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Nikola Motor unveils 1,000 HP hydrogen-electric truck with 1,200 mi. range
Nikola Motor Company unveiled its zero emissions Class 8 truck at company headquarters this week. Dubbed the Nikola One, the once all-electric prototype now hydrogen powered, boasts an incredible 1,200 miles of range and will be stiff competition for Tesla’s planned entry into the long haul trucking segment with its all-electric Tesla Semi.
Nikola One is sleek and futuristic. Because it has no diesel engine, the cab can be pushed forward as far as possible to give the driver a panoramic view of the road ahead. Individual electric motors for each of its six wheels provides an incredible 1,000 horsepower and 2,000 lb-ft of torque. Both numbers are considerably higher than for a typical tractor.
Power comes from a 320 kWh battery developed by the company. “Our battery engineers have made major advances in storage and cooling,” said Nikola founder and CEO Trevor Milton. “We believe our lithium battery packs are more energy dense and weigh less than any available vehicle production pack per kWh.”
The company had previously designed Nikola One as an electric truck that would have a range extender via a turbine powered by natural gas. But at the reveal, the company announced the turbine has been replaced by a hydrogen fuel cell that will keep the battery charged and provide a range between 800 to 1,200 miles.
The prototype on display this week is technological marvel. An array of sensors and cameras permit the driver to have a full 360º view around the entire rig at all times, eliminating blind spots all together. Inside the cab there is room for a one or two full size beds, a refrigerator/freezer, a 40″ curved 4K TV with Apple TV, as well as Wi-Fi and 4G LTE connectivity. Comfort and convenience for the driver will be unparalleled.
The company says it is evaluating a number of locations for its factory. “Nikola will build a world-class advanced manufacturing facility which will create thousands of new jobs,” says Trevor Milton. He claims the factory will be able to build 50,000 trucks a year by 2020.
So far, one might be forgiven for thinking the Nikola One is mostly vaporware except for one thing. The company has struck a deal with Ryder Systems, which has agreed to be Nikola’s exclusive nationwide distribution and maintenance provider. Ryder has a network of over 800 service locations in North America today.
“We are extremely excited to finally show off the Nikola One to the public for the first time,” said Milton. “There are many out there that wondered if we would deliver, but today we proudly show off the most advanced semi-truck ever built. We couldn’t be more thrilled to have one of the best brands in America, Ryder, as our trusted partner providing nationwide sales, service and warranty for Nikola Motor Company.”
The financial plan for the company calls for leasing the trucks for 72 months at rates of between $5,000 and $7,000 a month. The lease fee will cover all scheduled maintenance at a Ryder facility and the cost of hydrogen fuel. Talking a page from the Tesla playbook, Nikola is accepting reservations for its battery/fuel cell Class 8 truck. It says it has received billions of dollars worth of deposits which cost $1,500 and are fully refundable.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has let it be known that he also has his eye on the heavy truck market. We can be sure his vision for a Tesla Semi won’t involve any onboard fossil fueled range extender engines or what he dismissively calls “fool cells.”
The Coast of Hydrogen
Nikola says it intends to develop a network of 350 hydrogen fueling stations across North America for its trucks, beginning in 2018. It would be similar to the Supercharger network Tesla has been building to support long distance travel for its fleet of electric cars. But here’s the rub.
Hydrogen refueling stations cost $2 million or more to construct. It is estimated that a typical Tesla Supercharger location costs about one tenth as much to build. Exactly who will be paying for the hydrogen refueling system is unclear. And there are other issues with using hydrogen. Yes, the waste products of a fuel cell are water vapor and heat. But getting the hydrogen requires tremendous amounts of energy.
In the US, most hydrogen is derived from natural gas. Take the process back a step or two and that natural gas is often the result of fracking, a process that at the very least is controversial and at worst results in heavy pollution of the land and groundwater in the vicinity. Whether the Nikola One can accurately be called “zero emissions” is a matter for debate.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
Tesla Cybercab launch gets official date in Austin with dedicated event
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
