Don’t Be Taken for a Scramble: Nikola Corp (NKLA) Is Not the Next Tesla
- Nikola’s market cap now exceeds that of Ford despite zero income projections for this three hundred and sixty five days.
- The renewable vitality carmaker will open its first truck next three hundred and sixty five days.
- Unlike Tesla, Nikola will enter a market with an ever-rising selection of avid gamers.
Days after it started trading following a reverse merger, renewable vitality carmaker Nikola Company (NASDAQ: NKLA) has surged over 500%.
Within the words of executive chairman and co-founder, Trevor Milton, Nikola is “charge bigger than Ford and FCA [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]” and is “Nipping on the heels of GM.”
Trevor Milton is no Elon Musk
In some corners of the market, Nikola Company is being likened to Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).
Nikola’s co-founder has even boasted that he is indubitably one of the few participants in the enviornment who can outcompete Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Stated Milton:
There’s very few participants who can out-Elon in this world and I’m indubitably one of them. Nikola is the pioneer in heavy-duty trucking and Tesla’s appropriate in actuality following in our footsteps.
That’s an sluggish boast–Nikola Company is another race-of-the-mill startup that shouldn’t lose Elon Musk any sleep. The handiest thing the two companies comprise on the total is that they’re each named for Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla.
The topic with hydrogen
The renewable vitality carmaker in the intervening time boasts four autos planned for open in the months and future years abet–Nikola One, Nikola Two, Nikola Tre, and Nikola Badger.
All four autos are hydrogen-powered, with Nikola Badger the most convenient one coming with a gasoline-cell electrical automobile (FCEV) version and a battery electrical automobile (BEV) version.
There is a reason hydrogen has no longer taken off as a substitute to fossil fuels in avenue transport despite the expertise existing for a protracted time.
For one, hydrogen as an vitality source is extremely inefficient
. The course of of fixing vitality into hydrogen, compressing, chilling, and transporting it earlier than transforming the hydrogen abet into vitality ends up in 62% vitality loss. If the initial vitality amount were 100 watts, handiest 38 watts would live for the intended converse.
Most critically for patrons, BEVs are a cheaper solution relative to FCEVs.
Nikola Motors makes Tesla’s money concerns look love child’s play
Tesla’s skeptics love to masks that the Elon Musk-led firm has handiest had a handful of quarterly earnings since itemizing publicly. But Nikola’s fundamentals look even worse when you desire into yarn the rising competitors that Tesla didn’t comprise in its early days.
Nikola initiatives zero revenues this three hundred and sixty five days and handiest expects to generate the first $1 billion in sales in 2023. It was founded half of a decade previously, nonetheless Nikola has already misplaced in relation to $190 million. On the tip of 2019, the company’s profit hand amounted to roughly $86 million.
Its first truck shall be launched next three hundred and sixty five days, and two FCEV autos shall be launched in 2023. By that time, Nikola shall be competing in the truck house without a longer appropriate Tesla nonetheless the Amazon-backed Rivian and the legacy carmakers.
So, in brief, Nikola is no longer the next Tesla–other than presumably in brief ardour.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article signify the author’s notion and could presumably per chance simply no longer be regarded as investment or trading suggestion from CCN.com. The writer holds no investment pickle in the above-mentioned companies.
This text was edited by Sam Bourgi for CCN.com.