Nikola has 'first-mover advantage' with new hydrogen fuel cell electric truck, CEO explains

we are shifting gears into the world of elect of electric vehicles shares of EV truck maker Nicola moving to the downside today which shares off just about 13 after the company missed on its most recent earnings results joining us now to break all that down and give us a look ahead for the future of Nikola Vehicles we want to bring in Michael loschler he's the CEO of Nicola Corporation also across supermanian our Autos reporter joining the conversation as well Michael it's good to see you here so certainly judging by the reaction in shares today off just about 13 percent the street was not satisfied with these results turning low here after your Revenue Miss also the production pause what's your message following this quarter a message from our side is we are very focused on North America in the fuel cell track and we also built up the hydrogen infrastructure at the same time we have taken important decisions we have actually sold our European business to iveco because it's in very good hands there and obviously it's important that we stay focused going forward in terms of the pause of the battery election truck is something which makes sense before we launch our fuel cell truck and we are happy to take orders for the battery electric truck going forward because we have a flexible manufacturing line so we are very focused focusing on the key things for Nikola and that is certainly North America the fuel cell truck and hydrogen infrastructure hey Michael pross here so I guess uh public understands sort of the why the joint venture between you and ith code the big large European Trump maker why did you guys decided to sell that business off to them I know you want to focus on the North American Market um but does that deal continue forward do you guys still want to uh work with IFCO and use them as a as a parts and Chassis supplier yes absolutely I mean it's a strong partnership and iveco will stay a shareholder of Nikola and we will take their cabins and their e-axis so we have a long-term Supply agreement so it's a really good partnership but the reason why it makes so much sense I mean it's better that iveco in Europe focuses on the European execution of things and we do the same here in North America it's much easier to do this here and we also need our engineering resources now to finalize our fuel cell truck so I think this is really a win-win for both companies so Michael here in the US you are pausing production of that battery electric truck like you said at the Arizona plan as you work to modify that plan what are your production targets look like for this year and given the fact that we could see slowing growth in the second half of the year how do you see that potentially affecting your business so we are actually more optimistic for the second half of the year in particular because we will launch our fuel cell track which is the best in class truck with a range of up to 500 miles and now we gave guidance this morning between 375 and 500 trucks for the total year but we lean more towards the fuel cell truck because we get feedback from customers that they prefer the better range the lower fuel time and also the weight so this is clearly going in the direction of the the fuel cell truck where also Nikola has a first mover Advantage there is nobody else out there and at the same time we put up the energy infrastructure so we lean more towards the fuel cell truck here so but Michael you don't see any signs of curbing demand or anything from some of your clients out there potential clients just in terms of the fact that we could in fact see a harsher slowdown than we had initially anticipated well look I mean the the um zero emission Mobility segment is still very very small and it's growing and we see that customers are very interested in that so we don't sense that we are impacted by the overall economy it's more about like the ESG road map and that people really now want to go into trucks without a mission that is what is happening our biggest bottleneck is really setting up the infrastructure for the electric trucks but we try to find Solutions with customers and dealers to do this as quickly as possible hey Michael so I know those customers include companies like Walmart and I'll show another private provider of service for the US Postal Service what are they telling you about that whole um infrastructure build at because there aren't that many hydrogen uh stations in the in the US that can actually refuel these um fuel cell trucks exactly right and that's why Nikola is uniquely positioned to set up really the hydrogen infrastructure and we will produce green hydrogen distributed and then dispense it because you have to really offer both things I think we have a world-class truck but we also need to have the energy infrastructure and we also offer very Innovative things like a mobile fueler so that we can bring our mobile fueler to the customer and then the customer can fuel there but it's very very important you need to have both we always say you need to have the Chicken and the Egg that is what customers are expecting and I think Nikola is uniquely positioned to offer this Michael there's a big focus on your cash reserves your cash burn that you just reported here in q1 some concerns just that you're going to have to need to raise more funds do you have another are you thinking about considering more stock sales cool I mean two things first of all cash burn will come down quite a bit because we have invested a lot in r d and you see the results I mean we have fantastic products but going forward r d will come down and also cash burn then will go down at the same time yes we will have to raise Capital we also ask stockholders for approval beginning of June so that we have a foundation then to issue more shares and raise more Capital going forward Michael oshuler CEO of Nikola Motors thanks so much for joining us this afternoon

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Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023