 I want to welcome everybody back to the Independent Investor Channel. We're looking at the decision between Nicolo or Hylian or neither one. If you're interested in the emerging space, the Class 8 long haul to try to clean up the environment and get rid of some of this NOx and SOx emissions and lower the carbon footprint. A lot of companies are looking for the opportunity to do that. And there's a couple of companies that are in the divide for that business. Very competitive landscape, no doubt about it. In this video, I'm going to cross compare Hylian and Nicola. Super important to draw a distinction between these two companies. I think altogether the stock market is linking them together. I think that's a big mistake. I've done a deep dive on both of these companies. I've done due diligence on Hylian. I have not done due diligence on Nicola. I was kind of turned away right away on Nicola. Some of the initial information that was turned out and then rolled back on. And I think that was very, very unfair to early investors in Nicola. I'm rooting for both of these companies. I hope they both make good on the roadmap that they put themselves on. But the purpose of this video is really to define how different each of those approaches are. We're going to jump in and do a cross comparison on five metrics. The first being fuel cost. The second being fuel availability. The third being the performance factor. We're going to take a look into the each investor presentation and really look at the numbers and the performance and seeing what is going to be the best option for industry. The next is going to be the inevitable maintenance requirement. You can't put something into industrial service and expect that the maintenance element is going to be non-existent. It's going to be there and both companies are going to have to respond to injects on this front. And finally, the proof of concept approach. Hylian is taking an approach. Nicola is taking an approach as well. I'm going to do a deep dive and provide you my insights from my perspective on each of these companies as we do the cross comparison. With that, we're going to jump in and engage in the cross comparison. Please enjoy. When I went in and evaluated and really looked to do a cross comparison between Hylian and Nicola, it was interesting to me when I was trying to differentiate between the two companies and their objectives. I obviously as a fan of moving in a better direction as far as the shipping. Are there technologies out there in sciences that can be initiated and pushed out to the fleets? Absolutely. I think at the end of the day, when you're looking to deliberate and you're looking to identify the difference between these two companies, I think you're going to find that they are drastically different between their two approaches. And the first thing that stuck out to my mind as we go through here and we want to draw a comparison between Nicola and Hylian is the actual price of the fuel that they're going after to provide to the fleets. This cannot be understated. It cannot be breezed over. It cannot be shuffled under the table. It cannot be overshadowed with loud music. And it's amazing to me how this very factor right here gets breezed over. Now right now in the industry or in the stock market, Nicola seems to have the favor. Honestly, it's got momentum. I cannot for the life of me tell you why I've been doing stock market investing a long, long time. This is not the first time that a company will be provided a favor for a certain undetermined amount of time in the market and it will not be the last. There's no doubt. And I can't for the life of me understand with the capex spending that's going on with Nicola, with all of their problems with orders getting either canceled or revised down to anemic numbers with no real chance that they're even going to meet those numbers, that the stock should be going up at all, let alone multiple percents per day. And I know there's going to be schools of thought out there that say Ryan, you're completely wrong on that. I bring you back to the facts. The fact of the matter is right now the cost to produce the hydrogen, which is the sole direction that Nicola is taking in the class eight space, they are rethinking the entire industry altogether and looking to abandon the old ways of doing things will get to that. But the cost of hydrogen to the current cost of diesel here estimates at about $3 and 19 cents the cost of hydrogen at about $12. That's insane. And if you're putting your money into Nicola, you're basically saying that businesses are going to be so excited to take on the product and so excited to accept the three times fuel cost almost four times the fuel cost to go green, then that's your bet. And that's one of the major reasons here why the cost of fuel is so worth looking at the cost of fuel. When you're looking to compare Nicola to Hylian is one of those key elements to the cross comparison. So the second cross comparison element that I want to bring to everybody's attention is in fueling infrastructure. And this is huge. And you're going to place your bets where you will. I'd like to see both of these companies survive. I really would the unfortunate part about it when I look at Nicola and I cross scrutinize it with the facts. The facts just don't align with how excited the executive board is in selling the concept of Nicola to shareholders. And maybe it's just me, I could be completely wrong on this thing. I could be completely wrong. But here are the facts as they're laid out. The second element of why Hylian takes not only the nod in a cross comparison, there there is no comparison at all. One is a concept business. The other is looking for proof of concept right now, completely different approach in exploiting existing infrastructure as opposed to reinventing infrastructure. And if you look here in North America at the 729 fueling stations, there's probably over 800 now. We're actually not the leaders in this South America CNG and RNG fueling stations is above 5500. In Russia alone, they have over 20,000. In Eastern Europe, we're talking about over 5,000. And then finally behind the US and North America Africa at over 200 fueling stations. The infrastructure that exists for Nicola, 10. There are 10. Furthermore, when we go on to talk about the long haul electric market for class eight, you have Tesla. There are 10. So when you want to talk about integrating into existing infrastructure, or going with what appears to be the route of Nicola in establishing an infrastructure from ground up, there needs to be some discretion put into whether or not they are going to be physically capable of generating this infrastructure from scratch. And I think it falls into the number two reason why I think Hylian absolutely has the nod over Nicola. Not only are they trying to build the trucks from the ground up, but also look to build up the infrastructure from the ground up. So the number one number three reason that I wanted to draw a cross comparison really this is for anybody out there that is looking at these two companies and me, I'm a fan of both of them. In certain elements, I really like hydrogen fuel cell, I like the fact that Hylian is in advanced stage talks, if not already solidified that opportunity down the line when that happens, I have no idea when that's going to be. But if we want to talk in a cross comparison of performance and performance alone, I really want to earmark a couple things here that are super, super important. Now, these are on the books. Okay, these are not real world performance. I'm going to talk about that in just a second. But when we want to talk about range, okay, range here is really, really important. Tesla, I don't believe is a legitimate competitor in the space, especially the class eight space. If you want to talk about the class fives to sevens, lower routes, lighter loads, things like that in the full electric space, then we can talk Tesla. But I don't think it holds a candle to what Nikola and Hylian are doing, because a 750 mile range from Nikola is actually very, very impressive. I've seen the latest tests off their investor website, as well as read through their profile. The problem that I have is that once that 750 miles is burned up, where are you going to fuel your truck? That is always the comeback here. Now, in a head to head comparison, the results just do not compare. When you're talking about a hyper truck ERX, according to this investor presentation was rolled out at 1300. I'm a little bit disappointed to see that that revision has been rolled back a little bit. So I don't know how valid that 1300 is. I would put the same scrutiny on Hylian that I put on Nikola in saying, can this actually be achieved? Okay, now, the methods to go about finding out proof of concept and making sure that these are accurate range estimates is part of my reasons why I would cross compare these two companies and try to differentiate between the two. The stark differences really come in the performance piece. Okay, but on paper, you can kind of see here the cross comparison and both fairly impressive. I look at the payload capacity and I saw an internal test on the Nikola website that actually showed them pulling an 80,000 pound payload. Okay, now there are some issues with regard to trust with Nikola. Okay, and any type of internal test that they're running, they've given no indication to show that they are on the uppity up. Now, Hylian on the other hand has given us no reason to doubt what it is that they're pushing out through their numbers. So 53,000 on the payload capacity shows on par with the Nikola product for sure and then the Nikola, according to their investor website and their information that they've pushed out have actually tested and been successful in an 80,000 pound payload test. Now, make no mistake about it, that test was done on a racetrack. Okay, this is flat ground. This is a truck that was filmed with existing momentum not taking off and then stopping. Okay, which again, makes me want to question the actual integrity of the test itself being conducted internally and not by a third party. Okay, now the fuel charge time is on par 10 minutes, which is where I find that Tesla is really going to have a hard time competing in the market. There's no way that truckers are going to pull over at limited infrastructure or non existent really is probably more accurate at this point and wait 30 minutes plus to charge their truck when in fact the top end of the range is 500. In other words, they're only going to get to go a couple hundred miles where they're going to need to start to identify where the next opportunity to charge the electric vehicle is. And again, I want to footstomp the unavailability of resources at this particular juncture, right? So Nicola boasts a 10 minute charging time and the highly on boasts a 10 minute refueling time. The problem is that Nicola through conceptual doesn't have fueling stations to actually fuel their vehicle. So when you talk about the concept and the reality of the situation, a 10 minute refueling is absolutely in line with what you could realistically expect when fueling your truck with either diesel or CNG RNG when you pull over to get your fuel. And then with Nicola the 10 minute refueling from a conceptual perspective, because I will not give Nicola credit for existing infrastructure. It does. It doesn't exist, right? So I will conceptually give the nod here to Nicola on the 10 minutes, but I will absolutely give the nod in reality to Hylian's hyper truck ERX on par for the 10 minute refueling and actually being able to realize that fueling opportunity. Okay. The performance of payload at 20 seconds have accelerated from zero to 60. That's great. That just speaks to the power that's generated by the hyper truck. The Nicola is also fairly impressive with some of the internal tests that I've been able to see that are available for public disclosure. But on paper, the performance here is really what speaks volumes for me and really helps to cut through some of the hype and really put the performance to paper. So the number four reason when I'm cross-comparing these two companies, it just blows my mind away. The first thing that sticks out, this is directly from the Nicola newest investor presentation is the white space. I just want you guys to take just a quick look at this. This is supposed to be the maintenance and sales network of Nicola. A couple things on this, and I'm trying to look at this objectively. Really, I see a few blue dots and a lot of white space. I see that there is lovely in Kansas, some stations, and then the east coast of the United States is certainly represented here. I'm not really sure if I understand that we're just not in the long haul business in the western United States and in the Rocky Mountain States. I would feel a little bit left out if I was Texas, perhaps maybe, and even into the Dakotas in Wisconsin and into Wisconsin as well in Minnesota. I see a lot of white space here. All of Florida is left out except for the upper panhandle, and then the entire northeast is left out of the equation here. So I'm trying to understand a little bit what Nicola is trying to communicate here. They thought that it was important enough to put these 360 service centers in the slide presentation to put investors at ease to make them maybe accept that there are going to be specific locations where service and maintenance can take place. I want you to sit back for just a second and acknowledge for just a minute that Nicola, remember, is building this truck from the ground up, okay? Ground up. There is going to be either one of two scenarios. Either this truck is a complete success, and it is turned out on the road to be put under rigorous service and incur zero problems going forward. The other scenario is that there are foreseeable problems, and it is put into the rigors of Class 8 service, and there are problems. The issue becomes who is going to be available to service this technology? Who is going to be trained? Who are the mechanics that are going to be working with this? This slide really bothered me in that it was very, very vague in that if the customers that are going to buy all of these 100 trucks that are supposed to be turned out in 2021, which was a drastic revision from the speculation number that was thrown out by the previous Superman, Trevor Milton, who is no longer with the company anymore, and then reality shook in, and they said basically to save face that they were going to deliver 100 trucks. My question to not only who is going to buy these trucks, but if there are problems with said trucks, which the margins on these trucks are not that great guys, here's the thing, if cost to produce is so high that they're turning these trucks out and the margins are so tight on the initial onset of delivering these 100 trucks to said customers, how much profit do you honestly think Nicola is going to make off of these 100 trucks? Now you could make the same argument for Hylian, but remember Hylian is not looking to build the ground, the truck from ground up, right? They've already announced that Peter built, who's got decades of Class 8 service under him, are going to be the chassis of choice to be turned out with the hyper truck ERX. With all due respect, that's an awful big piece of the truck here that's being turned out from existing OEMs. Now Thomas Healy has talked about the maintenance aspect on the Hylian side of the side, which is going to be move away from the service center type of network that's declared here that's going to be absolutely necessary for the highly technical and highly advanced Nicola product that customers are supposed to buy, okay, as opposed to more of a plug and play application to where if there's a problem with the battery system on board a Hylian unit that it's going to be more of a replacement type of maintenance as opposed to the truck breaks down and it is unavailable until it goes to a service center as declared here by Nicola to be fixed, okay? So I wanted to bring this attention across comparison on the maintenance side of the house, something for you guys to think about when you're looking at these two companies side by side. And the last and final element, this is kind of the fifth cross comparison metric that I used is the actual testing method or proof of concept approach from both Nicola and Hylian. I found this to be extremely attractive and it was really cool. It was really cool. I was able to review some videos that were posted on the Nicola website that were entertaining to say the least. The approaches are very simple. Here are some of the notes here I've provided for you. This is right out of the newest Nicola presentation. They've sent it to strategic locations, some cold weather locations, etc. to do some testing. What's interesting to me is that these seem to me and all the videos that I reviewed to be in-house concept type of validations, okay? And you might say, well, you know, what's wrong with that Ryan? Well, in a cross comparison between these two companies, I'm not looking outside of Hylian and Nicola. Hylian is aligning with industry and the rigors of industry train validation and putting these trucks in the hands of the drivers and actually putting real service and road miles on the specific products that Hylian has with the HyperTruck ERX Council as opposed to doing simulation training or validation proof of concept where they basically film these trucks in a way that is conducive to what they want to portray. In other words, this is all in-house proof of concept whereas Hylian is all third-party proof of concept testing. And I think when we're looking at a cross comparison between these two companies, again, I don't invest in Nicola. If I can't trust what a company, and I'm not saying that the new regime isn't trustworthy, but what I am saying is Nicola has been built on a precedence of distrust with investors. And if I was an investor in Nicola and rode this thing all the way up into the 90s based on hype, I'd be pissed. I'd be pissed off. So it makes it very, very difficult for me to consume information here as a would-be investor in Nicola when I don't trust the company. So what is the neutralizer in the situation? Well, the neutralizer is to allow your product to be subject to third-party validation, third-party testing, where you get an impartial, unbiased opinion about your product, okay? And I found it really interesting how some of the validation in some of these testing parameters were done in somewhat of a controlled environment. And I think the test was set up a little bit in that these weren't true testing mechanisms. These were established by Nicola and it seemed like they were in-house testings that were rolled out to a would-be investor to say, look, because we've conducted these in-house testings, it should adopt large-scale adoption by Class 8 freight line companies, right? And I just don't buy that. I don't. So when we want to talk about who is doing diligence on the proof of concept, really, I'm not here to say which one is doing a better job. What I'm trying to do is really allow the numbers and what each company's approach is rendering. And then you can make a more informed decision as to who you feel more comfortable putting your money with if, in fact, you look to take a position in any of these companies. So with that, we'll kick you back to YouTube and we'll conclude the video. All right, guys, so we've come out of the cross comparison of both of these companies. Hope you appreciate each of these videos that are turned out through YouTube, provide a unique perspective on what I'm extrapolating from the publicly available data that's out there on both companies. Just for full disclosure, I am a shareholder in Hylion and I'm not a shareholder in Nicola. Some of those reasons I was trying to put at bay and offer a neutral interpretation of the information that's publicly available to any would be investor out there that is interested in the space. If you choose to invest in the company or not, please understand I'm not a financial advisor. This is for entertainment purposes only, but I do want to earmark and stress that the information is out there for you to review if you're looking to deliberate on which of these companies, both neither one, maybe one or the other is going to succeed in the long-haul Class 8 space. Man, the verdict is way too young to be called here in the race to the market share here in the Class 8 space, valued at just around $800 billion a year. So it's going to be huge to see how these opportunities ramp up. They make progress on each of their designed roadmaps, but I wanted to draw a distinction between the two in the making of this video because I think unfortunately the stock market has this wrong. They really do. I think they're aligning these two companies together, and I think hopefully through the cross comparison in this video, you can understand as I do how drastically different these two companies are. If you enjoy the content coming through the Independent Investor Channel, I would invite you to subscribe to the message at the notification bell. Leave your comments at the bottom of this video. If I've missed something, especially on the Nicholas side, I tried to look at this from a neutral perspective, but it's very, very difficult when I'm bullish on one company and actually very bearish on the other, but I tried to deliver and stick close to what is being turned out through publicly discernible information. It's available to all investors, but please leave your comments. I'll do my best to try to comment back to you and let you know. 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