“You can use onboard natural gas generator.” And when fueled with renewable natural gas (i.e., captured from hog farms or landfills), the truck can operate with negative carbon emissions. There is growing skepticism of the blank-check phenomenon as such deals have proliferated in recent weeks. We’ll figure out a way to get them some breakfast tacos and give them at least a few hours to sit back and celebrate as this process has been a full company effort. Growing up, I raced cars. TSLA Nikola was really the first to kick it off this year. Ryan Laskey, SVP of commercial vehicle drive systems at Dana, says both the initial hybrid e-axle offering and their all-electric drivetrain are “agnostic” when it comes to what kinds of engines or fuels they will work with, giving Hyliion fewer barriers to success. It’s a pointedly different approach to the electrification of heavy-duty trucks than that pursued by investor darlings Tesla “We were fortunate on timing,” said Healy, the firm’s CEO. @hyliion CEO @ThomasHealy47 explains what’s next for the company after going public on the @NYSE today. Cubbage says his team already loved the electric truck space and was drawn to Hyliion because Healy wasn’t trying to design from scratch, didn’t need to build a factory (thanks to Dana) and crucially, unlike all-electric Tesla and hydrogen-powered Nikola, didn’t need to spend money on setting up new fueling infrastructure.

Laskey lauds Healy for being customer-focused beyond his years. We hope all these technologies are successful as ultimately we’re trying to make this shift to electric. Or do we want a SPAC process? Subscribe now.]. But if the company catches favor with investors in anywhere close to the way that Tesla and Nikola have, it could make 28-year-old Healy a billionaire before too long (Nikola has already spawned two).

My daily driver is a Tesla, which is very fitting for what we’re doing. Let’s do this!’, . We met with the Tortoise team introduced to us through investment bank Marathon Capital. From that, we considered: do we go down the conventional IPO route?

“The goal was to be able to allow them to still buy the truck they already know and love and have it with a brand-new power train that will really revolutionize their logistics,” says Healy, 28. Normally you’d have hundreds of people come to the stock exchange.

The company created from the merger — Hyliion Holdings Corp. — began trading Oct. 2 in New York after shares in Tortoise surged more than 300% ahead of a shareholder vote last month. I love working on cars, souping them up and putting turbochargers on them. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. You’re really negotiating a deal with an organization as opposed to going on a roadshow for an IPO that may — or may not — be successful. © 2020 Transport Topics All rights reserved. Company Website. That was the moment of ‘OK. [Ensure you have all the info you need in these unprecedented times. “He gives the customer something they don’t even know they want yet.” Whether the electricity to power the drivetrain comes from the grid, diesel or gasoline, the result, he says, is 25% better fuel economy. Our equipment was shipped in tractor-trailers, so I got to know about trucks through that. All our team on Oct. 5 can livestream the ringing of the bell. The Hyliion Hypertruck ERX uses compressed natural gas to power its all-electric drivetrain. The benefits were clear—the e-axle would provide a helping hand, adding power and torque that allowed the diesel block to work more efficiently, improving fuel mileage and lowering emissions, while also capturing power via regenerative braking. I’m a gearhead at heart. Forbes reporter since 1999. SPACs are now getting scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which wants to ensure investors are receiving appropriate disclosures about insiders’ pay structures. Healy saw the e-axle as a hybrid bolt-on solution for bringing electric power to the world of long-haul trucking.

We were just going through a conventional financing fundraising process, and then we saw this as the best path. I spent a tremendous amount of time at racetracks driving vehicles.

“If we were trying to close right when the stock market was on that downswing, we might have been having different discussions.”.

Listen to today's daily briefing: Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Alexa | Google Assistant | More, 950 N Glebe Road Suite 210, Arlington, VA 22203, In a screenshot from a video, Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy, center, is seen behind the NYSE opening bell Oct. 5. When Thomas Healy was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2017, his startup, Hyliion, was still in the early stages of developing an innovation he called the “e-axle”—that’s an electrified axle, powered by lithium-ion batteries, that could be incorporated into the drivetrain of a traditional Class 8, long-haul truck. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. Automotive parts giant Dana Inc. was intrigued, and in March 2019 made an equity investment into Hyliion, and together they are manufacturing and marketing the device to Dana’s slate of customers, including truck giants Volvo, Navistar and Peterbilt. This caught the attention of Vincent Cubbage, at investment company Tortoise, which in 2019 floated a so-called blank-check shell company called Tortoise Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: SHLL) to look for a company worth merging with. The truck’s batteries are fueled by onboard tanks of compressed natural gas. In June, Healy agreed to a merger. We saw a lot of efficiencies with SPACs. When Thomas Healy was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2017, his startup, Hyliion, was still in the early stages of developing an innovation … In the first quarter, we kicked off our next financing round. They drive 100,000 miles a year and there’s still a lot of greenhouse gases that come from them. SPACs have definitely gotten a lot of attention. Thomas Healy is CEO/Founder at Hyliion Inc. See Thomas Healy's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Thomas Healy was secretly arranging a deal to turn his Texas-based truck electrification startup into a publicly traded company when the coronavirus pandemic struck. The more people are focused on that, the better off we’ll all be. So it was this thinking of, let’s take this mega-trend — a shift to electrification — and apply it to this industry.

Comments have been edited and condensed. Once completed by the end of the third quarter, Tortoise will be renamed Hyliion, with new ticker symbol HYLN and $560 million in cash to fund development of both the e-axle as well as Hyliion’s second offering, called Hypertruck ERX. Still, the 28-year-old knows luck was involved. Carnegie Mellon University. “When we think about how customers actually want to adopt new technology, they want to isolate the technology,” says Cubbage, not replace their entire kit. Bloomberg spoke with Healy ahead of his ringing the opening bell on Oct. 5 to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange.