The Nikola Corporation has announced an approximate $2-million grant from the US Department of Energy to better advance its research into autonomous refueling technologies for future hydrogen fueling stations. Nikola is a leading designer and manufacturer of heavy-duty commercial battery-electric vehicles, fuel-cell electric vehicles and energy infrastructure solutions.
The concept of autonomous fueling is part of the transportation industry’s effort to ensure fast, efficient, and safe fueling of a large onboard storage system to be less than 20 minutes for heavy-duty vehicles.
Nikola will attempt to develop an autonomous fueling system that can rapidly refuel heavy-duty fuel-cell electric trucks, while minimizing labor and challenges relating to ergonomics and maintenance of equipment, as compared to an equivalent manual fueling process.
“This funding is essential to advance key hydrogen fueling technologies that can improve the overall efficiency of fuel-cell commercial vehicles, while maintaining the safety and reliability standards required,” said Pablo Koziner, President of Energy and Commercial with Nikola. “The work we are doing with the Department of Energy and our partners on fueling technology is part of Nikola’s wholistic approach to the hydrogen ecosystem; supplementary to our work on heavy-duty vehicles, infrastructure, and energy solutions.”
Along with designing and building hydrogen fueling stations, Nikola develops, tests, and standardizes fueling hardware to facilitate the widespread adoption of heavy-duty fuel-cell electric trucks.
The company is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.