Tougher EPA requirements through 2027 essentially require truck manufacturers to embrace electrification. But diesel prices?not Milton?s lack of billions or his strategy to produce boundless quantities of hydrogen from solar arrays?may stop Nikola. Diesel costs about $2.50 per gallon at this writing. Even if it rises to $3.50?the threshold at which most large fleets would buy more efficient trucks, according to a recent University of Michigan survey?truck operators prefer more affordable upgrades such as improved aerodynamics, idle-reduction measures, and speed limiters.

Instrumented Test: 2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell
Quick-Take Review: 2017 Mercedes-Benz B-class EV
Scaling Up: Toyota Putting Mirai Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Tech in a Semi
There is some hope, however, in the same survey, which found that 30 percent of all operators said they would consider hydrogen and electric powertrains in the next two years. But those people might not stick around to buy once they see the Nikola?s price.

Space Truckin?
Who?d ever have thought that driving could be faster than the internet" With enough data, it is. Amazon?s Snowmobile is a 45-foot-long, 68,000-pound hard drive in a tractor-trailer. (The name is a riff on Snowball, Amazon?s large-scale data-transfer service.) For up to half a million bucks per month, Amazon will bring a trailer to you and transfer up to 100 petabytes (100 million gigabytes) to it, then physically drive the data to Amazon?s nearest cloud server. Total upl...