Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/696174
6 www.bigrigowner.com J U LY 2 0 1 6 COVER STORY > An upstart company is promising the coming-launch of a new Class 8 truck that company founder Trevor Milton says will "even the playing field" be- tween large fleets and owner opera- tors seeking to make a living. "I love owner operators," he says. "I'm a champion of them. It's been my goal to help them." How he plans to help them is by building Nikola One – a 2,000 horsepower electric semi-truck with a range, he claims, of roughly 1,200 miles. Milton, who originally founded Nikola Motor Company (NMC) to design and manufacture electric vehicles, energy storage systems and electric vehicle drivetrain compo- nents, says Nikola One is capable of pulling a total gross weight of 80,000 pounds. The majority of the truck's components are being de- veloped by NMC, but the company turned to Meritor for help in co-designing the industry's first-ever indepen- dent suspension. "By working together with some of the top engineering firms in America, we were able to design vehicles that have previously been thought impos- sible to design," Milton says. "We want to even the playing field and income inequalities seen between owner operators and fleets for the first time in recent trucking history. This is just the beginning of what's ahead for America, our company and the electric vehicle market." Milton says the truck's operational cost per mile is somewhere between 20-30 cents per-mile, roughly half of most diesel-powered semis, but its purchase price is expected to range from $350,000 to $415,000, depend- ing on options. Reservations for some of the first units, ongoing today, will set you back a fully-refundable $1,500 and the company says the trucks will be delivered in the order in which they are received. The first 5,000 orders will be enrolled in a free fuel program, in which drivers will Nikola Motor Company targets owner-operators with electric truck By Jason Cannon