I'm only a few minutes into the TeslaCharts interview with @nikoIatrevor and it's already packed with inaccurate and misleading info. Ugh...a painful thread. I'm sorry/You're welcome. 1/... https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/758369/4605602-episode-35-trevor-milton?play=true

Trevor: battery electric vehicles might be more efficient, but the power coming from the grid is not clean.
Truth: If Nikola can claim its power is renewable (they do), it is not accurate to say power for BEVs comes from fossil fuels. 40% BEV owners add rooftop solar.

Trevor: we still haven't selected a fuel cell provider and that's the heart of the vehicle.
Question: do your investors know you don't have contracts for the core of your vehicle yet?
Side note: no contracts in place for battery cells yet either.

"Whether we go with a @BoschGlobal fuel cell or we partner with another person is really up to us at Nikola. We're not forced to do anything. That's kind of the heart and soul of the vehicle, the fuel cell." - @nikolatrevor

"[ @BoschGlobal] make the majority of their money in diesel parts, injectors and so forth."
Actual Bosch revenue sources:
Source: https://assets.bosch.com/media/global/bosch_group/our_figures/pdf/bosch-annual-report-2019.pdf

Trevor: "the world in trucking does not revolve around efficiency...it's actually cost per mile. Efficiency goes into that slightly."
He goes on to compare efficiency of producing (high energy density) diesel, efficiency of producing electricity from natural gas, etc. Ugh.

. @nikolamotor cost of hydrogen already down to $3-4/kg. Is this Nikola's cost, wholesale pricing, or retail pricing? Without context, this is almost irrelevant
"I have got so much experience about this"
"I know this [hydrogen] stuff better than just about anyone I've encountered"

Contracts with @AnheuserBusch are for 1 million miles (not the 700k miles/contract from Nikola's investor filings).

"When you can standardize a hydrogen system, you're seeing a cost reduction of more than..."
"when we first started, the stations were going to be $50-60 million and now we're down to $14 million bucks."
- @nikolatrevor
Relevant: each station can support 210 trucks.

It's not clear if he's talking about hydrogen production, compression, or fueling, but it sounds like he's talking about all of the above, based on Nikola's model of producing on site.

"We've been able to build the most advanced hydrogen fueling station in the world. We have one here in Phoenix at our headquarters, operational. We're getting ready to put in all the electrolyzers right now" Just waiting on permits from the city.

Electrolyzers are the part of the process that generates hydrogen by applying electricity. Without these (from @nelhydrogen), how are you making hydrogen in Phoenix, @nikoIatrevor?

. @nelhydrogen has a factory right now, but they're building a much larger factory to support Nikola's supply. "They've been able to drive the cost down of those electrolyzers many times." - @nikolatrevor
Improvements come by increasing automation in electrolyzer assembly.

Nikola's Phoenix fueling station has been through multiple revisions. New electrolyzers are for the next iteration. Nikola built the first station in 7 months (at its HQ). It's going 2 years to build the 8 ton/day stations. Locations yet to be announced.

Trevor repeatedly reinforces his mastery of hydrogen/electrolyzers/fuel cells/batteries/grid power/grid balancing saying that "they don't understand. it takes decades of understanding to talk about..."

"Our goal is to be completely clean on the energy, but we all know that's not possible on day 1. It will be cleaner than the grid energy." - @nikoIatrevor
Installing solar + storage would fix this. From day 1.

"Are hydrogen fuel cell trucks less efficient than battery? Yes, by a few times. It's not just a little bit, it's more. But hydrogen fuel energy, the energy to create the hydrogen fuel is many times cheaper than battery energy..."

"...It's because you're not in the city creating the fuel."
- @nikoIatrevor
@Tesla Megachargers for Semis will not be in cities either, but along highways, much like truck stops are today, with copious amounts of cheap land for solar to power them.

What Trevor calls "hydrogen fuel energy" is called electricity is the rest of the world.
39 minutes into this 1 hr 39 min podcast.

"We have the most advanced battery electric truck in the world." The first production battery electric trucks from Nikola will come off the line in Ulm, Germany at the end of next year.

"You can't run a battery electric truck on the freeway, even if you have almost free energy. Because the weight penalty is so huge. Unless you go 200 miles then stop and recharge and that doesn't do you any good."
- @nikolatrevor

"The energy on the freeway, we tap directly into the federal transmission lines and we contract directly with groups. An example would be like a Tennessee Valley Authority or something where you have a huge hydro plant..."

"...you have tons of energy and you can pull it out on the freeway on the federal transmission line where you're not going in to the utility. You're contracting directly with them, you wheel it, you pay a small fee, like a fraction of a cent per kilowatt hour." - @nikolatrevor

Nikola is banking on leveraging grid services to get cheap or even free electricity to generate hydrogen. This essentially uses excess power from the generation/transmission grid to produce hydrogen, but competes directly with grid scale batteries & @Tesla Tesla's Autobidder.

. @nikolatrevor compares the cost of hydrogen to the cost retail customers pay to Supercharge at @Tesla's Superchargers. For Semis, Tesla guaranteed a rate of $.07/kWh for truckers.