
Watch this video from 3 minutes: . Tesla in 2017 targeted their 500mile Semi to be at Diesel weight parity!
Diesel parity would, according to these estimates, be even lighter than Nikola’s truck!
Suck on that, Trevor!
Ok, next point: their truck is estimated to weigh ‘between 17 and 20 thousand pounds’! That’s a huge error margin! One that gives me no confidence in Nikola!

Trevor also said their current prototype is very heavy, which I believe. What I’m worried about is how they get it down!
Nikola has an old style cab, claiming better visibility and the ability to have a passenger.
The passenger argument is complete bogus as the Tesla Semi actually allows for two passengers, as anyone at the unveiling will attest to.
As for visibility, that’s one of the reasons why Tesla chose the new windshield. I haven’t driven any truck so I can’t speak to visibility but I’ve heard no complaints about Tesla Semi visibility.
Tesla’s central seat also has advantages of its own, chief of which is that there is no LHD or RHD variant! This means that the rollout of Semi can be very fast indeed!

Also, back to visibility, in all likelihood Autopilot will be the sole driver before long anyways.
He then talks about how the cameras (and LiDAR 🤢) (seriously though, how will LiDAR help with this) will allow driver’s (he says women drivers though this is useful for anyone) to see around their truck live.
Credit where it’s due, this is a good feature everyone should use!
What’s safer than that though?
That’s right, no drivers!
Next feature was that you can order food at the Nikola truck stop before you arrive. Again, a good feature (though distracted drivers aren’t ideal).
I think it’s up to Netflix if you have that integrated into your OS.
Also, from renderings, it looks like Nikola has iPads stuck to the walls. This is terrible design, given that there isn’t much room to sit up and the screen is too far away as is.
A better design would be to have mounts on the ceiling or ideally have a much bigger screen you aren’t relying on a third party to produce.
This is like Tesla’s current arrangement, albeit without any gigafactories.
Trevor then talks about his 500Wh/kg cell, which he still hasn’t managed to make bigger than quarter size.
He says he will licence it out and make royalties on it, which is very different to what he has said before about just giving it away!
They do not make hydrogen tanks!

In fact, I am able to give even more detail than Trevor did here: Hexagon is Nikola’s tank manufacturer.
‘The lies and the fake lies’

The What?! 🤣🤣🤣
Oh deary me!
First off, Nikola does ‘the entire eAxle’? ‘eAxle’ is a Bosch product. The non-Bosch version is simply called an axle. Either Trevor is highly confused or he’s severely exposed himself here.
And as it goes for making only ‘$50 bucks a motor’, oh how wrong you are!
Motors cost thousands of dollars. Multiply that by four now! Tesla’s motors are significantly cheaper than their competitors’, enough to make it viable on economics alone.
Secondly, Tesla’s motors have a
far better power density than anything else as they’re more powerful and lighter.
Thirdly, Tesla’s motors and motor software are significantly more efficient than anything else.

There is huge gain to be had from in-house motor development and manufacture, as Munro will tell you.
Most importantly though, this mentality of ‘oh, it’s only 50 bucks’ is exactly what got legacy into their current mess. The marginal gains from putting effort into almost every vehicle system adds up hugely and has given Tesla an uncatchable lead.
That is why legacy-minded people cannot understand or believe Tesla’s capabilities. It is a foolish mindset and one that leads to extinction, figuratively and literally for some.
Same as I just said. $30-$40 saved per axle doesn’t sound significant but it really does add up!
I mean, is it just laziness that stops OEMs from doing this in-house?
This is the most god-awful reason to think you’re the best I’ve heard of!
These legacy OEM dinosaurs have no clue what is good and what isn’t. Most probably call their grandkids to find out how to change the TV channel!

Seriously though, is this actually his logic? 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️
Tesla’s self-designed chips have been praised by independent experts for being several years ahead of the competition yet Trevor thinks he knows better?

Please, $NKLA investors, this is not the next Tesla!
Imma just leave this here: https://twitter.com/insidernikola/status/1283189622957240320?s=21
Nikola ‘hopes’ to have the first tests with customers at the *end* of 2021. Given Trevor Time, that could be anywhere from late 2022 to never!
You can’t hear it?
Umm... no.
The question was ‘is there an Autopilot’, not ‘will there be an Autopilot’. Trevor’s answer is highly misleading and very untrue!
Tesla celebrates it’s world-leading Autopilot system. Nikola brags about its hardware suite. Yeah, there’s a difference.

And I don’t know about you but I don’t see a single self-driving sensor on this thing, save the cameras that are used for mirrors.
Wow, they are literally retrofitting an ICE car!
Wait a minute, wasn’t this the same guy going on about how it’s important to build from the ground up? 🤦🏻‍♂️
He doesn’t show the Badger because he ‘doesn’t have to’ and because ‘it’s marketing’.
What the fuck?!

Are we really meant to believe he won’t show it just to create haters on the idea that there is no bad press?

Unbelievable!
Peace out everyone. Bye!
You can follow @Nikola_Truth.
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