Matthew Hurley has been dreaming of an electric semi-truck for more than 10 years. As a truck driver, he has been thinking of what one might look like and how it would work.
Hurley, an owner operator leased to Nashville, Tenn.-based New Waverly Transportation, is currently strapped with a monthly truck payment of $1,000 and is spending $1,000 per week on fuel. He is doling out $1,700 per month, on average, to maintain his aging diesel-powered tractor.
He read an article earlier this year about Nikola Motor Company (NMC) and its founder, serial entrepreneur Trevor Milton. NMC has been developing an electric semi-truck.
To see it in person, he came to Nikola’s headquarters in Salt Lake City Thursday where Milton unveiled a working prototype of Nikola One, a zero emissions semi-truck that utilizes a fully electric drivetrain powered by high-density lithium batteries.
“This is far better than anything I imagined,” Hurley said after the reveal. “This is way over the top.”
Wait a minute. A zero-emissions electric truck that runs on hydrogen, one of the most abundant and renewable energy resources? And with double the horsepower of conventional diesel trucks?
