Nikola Corp NKLA Managing Director Steve Girsky said on Friday that the electric truck company was not concerned about competition from rival companies, including Tesla Inc.

What happened: One of Nikola’s customers began his transition to electric vehicles by purchasing six battery-powered trucks from a rival electric vehicle maker. But he only got 150 miles of range, despite being promised 220 miles. Plus, the trucks took an hour and a half to refuel, Girsky said, so he turned to Nikola.

“…now they’re frankly the largest owner of our trucks,” Girsky said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. The CEO was responding to a question about competition from rival truck makers, including electric giant Tesla, which already has an electric pickup truck, its Cybertruck, and plans to start production of its Tesla Semi truck next year.

Depending on the route, fuel cell trucks could be more efficient than battery-powered electric trucks, the CEO said, but added that battery-powered electric trucks do not work everywhere.

“In Colorado, for example, at high altitude and in cold weather, battery range drops quickly in cold weather. Our range will drop a little bit, but not nearly as much as a battery truck,” Girsky said, referring to the company’s hydrogen fuel cell trucks.

“There are use cases for both. We have customers who want to try ours, everyone else’s, including Tesla, and we’ll see where it all ends up,” Girsky added.

Nikola initially began delivering battery-electric trucks before hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks. However, after a few fire incidents, the BEV trucks were recalled in August 2023. The company is now returning the recalled battery-electric trucks to customers with improved battery packs and delivering new fuel cell trucks.

“I think it makes absolute sense to move forward with fuel cells now, as the market is not yet so full,” said the company’s CFO. Tom O’Brien said on Friday.

Why it is important: For the second quarter, Nikola reported revenue of $31.3 million, compared to $15.4 million a year earlier, beating analysts’ consensus estimate of $24.7 million. Adjusted loss per share was $2.67 for the quarter, compared to a loss of $5.90 a year earlier.

Nikola produced 77 trucks this quarter, compared to 33 a year ago, and delivered 73 trucks, compared to 45 a year ago.

Meanwhile, production of Tesla’s battery-powered electric truck Semi is expected to begin in late 2025.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has long been skeptical about hydrogen as an efficient energy source.

“Fuel cells should be called fool sells! Such a stupid choice for cars. Not even great for a rocket upper stage in my opinion, but at least not absurd,” Musk said back in March 2021.

In May 2022, Musk said the world would overwhelmingly choose batteries over hydrogen for energy storage, calling the latter “the dumbest thing I can think of for energy storage.”

Price promotion: Nikola shares closed Friday up 8.2% at $8.44, according to data from Benzinga Pro. The stock has fallen about 66% since the beginning of the year.

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Photo courtesy: Nikola Corporation