Nikola Motors has announced Jesse Schneider as vice president of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Schneider, who has spent most of his career working for BMW and Mercedes-Benz, has almost 20 years’ experience in vehicle electrification, and fuel cell, electric and hydrogen infrastructure and tanks with OEMs in Germany, the USA and China.
He also organized the worldwide standardization for electric and fuel cell vehicle infrastructure, and served as the chair of Hydrogen Fueling Standards and Specifications at SAE and ISO and most recently, wireless charging at SAE.
Schneider’s role at Nikola will see him head up the efforts of the Fuel Cell R&D division (working with Bosch in Germany), and the hydrogen fueling technology team for Nikola stations (working with NEL Hydrogen in Norway). He will also lead development at the Nikola R&D Center in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
“As we prepare for production testing, durability and manufacturing, it was necessary to hire one of the top fuel cell pioneers in the world,” said Trevor Milton, CEO of Nikola Motor Company.
“Jesse will be a great asset to our team. We are excited to introduce industry veterans into our company structure to help prepare for the manufacturing roll-out. [Schneider] will be a huge asset to Nikola and is welcomed to the Nikola family.”
The company is currently completing a 150,000ft2 R&D facility in the US city of Phoenix – Nikola will relocate to the site by August 2018. Once installed there, the company will begin development of a 1,000,000ft2 assembly plant in the Phoenix suburb of Buckeye.
Last week, Nikola announced that it would be refunding all deposits taken on its battery electric and hydrogen semi trucks, the Nikola One and Nikola Two, taking the opportunity to apparently have a swipe at Tesla and point out that no deposit money had been used for operation of the company.
