Not even the innovative mind of Nikola Tesla could've foreseen his name divided among two publicly traded electric vehicle companies, but here we are.
Nikola Motor Company, which went public through an acquisition Friday, builds zero-emission semi-trucks and pickup trucks, powered by either batteries or hydrogen-electricity.
"The difference between Nikola and everybody else is that we provide the entire supply chain," Trevor Milton, founder and CEO of Nikola Motor, told Cheddar Thursday after his company started trading on the Nasdaq. "That means the truck, the fuel, the service, the warranty, and the maintenance."
Nikola has ambitions to build the largest hydrogen network in the world along pre-determined routes that commercial customers consistently travel along. Beverage conglomerate Anheuser-Busch has already ordered 800 hydrogen-electric powered semi-trucks from the company.
"You don't build that station until all trucks are ordered. That allows you to never lose money and never build on speculation," Milton said, adding that he expects his goal of a 700-station network to take more than seven years to accomplish.
Despite the recent global economic disruption, Milton says this was the perfect time to tap into the public equities market.
"Once Coronavirus opens up, we're going to get over to Germany, make sure that factory is ready to rock and roll, start spitting trucks out," Milton said, estimating it will take about 12 months to get production up and running.
Nikola also seems to have a complicated relationship with EV competitor Tesla. While Milton praises Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk as a trailblazer, Musk has called Nikola's core technology a "Fool" cell and tried to invalidate the company's semi-truck door patent.
"It's kind of cool," Milton said. "It's definitely a compliment they're coming in here because we launched our truck -- they followed us in the market."
After years of development, Nikola is less than one year away from generating revenue and its factory in Germany is nearly complete, according to Milton.
"We're the first trucking company in the world to bring a zero-emission truck to full production," Milton said proudly. "We beat Daimler, we beat Volvo, and we beat Tesla, and it's the coolest thing in the world to be able to say that."
While $NKLA got an unenthusiastic response from investors in its first official day of trading, Milton's optimistic outlook expands beyond his own company -- to his country.
"Nikola is America's comeback story," Milton said. "We get to create thousands of jobs and we get to set a standard for the world to follow, and I think that's why this moment is so perfect."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
