Nikola, one of Tesla’s serious competitors in the field of electric commercial vehicles, is launching the pre-sale of its hydrogen pick-up Badger.
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The carmaker Nikola, named after the company Tesla after the well-known inventor, has attracted attention in recent days mainly due to its success on the stock exchange. Although it has not yet produced a single machine, its value has surpassed that of Ford.
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However, the situation should change next year and Nikola should launch his hydrogen tractor Tre, which wants to compete with the battery tractor Tesla Semi. A few years later, the arrival of the Badger hydrogen tractor, which the company introduced in the form of a concept in February this year, is also expected. And she quickly caught attention.
Badger promises a distinctive design combined with fantastic parameters. While the basic battery version talked about a range of about 483 kilometers, the hydrogen version should offer a range of up to 966 kilometers. Add to that independent all-wheel drive, power in the range of 400 to 900 hp (with the overboost function) or high versatility and you will quickly understand the attention of half the USA.
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But so far, Badger was just a concept that we didn’t really have to take so seriously. But that is changing today, as its pre-sale was launched. It can be implemented in three levels, from $ 250 to $ 5,000 (CZK 5,960 – 119,266), with each of these amounts deducted from the final purchase price.
In addition, customers who subscribe to Badger will enter the raffle for free and receive tickets to the “Nikola World” event, which is scheduled to take place on December 3-5 this year in Phoenix, USA. At the same time, Nikola promises the visitors of the event the opportunity to see Badger in action, which could mean interesting examples of a hydrogen worker in action.
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In addition, guests of the event can look forward to being one of the first to see the fantastic trick of the new Badger: the drinking fountain. In response to the question of what Badger will do with the water produced by the operation of hydrogen fuel cells, CEO Trevor Milton said the following on Twitter.
“We will use most of the washer fluid and then part as clean drinking water. Yes, you heard me right, we will have a drinking fountain in our truck. “
The use of water generated by the operation of hydrogen fuel cells for drinking is not really a big novelty. According to the AutoBlog website, which pointed out the pre-sale of Badger and his new special feature, drinking water from fuel cells has already been used, for example, by astronauts from the Apollo missions in the 1960s and by shuttle crews in the recent past.
Trevor Milton subsequently announced in several Twitter posts that, unlike the competition (guess who he thought), Nikola was not launching a pre-sale to raise additional funds to develop the car. In addition, customers can choose whether they want a battery or electric version during pre-order.
