Nikola trucks making progress

In April Nikola delivered the first units of its long-awaited Tre battery electric trucks. In fact, the company that started producing the Tre BEV at the end of March delivered 11 vehicles in April, which is a first.

“During the first quarter, we reached a significant milestone with the start of serial production for the Nikola Tre BEV at our Coolidge, Arizona manufacturing facility and are currently delivering saleable trucks to dealers for customer deliveries,” said Mark Russell, Nikola’s chief executive officer, in the first quarter press release.

“We look forward to scaling production and delivering 300-500 production vehicles to customers this year," he added.

This optimism contrasts with the problems facing the entire automotive sector today. The resurgence of Covid-19 in China has led authorities to impose strict lockdowns in the country, which has resulted in the closure of factories and continued disruptions to supply chains. Suppliers to vehicle manufacturers are therefore struggling to keep up, which significantly slows down the assembly of vehicles. In addition, the Russian invasion of Ukraine drove up the prices of raw materials such as nickel used in battery development.

"While there is still uncertainty about the magnitude and duration of any other supply chain impact from this event, we continue to have full supplier commitment and are confident in our ability to achieve our full-year target range without making revisions. Based on our current line of sight, we reconfirm the key electrical components available to meet our delivery targets," he added.

Brady assured analysts that Nikola has enough battery cells to build more than 500 Nikola Tre BEVs, and battery packs to build 300 to 500 Nikola Tre BEVs.