About Me

My photo
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
My passion is also my business, as I am with the Toronto based Hav-A-Kar Auto Group. I sell or lease any make of car, van or truck available in Canada. My interest in all things "car" has helped me with my many clients in Ontario over the past 25+ years. Please give me the opportunity to assist you.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

June 14: Electrifying!

Guessing game? Probably not, as I suspect everyone of you will see this pic, see the electric charge and automatically think Nikola Tesla. Sure, I believe you, while thousands wouldn't. At one time he was just the inventor of electricity or the discoverer of it or whatever, but now we hear his name every single day. And probably see cars bearing his name, every single day. If you are a day late coming to this conversation, well, now you know how the Tesla car got its name. Everything electric emanates from Nikola Tesla's discovery.

Below we see the most prominent use of his name, along with the guy, who probably would have discovered it, if Tesla hadn't. Thank goodness, Tesla got there first, as the "Musk" would be a terrible name for a car and the "Elon" wouldn't be much better.


So up pops another company selling, or trying to sell electric vehicles, but in this case it is not a car.......


......no, not a car and not quite anything else, but their big project will definitely be big and recognizable for what it is.......


So, what do we have here? This is the Nikola One concept electric truck that, has been proposed by Nikola Motors (wonder if Tesla has a middle name for the next company?). Sleek, big and almost fully electric. Almost electric? More about that in a minute.

For a mere $375k, a successful trucker can put his name on the side of this extremely sleek vehicle, but it's probably easier to lease it. Either way, the interest in the Nikola One is rather high. How high, you ask? How about 7000 orders with a $1500 deposit. Gosh, that is only a few hundred thousand orders shy of Tesla's future Model 3, but let's be fair, this is way more expensive and not as many families will want one (obviously, there are always a few soccer moms who want/need something bigger than an Escalade).


So, almost electric? Yep, since its electric power plant will give you a range of between 160-320 kms, depending on the load, fully electric is a non-starter. That would mean a cross country trucker could leave Halifax in June and arrive in Vancouver a couple of months later (maybe). Wouldn't work, so there is a turbine run by natural gas, that will recharge the batteries and allow the One to cover about 1920 kms between refills. As Tesla has done with quick charge stations in the US, Nikola Motors intends to set up fifty five natural gas depots across the US and Canada. Pretty ambitious? Well, it sure sounds like it to me.

But anyone who knows me (you know who you are), would argue that I say "no" to any changes until, I begin to mull it over and realize that it is the right thing to do (as they say, some minds are like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set - mine is not one of them). Elon Musk just might be a genius with an excellent business sense, but who is Nikola Motors? We shall see, folks, we shall see.

In the meantime, here is Nikola Tesla in his heyday with his ride and no, it is not electric.


I'll leave you with this, what will the next electric vehicle manufacturer be called???

Until next time.........



2 comments:

  1. I have little doubt that electric power is going to have a larger presence in the future. But one thing a person has to get his head wrapped around is that the electricity still has got to come from somewhere so we are constantly going back to either coal fired or natural gas generation, unless someone wants to take a stab at nuclear power which is very clean until something goes horribly wrong and you get another Grenoble. Wind generation has proven to be very 'dirty' in that it wastes a lot of output because of either too high or too low a frequency. Plus the cost of manufacturing, shipping, erecting and maintaining never gets recovered before a major overhaul comes due. Now they're talking about a CNG fired onboard steam turbine. Now let's talk about the car (and truck). Eventually you're going to need to replace the batteries. Some people I know are just finding out that it costs almost as much to dispose of the old batteries as it does to buy replacements. I don't like to constantly rain on someone's parade but electric power has still got a long way to go before it will be the cure all/end all. However, I applaud their efforts which will eventually succeed. I wish them luck...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi George, I'm aware of all your points, but it seems like they get swept aside in the rush to not pay weekly at the pumps, under the guise of saving the planet.

      Delete