COOLIDGE, Ariz. (AP) – It is the facility that doubters predicted would never be built by a firm that would fail.
On Wednesday, Nikola answered its critics by queuing up almost a dozen regular production battery-electric Class 8 trucks for shipping to customers from the first phase of a $600 million plant in the desert between Phoenix and Tucson.
“For years, we’ve been a pre-revenue startup,” CEO Mark Russell remarked during a production launch event. “We’re now going to be a revenue-generating firm, and we’ll remain that forever.”
The company has letters of intent and orders from major U.S. fleets for several hundred trucks. Covenant Transport, Heniff Transportation Systems, and Saia Inc. are among them. Total Transportation Services (TTSI) receives VIN No. 1 for drayage operations in the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Nikola was commissioned by TTSI to build 100 trucks. It is still putting mileage on two pre-series Tre units that Nikola donated for testing last December. The current mileage total reaches 11,000 miles.
14 battery-electric truck assembly stations
The plant’s first-half phase, measuring 250,000 square feet, employs 250 people. More workers are being hired on a weekly basis while building on an extra 160,000 square feet progresses. The second phase is expected to be completed in 2023.
“We have drones out here every day,” said Mark Duchesne, Nikola’s worldwide head of production, looking for signs of development after the July 2020 groundbreaking. “I recall reading somewhere that the phantom corporation is constructing a phantom facility.” This is true.”
Nikola team members signed the first steel pillar to rise from the earth, indicating the start of construction.
“It’s usually the final pillar that gets signed,” Duchesne explained. “We signed the first one because this is just the start.”
The assembly procedure begins with a steel frame imported from Mexico by Metalsa. Workers attach brackets to the frame, then air brakes and high-voltage electric hardware before the frame is flipped by a massive pulley to accommodate the final components and a cab brought from Madrid. There are 14 assembly stations in all.
At computer consoles within the work cells, all quality processes are monitored. The trucks travel from station to station on automated guided vehicles until they reach the end of the line for validation and final checks. The thunderous sounds of body shop stamping presses are absent, save for the odd sound of hand tools such as torque wrenches.
Nikola may later build a body shop. Nikola President Michael Lohscheller stated that the company will soon localize cab assembly to reduce the ongoing costs of international shipping.
A delayed ramp-up in manufacturing for battery-electric trucks
By the end of the year, the production ramp calls for five trucks each day. Nikola intends to produce 500 trucks in Coolidge this year, followed by production in a joint venture with Iveco in Ulm, Germany, beginning with 2,000 units in 2023. Production in Coolidge is expected to reach 2,500 trucks in 2023, including a hydrogen fuel cell version of the Tre.
When all three phases of the Coolidge factory are completed, Nikola will be able to construct 20,000 trucks per year on two shifts.
The cabover Tre was designed to be sold in European markets where roadways and city streets are narrower than in the United States, posing mobility issues. The Tre’s turning radius belies its size. U.S. fleets expressed interest in the Tre a few years ago, prompting Nikola to place it ahead of a hydrogen-powered fuel cell conventional body sleeper cab in 2024.
Adding distance from the past
Nikola stock, which closed Wednesday at $7.46, remains under pressure, as do most other electric and autonomous firms that went public through special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) in the last few years.
Nikola put additional space between itself and months of brutal negative attention during the launch ceremony attended by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, which began with a short seller’s report in September 2020 that claimed Nikola had faked several of its technology promises. Trevor Milton, the company’s founder, will stand trial in federal court in New York in July on fraud allegations.
Russell, who has taken over as Nikola’s top stakeholder after Milton sold off millions of shares of his once-dominant ownership interest, avoided any mention of Milton and even the company’s start in the basement of Milton’s Salt Lake City house.
That exclusion was made in honor of Ducey, who enticed Nikola to relocate to Arizona in 2018. Since then, he has attracted several electric vehicle and battery cell manufacturers to the state.
After touring the plant, Ducey noted, “Nikola has become a driving force in Arizona’s rapidly expanding electric vehicle industry.” “Nikola is unquestionably in control of the future of transportation and trade.”
