A Big Bang For Hydrogen Truckmaker Nikola As Stock Surge Boosts Founder’s Fortune To $8…

Nikola Motor, a maker of hydrogen- and battery-powered semis, saw its stock more than double on the third day of trading on Nasdaq

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, the apparent result of enthusiasm from European investors, interest in the company’s pickup truck and a limited number of shares available. The increase more than doubled the net worth of founder Trevor Milton.

Shares of the Phoenix-based company ended at $73.27, up 104%. That put Nikola’s market cap at about $26.4 billion, based on approximately 360 million shares outstanding. Company founder and executive chairman Milton is the biggest shareholder, with a stake worth about $8.1 billion at the close on Monday, according to a Forbes estimate. The company late Sunday said it would start taking orders for hydrogen- and battery-powered Badger pickup trucks this month, and Milton thinks expectations for additional revenue from that product ginned up some excitement. 

The limited availability of shares “has a little bit to do with it but I think a lot of what happened (today) is the fact that we announced the Nikola Badger and Nikola World, that the reservations open on June 29,” Milton tells Forbes. “Our entire business model was built on the semi-truck. So we’ve been priced at what our company will make based upon semis. A lot of analysts and a lot of investors didn’t really expect the Badger to be out this fast.”

While the company hasn’t said when production of Badgers, which will be produced by an automaker that Nikola hasn’t yet identified, will begin, Milton is confident demand will be high. “The amount of reservations and revenue that we’re expecting after June 29, when we open it up, is going to be astonishing–probably one of the greatest reservation numbers, I think, in recent history.” 

Badger is to be powered by a combination of batteries and the same hydrogen fuel cell system Nikola developed for long-haul semis, with a range of up 600 miles per fueling. That’s about double the expected range of Tesla

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’s Cybertruck and Rivian’s R1T, which rely on lithium-ion battery packs. Badger’s pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

Nikola began trading on Nasdaq on June 4, after completing a reverse merger with publicly listed VectoIQ, rather than through a conventional initial public offering. Although it won’t start delivering vehicles until 2021 it’s worth just a bit less than Ford Motor Co.

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’s $30 billion market cap at Monday’s close. The company is also seeing an increase in investment in the shares by European-based funds, which didn’t initially show up last week, and purchases by investors who took a short position and needed to cover it today, Milton said. 

“That caused them to have to go buy shares on the market. And it was a really bad time to be short, that’s for sure.”

Nikola has secured truck orders worth $10 billion from companies led by Anheuser-Busch, which wants 800 of its nonpolluting semis. So far, Nikola hasn’t generated much revenue but estimated in an SEC filing that sales will jump from $150 million in 2021 to $3.2 billion by 2024 as it ramps up production. In 2024, it expects to sell or lease 7,000 battery-powered units and 5,000 hydrogen fuel cell trucks, according to its filing. Those figures don’t include potential revenue from the Badger.

There’s been a steady uptick in interest in hydrogen for heavy-duty trucks, particularly long-haul vehicles, as fuel cell power systems are much lighter than batteries and can be refueled about as fast as diesel and gasoline models. Along with commercial vehicle maker CNH/Iveco, Bosch and Meritor, Nikola also counts South Korean solar panel maker Hanwha and Norway’s Nel as key industrial partners that helping get it sci-fi-styled semis on the road and fueled up. Like Elon Musk’s Tesla, Nikola plans to build and operate fuel stations to support its vehicles. 

Fuel cell technology, which makes electricity in a chemical reaction involving hydrogen and oxygen with only water vapor as a byproduct, has been around since the 1960s, but earlier iterations were far too costly and not durable enough for heavy daily use. That’s changed dramatically in the past decade, with costs for the materials and fuel tanks dropping steadily as the technology matured. While industrial hydrogen is typically sourced from natural gas, new methods for generating “green” hydrogen from water and electricity from solar or wind farms have made the fuel much more compelling to environmental regulators in California, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China.