By 2021, Salt Lake City-based Nikola Motor Co (www.nikolamotor.com) will bring to market the Nikola One and Two, a class-8 hydrogen-electric truck line-up that will deliver more than 745kW and 2,711Nm of torque with “zero local emissions”.

At the heart of the line-up will be a new commercial vehicle powertrain that has been developed via a partnership with Bosch (www.bosch.com).

Nikola founder and CEO Trevor Milton said: “We have been aggressively pursuing our goal of bringing the most advanced ‘semi-trailer truck’ ever built to market.

"The powertrain requires an innovative and flexible partner that can adapt quickly to the speed of our team.

Bosch has enabled us to come to market quickly with automotive-grade hardware and software so that our vision can become a reality.”

The eAxle developed by Bosch is a scalable modular platform with the motor, power electronics and transmission in a single compact unit.

This makes it suitable for vehicles of all kinds, from small passenger cars to light trucks. Nikola and Bosch will use this know-how to commercialise what is said will be the world’s first true dual-motor commercial-vehicle eAxle for a long-haul truck.

The eAxle will be paired with a custom-designed fuel cell system — also being developed jointly by Nikola and Bosch.