Last week General Motors announced a deeper partnership with Honda and now it’s announced a second partnership. The newest partnership is with startup Nikola.
General Motors will buy an 11 percent stake in Nikola for $2 billion, which will see GM engineer and build Nikola’s badger pickup truck. Battery electric and hydrogen fuel versions of the truck are planned. GM expects to receive in excess of $4 billion of benefits between the equity value of the shares, contract manufacturing of the Badger, supply contracts for batteries and fuel cells, and EV credits.
Nikola also expects to save over $4 billion in battery and powertrain costs over 10 years.
“By joining together, we get access to their validated parts for all of our programs, General Motors’ Ultium battery technology and a multi-billion dollar fuel cell program ready for production,” said Nikola Founder and Executive Chairman Trevor Milton. “Nikola immediately gets decades of supplier and manufacturing knowledge, validated and tested production-ready EV propulsion, world-class engineering and investor confidence.”
GM will also help Nikola reduce the cost of its other vehicles, including heavy trucks. Plus Nikola will use GM’s Ultium battery system and Hydrotec hydrogen fuel technology.
