GM Electric Vehicles and Nikola Research Paper

Nikola

What deal has Nikola made with GM to build electric trucks? 

Nikola and GM's deal allows GM to work with Nikola (an electric-truck startup) to develop and manufacture new models. GM, an experienced and already established traditional automaker, will provide electric batteries and fuel cells for Nikola's trucks, including the future planned Badger pickup truck. According to the deal, GM will receive a $2 billion worth of stock and a seat on Nikola's board (Colias, 2020). 

What are the advantages of having a strategic alliance with GM in terms of environmental impact?

First, it is a fact that GM has the technology and the manufacturing scale required to comfortably produce and sustain the auto market, something that the current electronic companies lack. This deal allows GM to put into use its industries and for Nikola to not necessarily have to put have another auto manufacturing industry, therefore, ensuring the environment is not further negatively impacted. 

Second, and at an operational level, GM and Nikola's strategic alliance will result in the broad commercial use of GM's hydrogen fuel-cell technology (Danigelis, 2020). The technology behind a fuel-cell involves mixing oxygen and hydrogen from storage tanks on the vehicle to create electrical power (Colias, 2020). This technology will significantly lower the traditional engine's carbon footprint and improve the environmental impact resulting from motor vehicles. This technology will result in a reduction in greenhouse gases emission.

Lastly, the strategic deal between GM and Nikola revolves around and improves the production of the fuel-cell. The success of the alliance will see increased use of the fuel-cell in electric cars. This will translate to increased environmental benefits through improvements in air quality. There will be no toxic tailpipe emissions as fuel-cell emits only water vapor than the traditional engine (Abdelkareem et al., 2020). Fuel-cell will result in reduced noise as even electric track and buses are very quiet.

References

Abdelkareem, M. A., Elsaid, K., Wilberforce, T., Kamil, M., Sayed, E. T., & Olabi, A. (2020). Environmental aspects of fuel cells: A review. Science of The Total Environment, 752, 141803.

Colias, M. (2020, Sept. 8). GM Stock Jumps on News of Stake in Electric-Vehicle Company Nikola. The wall street Journal.

Danigelis, A. (2020, Sept. 11). GM and Nikola form partnership to accelerate electronic truck production. Environment and Energy Leader. Retrieved from https://www.environmentalleader.com/2020/09/gm-nikola-electric-trucks-production/