Nikola Founder Exaggerated the Capability of His Debut Truck (bloomberg.com) 94
An anonymous reader shares a report: After half an hour of promotional videos and big promises, Nikola's 13-foot-tall prototype parked atop a rotating stage began to spin. The dramatic music reached a crescendo, lights flicked on and a partially translucent white sheet lifted off the Nikola One. Founder Trevor Milton walked up to applause, put his hands on his side and admired the big rig. "Oh, that thing is so awesome," he said. "We've been waiting so long to show this to the world, you have no idea. It's hard to even contain my emotion about this." Milton then made several comments to the crowd at the December 2016 event suggesting the Nikola One was driveable. The statements alarmed people familiar with the truck's capability, who told Bloomberg News recently that it was inoperable and missing key components to power itself. On Wednesday, Milton said key parts were taken out of the vehicle for safety reasons and that it never drove under its own power.
[...] At the event 3 1/2 years ago, Milton said the company had put up a chain to keep people from bumping into any of the vehicle controls. "We're going to try to keep people from driving off," he said. "This thing fully functions and works." Later, he said the truck was not a "pusher," referring to an inoperable prototype that needed to be nudged onto the stage. The people familiar with the truck, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information, said they were concerned about the statements. Gears and motors were missing, and while the words "H2 Zero Emission Hydrogen Electric" were emblazoned on the vehicle, there was no fuel cell on board.
[...] At the event 3 1/2 years ago, Milton said the company had put up a chain to keep people from bumping into any of the vehicle controls. "We're going to try to keep people from driving off," he said. "This thing fully functions and works." Later, he said the truck was not a "pusher," referring to an inoperable prototype that needed to be nudged onto the stage. The people familiar with the truck, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information, said they were concerned about the statements. Gears and motors were missing, and while the words "H2 Zero Emission Hydrogen Electric" were emblazoned on the vehicle, there was no fuel cell on board.
Isn't that the American Way (TM)? (Score:4, Funny)
Vastly overstate the worth of your products, get tons of investors, and then maybe later deliver something that may or may not work?
Re:Isn't that the American Way (TM)? (Score:4, Funny)
Common in IT: "But boss, it's just a quick mock-up; it won't handle production transaction loads and maintenance needs."
Boss: "Let's worry about that later, just shippit!"
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Gods Work? I don't think so
That was four years before investors. SEC (Score:2)
> overstate the worth of your products, get tons of investors
If they had been publicly seeking investors, that would be exactly the kind of "material misstatement of fact" that gets a CEO in trouble with the SEC. Kinda like how Elon Musk can't be CEO of Tesla anymore because he tweeted an untrue statement which would encourage investors.
This guy made the statement in 2016. They went public (started offering their stock as an investment to the public) in 2020.
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So he got away with what is basically fraud because he made sure the SEC was not involved. Well, he got massively rich off his misdeed, so that is ok then.
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Fraud against whom? Any investors are pretty happy right about now.
The SEC does have jurisdiction over investment in privately held companies too, so they could bust him if he did something like sell to someone who wasn't an accredited investor, or if investors say they were mislead. I haven't heard any complaints from investors saying they were mislead. Someone who owns 20% of the company should know more about the company than just watching a press event.
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Not stating a serious risk is fraud. Stating a wring state of completion on a project towards investors is fraud.
It may not bite anybody but it may also cost them a lot of money.
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Yeah if the (few) owners of the company believed their own press stunt, that would be a problem.
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The problem is that fraud is usually done to screw investors over - like the CEO absconding with a ton of money by pumping up the stock then revealing the fraud which causes it to drop. This normally causes the investors to lose money and thus they get angry and call on the SEC to investigate.
Elon had that happen to him because the short sellers lost a bunch of money from the untrue statement - basically Elon managed to pump the stock up much higher than it was supposed to go.
Apple had the same thing happen
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> Elon had that happen to him because the short sellers lost a bunch of money from the untrue statement - basically Elon managed to pump the stock up much higher than it was supposed to go.
The problem with false statements pumping a stock isn't so much short sellers as it is the stock goes righr back down when the lie is discovered and publicized. Anyone who bought between the time he made statement and the time everyone knew it was false got screwed, over-paying for the stock.
That's actually neutral for
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Google: Who is Tesla's CEO? [google.com]
A brief summary: Musk initially geared up for a fight with the SEC over the tweets, convinced he had a verbal agreement with the Saudis and had done nothing wrong, but was convinced to settle with the SEC by Mark Cuban; Mark had previously won a battle against the SEC, but pointed out that even when you win, you still lose, in terms of years of expense and distraction. The settlement involved no admission of guilt of wrongdoi
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Yep, limited strictly to America. In all the other countries, they have a very elaborate set of ...things... to prevent this. But those stupid Americans are still trying to figure out how to do things without slaves. /sarcasm
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"Fake it 'til you make it"
(or at least, "Fake it until you get the money". The "making it" part is optional)
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No, but it *is* the Start-Up Way (TM) (Score:2)
"Innovating" is not really the same as "flying blind", but they often just start giving away free lunches and then brag about how much their 'customers' love them.
What's even sillier (as I casually browse past news stories about the semitruck) is that some of them are bragging about how it will have 900 HP (way too much) and how fast it ca
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I'd be surprised if many logistics companies bother very long with the Tesla equivalent.
Indeed. They have tight margins and cannot afford to be inefficient or, worse, ineffective. That product either delivers (in a very non-flashy way) or it will have no real chance beyond a short-term publicity stunt.
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It worked out great for Elon Musk, he probably just figured he would do the same.
Tesla stock is at an all time high and robotaxi is nowhere to be seen, same as the last 4 years when it's been just months from launching.
That was 3 1/2 years ago (Score:2)
That was 3 1/2 years ago. What about today? Considering they just got listed on NASDAQ and said founder is worth just under $4 Billion from his stock ownership, inquiring minds want to know.
Also, quoting Forbes, "Nikola has secured truck orders worth $10 billion from companies led by Anheuser-Busch, which wants 800 of the companyâ(TM)s non-polluting behemoths. "
I don't think they're still at the phase of promoting pipe dreams if they have $10 billion in orders, with delivery expected next year -- unles
Re:That was 3 1/2 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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On the other hand, it's also possible a Musk fanboi is simply jealous there's some press about an electric vehicle which isn't about Elon.
Re:That was 3 1/2 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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A Nikola/Tesla deal would be very confusing.
Re:That was 3 1/2 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
The orders are free. Anyone can make them. I have an order for dozens of trucks registered to Donald Duck, for his business, Fake Company, at their address on Imaginary Lane, in Not-A-Real City.
Nikola got listed on NASDAQ via a reverse acquisition with VectoIQ. A reverse acquisition is a very expensive way to go public, but it lets you avoid the normal regulatory and financial obligations. The CEO made sure he got a personal payday during the acquisition, too (structured to let him cash out stock).
For years, delivery is always imminent, and always, never happens.
Nikola is a company with 350 employees and no factory. They don't even make all of their own prototypes (and some of the products exist only as renderings). Others, apparently, were just empty shells.
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The orders are free.
Are you telling me I can reserve a Nikola truck for less than a nickel a truck?
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That's exactly what people said about Bernie Madoff; he's managing too much money for it to be a scam. Scams can't be that successful.
The existence of pre-orders never means it isn't a scam. That's just silly. The existence of filled orders is the only proof for it not being a scam.
unless this is the Theranos of electric trucks.
That is the implication of the fact they lied about the state of the demo vehicle in order to get the orders. Like when Theranos said it already worked, even though the performance numbers don't really add up unless they had al
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I don't think they're still at the phase of promoting pipe dreams if they have $10 billion in orders,
$10 Billion in orders with $0 down.
All reservations will be refunded 100% and you wonâ(TM)t lose your place in line. We donâ(TM)t use your money to operate our business. We want everyone to know we have never used a dollar of deposit money in the history of our company. All deposits will be refunded
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It was a shelf IPO— a shelf company that was publicly traded “acquired” Nikola, and changed its ticker... to avoid SEC scrutiny. If you thought WeWork was a scam, this is about an order of magnitude worse.
Unless they have farmed out 100% of detailed engineering, along with manufacturing (as they have declared), there is no way they will ever produce a vehicle. If you want to look at the options pricing you will quickly see that the market has very little faith in this company.
They invented doors with windows. (Score:2)
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Shiny roundish doors and windows, Apple sued them.
Reminds me of the con artist (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the 80s, when Atlantic City was supposed to be the East coast version of Las Vegas, the con artist desperately needed a loan to build one of his casinos. He was so deep in debt banks were extremely leery of pouring more money after bad. Obviously they wanted to see for themselves what exactly was going on.
The con artist called up one of his people working on the project and told him to get anyone and everyone he could find down to that site and make it look like a massive construction project was underway (at the time, there was very little if anything going on).
The bank representatives show up and the con artist is walking with them, lying about how great the site is, how much money the casino will bring in and so on. At one point the group passes a guy digging a hole. On their way back, they pass the same guy now filling in the hole he had dug. One of the bank representatives asked why the guy was filling in the hole and the con artist gave some BS excuse.
The banks did eventually give the con artist a loan, the casino was built and promptly went bankrupt.
In case you're wondering, the con artist brags about this event in the first book he wrote. The one not in any way written by a ghost writer.
Re:Reminds me of the con artist (Score:4, Funny)
Heaven forbid anybody like that ever becoming President. Imagine the chaos and drama.
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I smell someone who lost money on that casino.
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No, he lost his money *in* it!
Re:Reminds me of the con artist (Score:4, Funny)
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So you wouldn't mind to be scammed?
Re:Reminds me of the con artist (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently, he'd shake the scam artist's hand and congratulate him on a job well done. "That took guts and skill," he'd say.
Re:Reminds me of the con artist (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm dead broke, so I'm impossible to scam.
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I'd be more than happy to load a pre-paid debit card for them. But they are going to have to front me the cab fare so I can get to the Quicky-Mart to buy one.
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Scams work because they play on the victim's own greed.
No, scams work because someone confidently makes claims that are false. Depending on the scam, greed doesn't even have to be a factor.
I'm not greedy, so I'm inherently harder to scam.
This is false. You are not harder to scam, you are just less susceptible to certain types of scams. Provided the right scam you would be an easy mark where others would look at you and ask, "Really? You fell for that?"
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No, scams work because someone confidently makes claims that are false.
Funding secured.
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"The banker thought he saw yyyyyuuuge profits. "
The banker thought he was in on the con.
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It takes strength to rape a woman as well, do you consider rape an "achievement"?
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It's never appropriate to draw a comparison there because if you make a financial agreement on false premises it can be considered fraud, but sexual consent is still considered valid if you lie to someone to get them to fuck you.
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LOL seriously, if a bank is literally stupid enough to grant 8- and 9-figure loans to people based on "walking past the activity at the site" then the con artist was right to con them. Fools and their money and all that.
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The president isn't "allowed" to investigate anyone. The DOJ, in a non-corrupt administration, is independent of the president.
Furthermore, this isn't regarding an "investigation", it is regarding a corrupt plan to smear a presidential candidate.
Ironic that Nikola could end up losing to Tesla (Score:2)
https://www.tesla.com/semi?red... [tesla.com]
That's it. I have no further insight into this topic. Go join in with the pro/anti Musk war that is building up as we speak. Get plenty of popcorn.
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Horrible name (Score:3)
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Re: Horrible name (Score:1)
Re:Horrible name (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to say it - "Nikola" is a dumb-ass name for a car company. Yes, I'm from the same region as Nikola Tesla...
It's even dumber when you consider that Tesla is already an established manufacturer. It would be like creating new company called Henry to compete with Ford.
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Hydrogen is green washed oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Battery technology is riding on the back of cellphone, laptop and other mobile computer users who are willing to pay more than 500 $/kWh.Their demand for lighter smaller batteries seems to be insatiable and they have created a huge several billion dollar worth market. The profits from that sector is driving the battery technology in its own Moore's law. Energy density doubling, prices halving every seven years.
That profitable sector is the key. All competition to Li-Ion batteries are experimental projects with much smaller funding. Coming to hydrogen, renewable hydrogen needs to become cheaper than fossil fuel hydrogen for it to become economically viable. There is no path for that.
Batteries on the other hand are displacing fossil fuels in expensive luxury cars, peak load electric power plants, already. That will reduce the price of fossil fuels even more and the green washed hydrogen will be even more cheap.
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Both hydrogen and batteries are just different ways to store energy. Both can be "recharged" electrically. Hydrogen can be made by cracking water, using electricity, from whatever source you'd use to charge the battery.
You can get hydrogen directly from fossil fuels though, that being a non-renewable resource isn't sustainable in the long-term. Although it's handy when you have it because it takes less energy to get out of petroleum than it would to crack the water. There, you're converting the form of
Re:Hydrogen is green washed oil (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and currently battery technology wins on those tradeoffs, AND is improving by the day, hydrogen meanwhile is worse in almost every way, and has been stagnant for years.
Batteries are cheaper, can release more power faster, are far safer, and can be recharged anywhere. Hydrogen meanwhile is extremely dangerous, very costly, requires whole new infrastructure that doesn't exist and would be expensive to build, and takes more than twice as much electric input for the same electric output.
Additionally, despite years of hype, fueling times for hydrogen aren't dramatically faster than electric fast-chargers, and the range of the vehicles isn't much (if any) more once charged.
Hydrogen was surpassed by battery technology several decades ago, it's time we put it out of its misery.
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Batteries are cheaper, can release more power faster, are far safer,
I would say that hydrogen can release more power faster and that is why it's most definitely not safer. Now don't give me flim-flam about useful power!
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We donâ(TM)t have hours to waste waiting for your piece of shit batteries to recharge.
You can drive 620 miles in a Tesla Model 3 with ~23 minutes of charging.
At 70mph that's ~8 hours and 50 minutes of driving with one 23 minute stop. My bladder can't even handle that level of sustained driving.
If you drive for 150 miles you only need to stop for 12 minutes of charging. So every 2-3 hours you stop for 15 minutes stretch your legs and at some point stop to eat a meal for an hour and at that point you can go another 300 miles.
Charging is not the limit any more, it's now the human body's wil
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It's funny checking the options interest on Nikola (Score:2)
For example, Nikola is currently at $64. If one compares, say, a Jan 21 '22 $25-30 PUT spread, the strikes are $4,50 x 100 apart, for a spread that has a max payout of $5 x 100. E.g. the market thinks that by Jan 21 '22, there's 90% odds that Nikola will be under $25, e.g. less than 2/5ths of its current value. It doesn't get much prettier down from there.
Most of the market thinks that this company is a scam. But that hasn't stopped others from dumping in cash at ridiculous valuations.
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"Upon further review, your home is not located within our currently planned service territory. The driving distance from our closest warehouse would make it difficult for us to provide you the high-quality service that our customers deserve. For this reason, we will not be able to proceed with your project."
Who would have thunk (Score:2)
Analogy.... (Score:2)
...if Theranos built a truck it would be this.
Stock is up almost 5% today (Score:1)
Par for the course?
Universal Truth of Marketing (Score:2)
Marketeers gonna Market! Anything you can say that makes the product sound good ... is worth the risk of being called out later on for lying in your teeth. ... doesn't matter who's marketing/advertising you examine, there will be lies in the content.
Vehicle manufacturers, Cheese makers, Beer makers, Politicians
Hey, look over there, shiny thing!