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Diesel mileage may be on the way for us
Excerpts from an article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal earlier this week:
"Utah millionaire Trevor Milton signed up a Tennessee manufacturer to assemble his long-range Nikola One electric trucks. On paper at least, they'd run 1,200 miles on hydrogen fuel cells capable of 15 miles per gallon, more than double the mpg of the typical 18-wheel diesel truck.
Thompson Machinery, the Nashville firm that services diesel freight trucks and heavy equipment in Memphis, already has agreed to maintain the Nikolas at its garages in Tennessee and Mississippi and has also invested in Milton’s Nikola Motor Co.
“We’re making a bet it’ll make its way to the heavy-duty highway fleet,’’ said Steve Lainhart, vice president of Thompson’s power division.
Hand over $7,000 every month, and Nikola Motors would provide the tractor truck and the hydrogen, maintain the power plant at no extra charge and in a nod to Uber regularly link the driver to shippers who need loads delivered.
While that lease may sound steep, $7,000 is close to the monthly payment on a $150,000 loan for a diesel truck.
Diesel costs look likely to rise again under the EPA’s pending Phase 2 greenhouse gas rules. These would reduce carbon emissions and raise fuel economy but tack $15,000 on the price of a diesel truck and its accompanying trailer made after 2020. This isn’t the first surge in pricing.
Over nearly two decades, stricter air quality regulations forced the diesel engine and oil industries to slash noxious sulfur emissions from big trucks. Unhealthy air over congested cities cleared, while the technology added up to $20,000 to the price of the typical 18 wheeler powered by a 500-horsepower diesel.
With that kind of uptick, the 1,000-horsepower Nikola One appears affordable, and throwing in maintenance and freight dispatching can appeal to many of the nation’s 350,000 registered owner-operators of heavy-duty trucks, analysts say.
“This could be a game changer,” said heavy-truck analyst Antti Lidstrom of market researcher IHS Markit in Denver.
Recently, Ryder Truck Rental, the Miami company that leases out big rigs, agreed to buy 5,000 Nikola trucks. Fitzgerald Glider Kits signed up to make them outside Nashville at Byrdstown, Tennessee. And the Chattanooga truck line U.S. Xpress Enterprises announced it’d test Nikolas on routine delivery runs."
It might not happen in the next few years, but hopefully smaller trucks will benefit from this technology in the future.
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Jim in Memphis, Wife of 51 years is Brenda
2019 F450 6.7 Powerstroke
2018 Mobile Suites 40RSSA
2021 40' Jayco Eagle
2001 Road king w/matching Harley sidecar
2021 Yamaha X2 Wolverine 1000
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