CERAWEEK: Nikola deploys mobile refueling stations before release of fuel cell trucks

The truck manufacturer Nikola says that its recently released mobile refueling station is designed to help spark sales of its fuel cell trucks in the near-term as permanent refueling infrastructure continues scaling up in the medium-term, helping to solve its "chicken or the egg dilemma."

On Jan. 18 the company announced its mobile fueler program, which can deploy hydrogen fuel units to trucking companies' parking lots or depots as a behind-the-fence fuel solution. The program is designed to support the company's sales of its imminent Tre FCEV model, which is expected to be released in the second half of 2023. The company reported that it has received orders for the hydrogen-powered trucks from Plug Power, which ordered 75 vehicles, and Biagi Brothers, which ordered 15.

Also in development is Nikola's first set of brick-and-mortar refueling station, the first of which is planned for Ontario, California. But because each of those stations takes several years to build, the company created the mobile refueling program to bridge the gap between truck sales and when those stations are planned to come online.

"If I'm selling fuel cell trucks in six months, customers are looking at us and saying, when's your first station?" Carey Mendes, president of energy at Nikola, said March 7 during CERAWeek by S&P Global. "So we've come up with a mobile fueler, which we can deploy right now. ... If you're a customer that says, 'I don't want to wait ten years or five years,' we give them a solution right now."

"If you tell them it's five years from now, folks may never adopt it. So you need to have solutions right now," Mendes said.

The build-out of hydrogen refueling infrastructure for heavy-duty and light-duty vehicles has occurred almost exclusively in California, which is aiming to meet former California Governor Jerry Brown's 2018 executive order to build 200 stations by 2025.

Yet while stakeholders understand that refueling infrastructure needs to co-arise with the fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles, "it hasn't quite played out that way," said Jennifer Hamilton of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership.

In January, the California Energy Commission said that the pace at which it was building out the refueling network was outstripping station demand from light-duty vehicles. The 62 stations currently operating in the state have a combined capacity to support 51,000 fuel cell vehicles, yet there are only just over 12,000 vehicles on the road.

But the heavy-duty vehicles market has a different set of dynamics, wherein companies need to ensure that their fleet is economical while achieving their climate and ESG goals. Trucking companies also need assurance of a wider geographic distribution of stations before committing to a hydrogen-powered fleet.

"You need to let them see the reality of the infrastructure, which I know is a risk," said James Kast, hydrogen infrastructure manager at Toyota. "You have to deal with low utilization. I think there has to be policy incentives like California has to do that – to incentivize large build-out ahead of time."