Nikola inaugurates first HYLA modular hydrogen refueling station in Ontario, CA
Nikola, producer of fuel cell and battery electric semi trucks, held a grand opening for the first of its HYLA refueling stations. The goal is to build a hydrogen refueling network that can be rolled out quickly, and built up over time as fuel cell trucks become more common.
There’s a big push for zero emission trucks in California right now, in response to California’s new truck regulations. That push is particularly focused on the trucking routes between the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the distribution centers of the Inland Empire – which Ontario lies at the heart of.
For a zero emission truck, you’ve got basically two choices: batteries, or hydrogen fuel cells.
Nikola sells both of these, but the problem with hydrogen is that the electrical grid is already built out, and there’s relative ease to add new chargers, whereas hydrogen fueling stations are a more involved effort.
So Nikola created its HYLA concept, which allows it to roll out temporary refueling stations in targeted areas under more simplistic permitting and construction schemes, with the potential to build these stations into a larger permanent construction later on.
As of now, the refueling station is… basically just an asphalt-and-gravel lot, with a building for 24/7 support on-site, across the street from the Ontario Airport. But it only took a few months for Nikola to set this up, which is key given the rapid rollout of electric trucks in California, especially for drayage (moving goods from port to distribution centers).
The station consists of two large liquid hydrogen tanks on trailers, each holding over 800 kilograms of hydrogen stored in liquid form. This is enough hydrogen for about 20-25 fillups. The Nikola Tre FCEV holds about 70kg of hydrogen in a tank, but fillups won’t always fill the entire tank.
Filling up takes about 20 minutes, with technicians on hand to manage the process. Fueling with highly compressed hydrogen (700 bar) is a little more complicated than uncompressed diesel or high-powered DC chargers. The equipment onboard the tank trailer also includes motors and pumps to turn the liquid hydrogen into compressed gaseous hydrogen before putting it into the Tre’s tank.
The process is also quite noisy due to the pumps onboard the trailer unit, and there is some loss of hydrogen during the pumping process – hydrogen molecules are tiny, and really hard to keep in place.
Nikola says it has been filling these tanks once every day or two so far, but wants to scale up to filling about 50-70 trucks a day, which will require daily deliveries of liquid hydrogen. Currently, that liquid hydrogen is “gray” hydrogen, which means it was produced by methane, a fossil fuel. FCEVs are still more efficient than diesel vehicles when run on hydrogen made from methane, but not as efficient as battery EVs charged from methane-generated electricity.
But just like with BEVs – it’s even better if the fuel comes from a better source. Hydrogen could theoretically be generated by electrolysis of water, powered by clean energy. This is called “green hydrogen,” and Ole Hofelmann, President of Nikola Energy, told us that Nikola would like to set up a green energy hydrogen electrolysis plant in order to produce its own liquid hydrogen and then deliver it to its own stations in its own trucks, making the whole loop have zero emissions. But that’s some ways off.
While this is only a temporary station for now, Nikola plans to make it more permanent in the future – paving the lot, building permanent pumps and so on. As that happens, the trailers can be sent to the next site, as an “advance team” to set up the site before permanent construction (and lots of permitting) begins. Nikola says it wants to have 9 stations set up in California by the end of Q2 and 14 this year – which seems ambitious. Today was the grand opening for this station, but it has been in operation for about a month and a half now.
The truck – the Nikola Tre Fuel Cell semi
The higher energy density of the hydrogen – stored at 10,000psi in four 450lb tanks behind the cab – means that the Tre FCEV has longer range (500mi) than competing electric trucks. This doesn’t matter all that much for drayage, but Nikola told us that one driver does a weekly loop filling up in Oakland, CA, driving down to Long Beach, then out to Ontario, then filling up and heading back to Oakland. This is too long a trip for most BEV trucks (except one, at least – we’ve seen the Tesla Semi do similar mileage).
We spoke with a driver, Edward from 4 Gen Logistics, who’s been driving the Tre FCEV for about 6,000 miles. He said that he he was initially intimidated by the new technology (and by the climb to get in the truck in the first place – it sits VERY HIGH), but now he likes the Tre more than other BEV trucks he’s driven like the Volvo VNR, Kenworth, and Daimler eCascadia. He says this is because the longer range means he can do 2-3 trips to the port and back in one shift, which he hasn’t been able to do with the BEV trucks. And it comes with a features to make his life easier, like automatic tire pressure and load sensing.
He also likes the performance. Similar to other electric trucks, it has a ton of torque, but Edward said the FCEV is even better at climbing hills with a full load than the BEVs he’s driven are.
I’ve driven the Daimler and Volvo myself, and both were super impressive in their drivability. I’ve ridden in the Tre FCEV tractor (with no trailer) on two occasions, and the ride is extremely quiet for a 26,200lb, 536hp tractor (about 3,000lbs lighter than the BEV – both get an extra 2,000lb weight limit, though the FCEV’s extra 2k lbs only applies in 5 states, while the BEV’s is federal). I’m also impressed with the strength of its regenerative braking – though that’s particularly hard to judge without a trailer attached.
The FCEV does have similar horsepower to the Kenworth and about 100 more horsepower than the Volvo and Daimler, but it has a much smaller battery that it’s pulling that power from. Nikola’s fuel cell stack is large, but it mainly works to charge the 164kWh onboard battery, which then goes on to power the wheels. Most hydrogen vehicles have a battery to buffer the power coming from the fuel cell stack, but this is a particularly large one, even for a semi truck.
Electrek’s Take
We at Electrek were skeptical of Nikola from early on. There are a lot of EV startups out there, and we try to cover as many of them as we can. But it’s a difficult business, and many of them are likely to fail. Everyone should always keep on guard about untested claims from new companies.
Nikola was one of those companies that made early claims that ended up not being true. As a result, its founder and former CEO, Trevor Milton, ended up in prison.
It has moved through a few CEOs since then, but seems to have largely put the Milton era behind it. Nikola is making trucks now, and has delivered far more trucks than Tesla has delivered Semis, both BEV and FCEV (though it had to recall all of its BEVs last year).
And now we’ve ridden in the FCEV twice, and it worked rather well – it ran under its own power, not just downhill like Milton’s “Nikola One”. And drivers seem to like it. That’s good progress.
As for the feasibility of fuel cells in general – many of our readers question its application and whether it’s better than BEV. We share those questions, particularly given that ~95% of hydrogen is currently produced from methane, which means it’s a lot dirtier to fill up on hydrogen than on CA grid electricity (which is generated from ~54% non-polluting sources).
California is working on adding requirements to its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) which would require a certain percentage of “green” hydrogen to earn credits, so that might be cleaning up if progress is made on offering commercial green hydrogen credits. And if Nikola manages to build those electrolysis plants, that could solve the problem too (we also remember Tesla saying every Supercharger would have solar panels way back in 2012, and several hundred billion dollars in revenue later, that, uh, hasn’t happened).
But all of that is a long way off. However, we say similar things with EVs – even if an EV is charged with full coal power, it’s still cleaner than a gas car, and as the grid cleans up, the EV cleans up too. Same with FCEVs – if green hydrogen makes its way onto the market (or if governments finally implement carbon pricing as they should have done 100 years ago) an FCEV suddenly becomes much cleaner as well.
And if you don’t have trucks out there, then there’s no reason, or capital, for investment into building up infrastructure to generate green hydrogen. So you have to put some trucks on the road so there’s a reason to do it.
We’ve heard a lot of the same arguments from the light duty side of things – see our drive in the Honda CR-V e:FCEV earlier this week – but for those, BEV is already much more practical than FCEV. For heavy duty, especially long haul, hydrogen does have real advantages, at least in the short or medium term. So it’s good to see someone working on it – and it’s good to see Nikola working to put the specters of its past behind it.
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Environment
‘Bitcoin Family’ hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
The Taihuttus on a ski trip to Sierra Nevada in southern Spain. They sold everything they owned in 2017 to bet on bitcoin — and now travel full-time as a family of five.
Didi Taihuttu
A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists.
Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called “Bitcoin Family,” said he overhauled the family’s entire security setup after a string of threats.
The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.
Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
“We have changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet on my phone. And that’s not a lot.”
CNBC first reported on the family’s unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America.
The Taihuttu family dressed up for Halloween in Phuket, Thailand, where they recently moved homes after receiving disturbing messages pinpointing their location from YouTube videos.
Didi Taihuttu
As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure.
This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives.
One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal.
In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive.
Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements.
The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets.
“It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen,” said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions.
Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.
That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders.
But Taihuttu isn’t waiting for corporate solutions. He’s opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile.
As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation.
“We’ve been talking about it a lot as a family,” Taihuttu said. “My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street.”
Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What’s the plan?
One of the steel plates the Taihuttu family uses to store part of their bitcoin seed phrase. Didi etched it by hand using a hammer and letter punch — part of a decentralized storage system spread across four continents.
Didi Taihuttu
Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely.
“We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now,” Taihuttu said. “And I think we’ll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we’re definitely going to skip France.”
Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs.
“We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved. And now we don’t film anything at all.”
“It’s a strange world at the moment,” he said. “So we’re taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we’re now completely hardware wallet-less. We don’t use any hardware wallets anymore.”
To throw off would-be attackers, Didi Taihuttu encrypts select words from each 24-word seed phrase — then splits the phrases into four sets of six and hides them around the world.
Didi Taihuttu
The family’s new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents.
“Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can’t do anything,” Taihuttu explained.
On top of that, he’s added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective.
“You only need to remember which ones you changed,” he said.
Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups.
While the family still holds some crypto in “hot” wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed.
The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit.
Didi Taihuttu during a recent visit to Sierra Nevada, Spain. The family’s lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic, and all-in on bitcoin — makes them outliers even in the crypto world.
Didi Taihuttu
About 65% of the family’s crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust.
“What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?” he said. “You’re putting your capital back in someone else’s hands.”
Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he’s targeting for 2033.
The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model.
Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live largely off-grid, managing crypto through decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold storage system.
Didi Taihuttu
Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a “single point of compromise” — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access.
Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share.
The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers.
Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto’s original ethos.
While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids.
Lately, he’s also considering stepping back from the spotlight.
“It’s really my passion to create content. It’s really what I love to do every day,” he said. “But if it’s not safe anymore for my daughters … I really need to think about them.”
WATCH: ‘Bitcoin Family’ tracks moon cycles to make crypto investment decisions
Tesla’s head of Optimus humanoid robot, Milan Kovac, announced that he is leaving the automaker after 9 years.
It leaves just as CEO Elon Musk claimed that the humanoid robot is going to make Tesla a”$25 trillion company.”
Electrek first reported on Tesla hiring Kovac back in 2016 to work on the early Autopilot program. At the time, we noted that the young engineer had an interesting background in machine learning.
He quickly rose through the ranks and ended up leading Autopilot software engineering from 2019 to 2022.
In 2022, he started working on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program.
Late last year, he was promoted to Vice President in charge of the complete Optimus program, as CEO Elon Musk began to tout the program as critical to Tesla’s future.
Musk claimed that Optimus could generate $10 trillion in revenue per year and make Tesla a $25 trillion company. These claims are largely unsubstantiated as the humanoid robot market is still in its infancy.
Most market research firms currently estimate the size of the humanoid robot market to be in the low single-digit billions of dollars, with growth projections through 2032 ranging from $15 billion to $80 billion.
That would represent impressive growth, but nowhere near what Musk is touting to investors.
Today, Kovac announced that he is leaving Tesla for personal reasons:
This week, I’ve had to make the most difficult decision of my life and will be moving out of my position. I’ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad. I want to make it clear that this is the only reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. My support for Elon Musk and the team is ironclad – Tesla team forever.
Kovac has been regarded as one of the top new technical executives at Tesla, which has seen a significant talent exodus of top engineers.
The company has made progress with the Optimus program over the last year. Still, many have been skeptical, as Tesla has been less than forthcoming about using teleoperation in previous demonstrations.
Kovac is not the only Optimus engineer to leave Tesla recently.
Figure, another company developing humanoid robots, has recently poached Zackary Bernholtz, a 7-year veteran at Tesla and most recently a Staff Technical Program Manager.
Electrek’s Take
This is a significant loss for Tesla. Kovac was one of Musk’s top technical guys and literally the head of the program he claimed would bring Tesla to the next level – although I think most people have been understandably skeptical about these claims.
I’ve been bullish on humanoid robots, and I could see Tesla being a player in the field, but it’s nowhere near the opportunity that Musk is claiming, and there’s also plenty of competition with no clear evidence that Tesla has any significant lead, if any.
In China, Unitree has been making impressive progress, and it is already selling a humanoid robot.
In the US, Figure has also been making a lot of progress lately:
I think it’s a smart space to invest in for manufacturing companies like Tesla, but there’s going to be a lot of competition.
It’s too early to say who will come out on top.
As for Kovac leaving, I’m sure his personal reason is correct. However, we often see people claim that and then they quickly turn up at another company.
If he believed that his product would soon become a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity, I doubt he would be leaving, but you never know. 9 years at Tesla is some hard work and it’s impressive for anyone. Congrats.
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