Raphael Stevens

Two superyachts belonging to Russian oligarch docked in Turkey this week, avoiding seizure by Western authorities.
The Chelsea FC owner is subject to EU and U.K. sanctions.
Turkey, a non-EU country but a NATO member, is opposed to sanctions out of principle, making it an attractive outpost for oligarch assets.

Eclipse, the private luxury yacht of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, anchors at Cruise Port in Marmaris district of Mugla, Turkey on March 22, 2022.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The azure waters of southwest Turkey saw the arrival of a two multimillion-dollar superyachts this week reportedly belonging to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, whose voyage to circumvent Western sanctions continues.
The Eclipse, a 533-foot, six-story superyacht — one of the largest in the world — docked in the resort town of Marmaris Tuesday, narrowly skirting nearby Greek islands and the purview of EU sanctions, tracking data showed.

Complete with two helipads, two swimming pools, a disco hall and a mini submarine, it joins the 458-foot Solaris, another luxury yacht linked to the Chelsea FC owner, which arrived at the Turkish tourist resort of Bodrum a day earlier.
They account for two superyachts known to belong to the oligarch, both traveling under Bermuda flags.
With each one worth an estimated $600 million or more, Abramovich is now seen stationing $1.2 billion in the non-EU country as he seeks to move his assets out of reach of U.S., U.K. and EU governments targeting Russia’s wealthy elite.
And it’s a legitimate move — so long as the yachts remain outside the territorial waters of sanctioning countries, which extend 12 nautical miles out from the coastline. To be sure, Abramovich is not currently subject to U.S. sanctions reportedly because of his role in facilitating talks between the White House and President Vladimir Putin — a position the U.S. is currently weighing.
“Yachts alleged to be beneficially owned by sanctioned individuals are free to travel and operate outside EU/U.K./U.S. waters,” Benjamin Maltby, partner at U.K.-based Keystone Law and an expert in yacht and luxury asset law, told CNBC Wednesday.

A neutral outpost for oligarchs

Turkey, despite strongly criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine, has refused to follow its NATO allies in imposing sanctions, saying it opposes them out of principle.
Given its diplomatic and economic ties to Russia, especially as regards Russian gas imports, and its at times volatile relationship with Western partners, that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
“Implicit in this delicate dance is an understanding — as with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — that Turkey will not join the Western sanctions against Russia,” Emre Peker, director and Turkey specialist at Eurasia Group, told CNBC.

The superyacht, Solaris, owned by Roman Abramovich, seen in the waters of Porto Montenegro on March 12, 2022 in Tivat, Montenegro, before later relocating to Bodrum, Turkey.
Filip Filipovic | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Instead, Turkey has positioned itself as a neutral and valued mediator in talks between Russia and Ukraine, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte praising the country Tuesday for “doing everything that it can do.”
That has made it a destination of choice for Russians looking to preserve their wealth and make investments in an increasingly inhospitable global market.
Abramovich, who is not himself traveling on either of the two yachts, was in Istanbul last week, according to flight tracking data.
“He wants to do some work and may buy some assets,” a source told Reuters, noting similar moves by other oligarchs. Abramovich’s sale of his prized Chelsea soccer club — seized two weeks ago by U.K. authorities — remains ongoing.
Spokespeople for the Turkish government and Abramovich did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Outside the scope of sanctions — for now

Meantime, the accommodating environment means his yachts will avoid being seized or impounded for as long as they remain in Turkish waters.
That contrasts with the rapid capture of other oligarch yachts, including Alexei Mordashov’s 213-foot vessel in Italy and Igor Sechin’s 280-foot yacht in France in recent weeks.
However, Maltby noted that some yachts stationed in neutral waters could yet fall foul of international legal conventions, which could see them detained for other reasons.
For instance, the Lloyd’s classification society announced two weeks ago that it would no longer provide services to Russian vessels, while the Isle of Man ship registry said it would deregister certain yachts.
“Recent announcements by certain regulatory bodies … means that some such yachts may be unsafe and/or uninsured in the eyes of non-EU/U.K./U.S. port authorities, and could be detained on this basis,” said Maltby.
Meantime, crew and repair workers — in protest to the war and fearing reputational risk — may be reluctant to engage in the operational and maintenance work required of such large, luxury vessels.
“While Turkey doesn’t have sanctions in place, maintenance and supply companies may now want payment upfront — which is not normal practice. Whether and how quickly such payments can be made remains to be seen,” said Maltby.

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Alaska Airlines plans to covert two of its midlife Boeing 737-800s to add to its fleet of 737-700s cargo planes.
The planes will serve destinations in Alaska.
Air cargo has been a relative bright spot for carriers during the pandemic.

Alaska Airlines employee Jeff Ferguson loads cargo at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska.
Mark Thiessen | AP

Alaska Airlines is turning two of its midlife Boeing 737-800s into cargo planes, a bet that the pandemic boom in air freight will continue to generate revenue even after more passengers return to travel.
The Seattle-based airline, the country’s fifth-largest, already has three smaller Boeing 737-700s dedicated solely to air freight. It’s a small number for a carrier whose mainline fleet stood at 217 planes at the end of 2021, but the pandemic has made cargo more important to airlines.

Covid forced passenger carriers to cut flights, reducing belly space in planes around the world that would normally carry everything from live animals, packages, produce and pharmaceuticals. That drove up demand — and prices — for air cargo.
Alaska has put out a request for proposals to convert the two planes to air cargo and hasn’t yet settled on a supplier. The increase in its cargo fleet could extend beyond the two planes, but it hasn’t yet committed to adding more.
“I don’t think the magic number is two,” Adam Drouhard, the airline’s managing director of cargo, told CNBC.
The new planes will be dedicated to serving destinations in the state of Alaska.
Companies including Boeing have been adding capacity to convert more passenger jets to cargo planes to capitalize on the trend.

Cargo analyst Stephen Fortune said the conversion of a passenger jet into a freighter, which entails ripping out passenger seats and overhead bins, reinforcing the plane’s floor, and cutting a cargo door for easier loading, can cost around $5 million.
Alaska debuted converted 737-700s in 2017, but Drouhard said he expects that expanding beyond the two planes will be easier than the conversions of five years ago because it’s not an altogether new program: 737-800 conversion lines are already available.
“It’s not going to be as big of a ramp up with one every eight to 10 years,” he said.
In 2021, 101 passenger planes were converted to freighters, up from 59 in 2019 and 71 in 2020, according to IBA Insight.
Most other U.S. passenger airlines don’t operate standalone freighter aircraft but have benefited from the rise in cargo demand during the pandemic. Some carriers flew passenger planes with empty seats and full cargo bellies when demand for travel plummeted in 2020.
Cargo revenue for United Airlines, which does the most long-haul international flying of the U.S. carriers, brought in $2.35 billion last year, up more than 42% from 2020 and double 2019, before Covid hit. Air freight made up almost 10% of its sales last year, compared with 3% before Covid.
Low-cost and leisure-focused airline Sun Country started flying cargo for Amazon in 2020 on freighters for the e-commerce giant’s air unit, a plan it drew up in 2019 but sped up during the pandemic.

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As mainland China battles its worst Covid-19 outbreak since early 2020, local governments increasingly say the new omicron BA.2 variant is to blame.
Mainland China has reported well over 1,000 new confirmed Covid cases a day since March 12, with the number holding above 2,000 for the last three days.
Despite apparent changes in the virus’ severity, China has maintained its stringent zero-Covid policy of using swift, regional lockdowns to control outbreaks.

People line up for nucleic acid testing at a temporary Covid-19 testing site on March 22, 2022 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — As mainland China battles its worst Covid-19 outbreak since early 2020, local governments increasingly say the new omicron BA.2 variant is to blame.
That’s the new Covid subvariant, which preliminary research indicates is even more transmissible than the original omicron variant — but doesn’t necessarily cause more severe illness.

Mainland China has reported well over 1,000 new confirmed Covid cases a day since March 12, with the number holding above 2,000 for the last three days. That’s not including the asymptomatic case count, which can be just as many, or far more, than the number of daily confirmed cases.
From the northern province of Jilin — which accounts for more than half of the new daily cases — to industrial centers like Tangshan and Shenzhen, local authorities have blamed omicron BA.2 for the latest wave of Covid.
“Omicron BA.2 caused this outbreak, and spreads faster and more easily than previous viruses,” the export-heavy province of Fujian said in an online statement Tuesday, according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese text.
The subvariant is also “stealthier” and harder to find, but infections are primarily mild or asymptomatic cases, the Fujian government said.

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Scientists have also described BA.2 as a “stealth” variant because it contains mutations that could make it harder to distinguish from the older delta variant using PCR tests.

Despite apparent changes in the virus’ severity, China has maintained its stringent zero-Covid policy of using swift, regional lockdowns to control outbreaks. The strategy had helped the economy quickly return to growth after the initial shock of the pandemic in early 2020.
Different provinces or cities can impose quarantines or travel restrictions on people coming from other regions, or at least require valid virus tests, adding hurdles to commercial travel.
For example, a company had to change its truck driver to a local one before the vehicle entered a city in the Guangxi region, said Klaus Zenkel, chair of the south China chapter of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “Otherwise he cannot enter the area where he needs to deliver the goods to.”
Zenkel is based in the southern city of Shenzhen, which ended a week-long lockdown Sunday night.
“If you compare this lockdown for the seven days last week, 14 to 21 of March, it was almost tougher than two years ago when the pandemic started,” he said, referring to the tighter government restrictions on international travel and stay-home policies.

Smaller businesses hurt more

More than half of mainland China shut down in February 2020 for an extended Lunar New Year holiday in an effort to control the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in the country. The economy contracted that quarter, but quickly rebounded.

This time around, multinational corporations could maintain production by keeping workers in the same area as factories, but smaller businesses lost a week of output, Zenkel said Wednesday. He said district governments are asking businesses to share what their losses were, for potential compensation plans.
Shenzhen is pretty much returning to normal, but many people were still getting tested every day so they could present valid negative results as needed for in-person business meetings, he said. “Let’s hope [with] all these experiences and all the China data, the Chinese government can find a way to go from zero-Covid to ‘live with Covid.'”

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Across the country, Covid tests remain a primary way for authorities to confirm whether people are allowed into a city or whether a neighborhood can end its lockdown. These tests — which can’t yet be self-administered at home — now only cost about 8 yuan ($1.25) in Beijing, or free if arranged by community leaders.
At a Shanghai city press briefing Wednesday, Wu Fan, deputy dean of Shanghai Medical College at Fudan University, emphasized the need for the public to maintain social distancing, comply with testing and health code checks, and monitor themselves carefully.
“This time, the omicron BA.2 variant seems to be running very quickly,” Wu said, according to CNBC translation of the Chinese remarks. “Just chasing it isn’t enough. [We] also need to cut off the path ahead of it.”

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One of the enduring mysteries of the Covid-19 pandemic is that children have been spared by the virus, for the most part, and have not experienced anywhere near the severity of illness that adults have.
The Covid-19 global health crisis has led to over 6 million fatalities.
Scientists are still in the process of working out why the majority of children do not suffer badly from Covid.

A child reacts while receiving a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at Smoketown Family Wellness Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., November 8, 2021.
Jon Cherry | Reuters

LONDON — One of the enduring mysteries of the Covid-19 pandemic, a global health crisis that has led to over 6 million fatalities, is that children have been spared by the virus — for the most part — and have not experienced anywhere near the severity of illness that adults have.
When Covid emerged in late 2019 and began to spread around the world, scientists scrambled to understand the virus and how to combat it, with hospitals trying different techniques to save the worst-off Covid patients in intensive care units.

Mercifully, few of those patients were children, posing a mystery for public health experts as to why kids were not becoming severely ill or dying with Covid.
Scientists are still somewhat baffled as to why children are not badly affected by Covid, although studies are slowly shedding light on how, and why, children’s responses to Covid differ from those among adults.
“A number of theories have been suggested, including a more effective innate immune response, less risk of immune over-reaction as occurs in severe Covid, fewer underlying co-morbidities and possibly fewer ACE-2 receptors in the upper respiratory epithelium — the receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 [Covid] binds,” Dr. Andrew Freedman, an academic in infectious diseases at the U.K.’s Cardiff University Medical School, told CNBC in emailed comments, adding that nonetheless the phenomenon was not “fully understood.”
He noted more research will be required before we have a definitive answer but a body of evidence has already emerged showing that Covid poses a much smaller risk to kids, and why that might be.

Rapid immune response

It’s widely understood that the risk posed to adults from Covid rises with age as our immune systems become slower to respond to, and less effective at combating, infections.

In particular, the risk increases for people in their 50s and increases again for those in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, with people 85 and older the most likely to get very sick. Having certain underlying medical conditions can also make adults more likely to get severely ill.
There have been several recent studies looking at the difference between adults’ immune response to Covid, and children’s, and these have found fundamental differences between the two with the latter having a more robust and “innate” immune response.
Research carried out by the Wellcome Sanger Institute and University College London, and published in the Nature journal in December, found a stronger “innate” immune response in the airways of children, characterized by the rapid deployment of interferons — which are released in the presence of viral or bacterial threats and help to restrict viral replication early on — UCL said.
Meanwhile in adults, the researchers saw a less rapid immune response which meant the virus “was better able to invade other parts of the body where the infection was harder to control.”
Kristin Mondy, a division chief of infectious diseases at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas, told CNBC that “out of the many hypotheses currently circulating in the literature, the best evidence to date supports the hypothesis and findings that children have a stronger innate immune response compared to adults, particularly in nasal mucosal tissue where immune cells can more rapidly control and eradicate the virus compared to adults.”
“That being said, we also know that children are more susceptible (than adults) to the Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome which is an overactive immune response to Covid-19, resulting usually in excessive inflammation in organs other than the lung (usually the heart/circulatory system and gastrointestinal tract).”

Exposure to viruses

Another advantage children have is their greater exposure to viruses, particularly during term time when viruses are able to spread easily among children at school. The most common virus children get are innocuous colds and these are commonly caused by several types of virus including rhinoviruses (the most common cause of the common cold) as well as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and coronaviruses.
Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses in humans but several, including Covid-19 and SARS and MERS, have emerged as global health threats.
Ralf Reintjes, professor of epidemiology at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, explained to CNBC that children’s immune systems have a number of advantages when it comes to fighting infections.
“First of all, they’re younger so their immune systems are challenged a lot anyway … when they’re one year or two years old until up to 10 or 12 years old, they they go through lots of infections,” Reintjes told CNBC on Monday.
“They get lots of contact with other coronaviruses at this time so their immune system is in training anyway, and is very young and fit,” he said, adding that when children’s immune systems are then confronted with Covid-19, having had a lot of practice fighting off various infections and coronaviruses, they have much stronger immune response than adults who tend to get less of those kinds of infections.
The phenomenon is not unique to Covid-19 either, Dr Andrew Freedman said, with children often able to fight off other kinds of infection better than adults, albeit not in all cases.
“For instance, most children do not develop symptoms from Hepatitis A infection and Epstein-Barr infection is usually asymptomatic in younger children as opposed to teenagers and young adults who present with glandular fever. There are, of course, other infections which are more severe in younger children compared to older ones and adults, such as RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] and flu.”

What risk does Covid pose to kids?

Research published in late 2021 looking into the overall risk posed by the virus to children found that this was very low for the absolute majority of children and young people aged below 18.
The study, carried out by researchers from several British universities, studied deaths among children and young people in England from March 2020 to February 2021 — the first year of the pandemic — differentiating between those who died of Covid and those who died of an alternative cause but had coincidentally tested positive for the disease.

Kids in a queue while wearing face masks during the food distribution amid Coronavirus COVID 19.
Ajay Kumar | SOPA Images | Getty Images

It found that of the 3,105 children and young people who died from all causes during the first pandemic year in England, 25 had died of Covid, corresponding to an overall mortality rate of 2 deaths per million children in England.
Of the 25 children that sadly died of Covid, 19 had chronic underlying health conditions, including some children with multiple comorbidities and life-limiting conditions.
While the other six children that died appeared to have no underlying health conditions, researchers cautioned there may have been an unidentified comorbidity or undiagnosed genetic predisposition to severe disease with Covid infection.
While the study found that the overall risk to children was “extremely low” it did note that those above the age of 10, of Asian and Black ethnicity, and those with comorbidities (neurological conditions were the commonest comorbidity) were over-represented in the mortality data compared to other children.

The study concluded that Covid “is very rarely fatal” even among those children with underlying comorbidities. Indeed, within the year that was studied, an estimated 469,982 children in England had Covid, meaning that a child’s chance of surviving an infection was found to be 99.995%.
Pediatric Covid case and mortality data from the U.S. show similarly low risks to children.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that a total of 966,575 deaths had been caused by Covid in the U.S. during the pandemic. Between 2020 and 2022 there were 921 deaths among 0-17 year olds that were caused by Covid, out of 73,508 deaths in this age group that were caused by all causes.
Since the pandemic began, children have accounted 19% of all Covid cases in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ latest state-based data summary published last week, but the academy said that “among states reporting, children were 0.00%-0.27% of all Covid-19 deaths, and 3 states reported zero child deaths.”
Children continue to represent around a fifth of all Covid cases; for the week ending March 17, children accounted for 18.3% of reported weekly cases. Children under the age of 18 make up 22.2% of the U.S. population.

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Limits on social gatherings will be doubled from five to 10 people, outdoor mask mandates will be dropped, more employees can return to offices and capacity limits for large events will be increased, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced Thursday.
Throughout the pandemic, Singapore has been more consistent and strict about measures such as mask mandates and traceability than most of the rest of the world.
On travel restrictions and measures, all fully vaccinated travelers and non-fully vaccinated children aged 12 and below can enter Singapore without needing to apply for entry approvals starting April 1.

Office workers walk out for lunch break at Raffles Place financial business district in Singapore on January 4, 2022.
Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE — Singapore will ease most of its Covid restrictions including outdoor mask mandates starting March 29, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced Thursday.
Limits on social gatherings will be doubled from five to 10 people, more employees can return to offices and capacity limits for large events will be increased, Lee said in a national address.

Masks will still be needed indoors, and safe distancing of 1 meter between groups in mask-off settings will still be required.
Throughout the pandemic, Singapore has been more consistent and strict about measures such as mask mandates and traceability than most of the rest of the world.
Lee also said Singapore will “drastically streamline” testing and quarantine requirements, making travel abroad easier — “almost like before Covid-19.”
“Resume more normal lives, enjoy larger gatherings of family and friends, go outdoors without masks, or reunite with loved ones abroad,” Lee said. “But do not throw all caution to the wind.”

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He called on people to comply with the relaxed rules and test regularly.

Border measures

On travel restrictions and measures, all fully vaccinated travelers and non-fully vaccinated children aged 12 and below can enter Singapore without needing to apply for entry approvals starting April 1.
They will not be tested upon arrival in Singapore, Transport Minister S. Iswaran said at a press briefing.
Travel-related stocks jumped on Thursday following the national address. Singapore Airlines rose 4.25%, while ground-handling and in-flight catering services firm Sats gained 5.04%.
Under current arrangements, fully vaccinated travelers have to enter Singapore on specific flights to avoid quarantines. They must also take an on-arrival antigen rapid test.
Pre-departure tests will be removed for people entering via land borders but will still be needed for those entering via air and sea routes.
Returning Singapore residents previously needed to pay for Covid-related medical bills if they tested positive within 14 days of their arrival, but will no longer need to with immediate effect.
The peak of the omicron wave in Singapore appears to have passed. New daily cases stood at 8,940 on Wednesday, down from a record 26,032 infections on Feb. 22.
The majority of people infected in Singapore have mild or no symptoms. Around 0.3% required oxygen supplementation over the last 28 days, and 0.04% were in the intensive care unit.
As of Tuesday, 92% of the population has completed the primary vaccination series, while 71% has received boosters.
Authorities announced a second booster dose for people 80 years old and over, people living in nursing homes and medically vulnerable people. The recommended time to take that shot is five months after the first booster dose.

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A China Eastern Airlines flight on a Boeing 737-800 carrying 132 people nose-dived Monday afternoon in a rural, mountainous part of the southern region of Guangxi.
Search and rescue teams found one of two black boxes — technical equipment on airplanes for capturing flight data,
The black box found Wednesday is likely the cockpit voice recorder, Zhu Tao, director of the aviation safety office at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a press conference Wednesday night.

Zhu Tao, director of the aviation safety office at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, speaks during a press conference at a hotel in Wuzhou on March 23, 2022.
Noel Celis | Afp | Getty Images

BEIJING — Search and rescue teams have found a black box and human remains at the China Eastern Airlines crash site, state media said, citing Chinese officials late Wednesday.
An airplane’s black boxes are two sets of technical equipment — one that captures flight data, and another that records cockpit communications with air traffic controllers. Analyzing that data could reveal reasons for the crash.

The black box found Wednesday is likely the cockpit voice recorder, while the search continues for the other, Zhu Tao, director of the aviation safety office at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a press conference Wednesday night.
The box has been shipped overnight to a professional civil aviation agency in Beijing for data analysis, Zhu said, noting the process would take time. The box’s storage unit appears relatively complete, although the exterior was severely damaged.
A Boeing 737-800 flight carrying 132 people nose-dived Monday afternoon in a rural, mountainous part of the southern region of Guangxi. Authorities haven’t confirmed any fatalities or shared why the crash happened.
Honeywell manufactured the two black boxes on the crashed Boeing plane, China’s civil aviation authority news account said, citing Wednesday’s press conference.

Rescue teams have sent human remains found at the crash site on to investigators, state media added, citing the same press event.

The last serious passenger flight crash in China occurred in 2010.
Since this week’s crash involved an American-made Boeing plane, U.S. agencies and companies will also participate in the investigation.
While Chinese authorities are leading the probe, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it has appointed a senior air safety investigator and that representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and CFM will serve as technical advisors. CFM is a joint venture between U.S.-based General Electric and France-based Safran that manufactured the engines on the crashed plane, the safety board said.

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Holley is pursuing growth through managing supply chain issues currently dogging the auto industry, CEO Tom Tomlinson told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday.
“Supply chain has definitely been a challenge, but we’ve managed it effectively,” Tomlinson said in an interview on “Mad Money.”

Holley is pursuing growth through managing supply chain issues currently dogging the auto industry, chief executive Tom Tomlinson told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday.
“Supply chain has definitely been a challenge, but we’ve managed it effectively,” Tomlinson said in an interview on “Mad Money.”

“We’ve left some dollars on the table though still, and we’re operating with a bigger book of business backlog than we’ve ever had, and so that’s one of our focuses, to really unlock more growth by working through those supply chain issues,” he added.
Stock of Holley, which makes aftermarket auto parts for high-performance vehicles, fell 0.78% on Wednesday to $14.01. The company released its fourth-quarter earnings results on March 3, reporting better-than-expected sales and EBITDA and a positive 2022 outlook.
When Cramer asked if Holley could become a “consolidator for [the auto parts] industry” through mergers and acquisitions, Tomlinson said that the company “absolutely” could. Holley added Arizona Desert Shocks, Baer Brakes, Brothers Trucks and Rocket Racing Wheels to its brand portfolio during the fourth quarter.
“We’ve had a lot of experience, very successful experience with M&A, we have a very methodic program and it’s part of our strategy to accelerate the company’s growth,” he said.
Holley, which went public in 2021 through a merger with a SPAC, was featured on Cramer’s list of profitable, newly public stocks to watch in January. 

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Production of the battery-electric version of Nikola’s Tre semitruck began on Monday.
The battery-electric version of the Tre is intended for shorter routes, with an estimated range of about 350 miles.
A longer-range version of the Tre, powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, is on track to begin shipping late next year.

Nikola Motor’s Tre semi-truck.
Nikola Motor Company

Electric heavy-truck startup Nikola announced on Wednesday that it has begun production of the battery-powered version of its electric Tre semitruck at its factory in Coolidge, Arizona, beating rival Tesla’s electric semitruck to market.
Nikola plans to begin deliveries of the trucks in the second quarter, executives said during a presentation for analysts. Production of the trucks for customers began on Monday.

Nikola shares were up about 4% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
The battery-electric version of the Tre is intended for shorter routes, with an estimated range of about 350 miles. Nikola expects to deliver between 300 and 500 of the trucks this year before ramping up production to a higher level in 2023.
Nikola’s once high-flying stock has slumped to single-digits since the departure of its founder, Trevor Milton, under an ethical cloud in 2020. The company has cut ties with Milton and has settled all outstanding claims related to his actions, it reiterated on Wednesday.
Milton was indicted last year on federal fraud charges related to statements he made before Nikola’s initial public offering.

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Nikola plans to follow the battery-electric Tre with a version powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that will come with range of up to 500 miles, suitable for longer routes. That will be followed by what Nikola calls a “next-generation” fuel-cell model in 2025, suitable for long-haul routes with up to 900 miles of range.
The hydrogen Tre is on track to begin shipping late 2023, the company confirmed.

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