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Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
- fullshark 2y agoBriefly more valuable than the ford motor company. SPACs were borderline criminal enterprises, though this one was outright criminal.
- kjs3 2y agoAnd yet...just watch all the people who will think because they raised $700m that they're a success to be emulated. People still fervently defend Elizabeth Holmes.
- miztrskinnr 2y agoThey achieved the tallest of orders; made line go up!
- kjs3 2y agoWell, yes, there was a product that never worked, and conviction + prison sentencing for fraud, and the bankruptcy, and out of work workers and shafted suppliers...but we shouldn't let that detract from the positive!
- stickfigure 2y ago> People still fervently defend Elizabeth Holmes. Dozens!
- pstuart 2y agoHydrogen has its place in our energy economy but its got too many issues to be used to power vehicles. Batteries have won, and synthesized hydrocarbons will be the alternative for where batteries won't work (i.e., most commercial air travel). That said, it's a pity to see this failure.
- fullshark 2y agoThis company was an elaborate con, legitimately. Its failure is justice.
- tombert 2y agoSo much so that the CEO was convicted of fraud over it. It's insane that it still had value after the Hindenburg report.
- GJim 2y ago> Hydrogen has its place in our energy economy It certainly does not! (At least, not in any meaningful sense). A) How do you store it? Hydrogen does not compress to a liquid (except a cryogenic temperatures), meaning storage requires bulky, heavy and dangerous high pressure storage..... or cryo kit. B) Where do you get the hydrogen from? Electrolysis of water gives less hydrogen energy out than electrical energy you put in.... its more efficient to use the electrical energy directly. Currently we obtain hydrogen from natural gas, which itself is a finite resource (not to mention CO2 is emitted when extracting the hydrogen from gas). Seriously, the sums don't add up and hydrogen is a looser however you look at it. The only people promoting it here are the natural gas industry who are looking to get money pushing the "hydrogen economy" vapourware.
- mschuster91 2y ago> It certainly does not! (At least, not in any meaningful sense). The problem is, there are applications that for the foreseeable future cannot be made to work on batteries - airplanes larger than bushcraft and large-scale maritime shipping (the large ocean liners carry upwards of a million gallons of fuel). Assuming we want to convert these away from fossil fuels - which we have to! - there are only two renewable alternatives: biofuels, which carry serious ethical implications given world hunger and soil depletion, and synthfuels made from hydrogen and sequestered CO2 as base chemicals. The problem is, synthfuels are absurdly expensive because there is no hydrogen market yet so there isn't much happening in scaling up from lab-scale.
- idontwantthis 2y agoRemember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn’t even drive?
- m0llusk 2y agoThat was a classic. They should have pivoted to comedy.
- sct202 2y agoI couldn't believe people kept pumping this company like it had real promise after that came out.
- Me000 2y agoImagine if someone had said this about Tesla. They would have been swamped if wall of text responses. At least Nikola delivered what they promised.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tombert 2y agoThey decidedly did not deliver what they promised. Their hydrogen truck did not work, which is why their promo video had to tow a truck up a hill and film it rolling down.
- bayesianbot 2y agoAt least funnily the video delivered its promise as it was titled “Nikola One in Motion”
- tombert 2y agoTechnically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
- idontwantthis 2y ago
- bayesianbot 2y agoI always wondered how it kept some value for a long time after the Hindenburg Research report[1]. To me, the report (and the CEO's empty response to it) made it clear there was pretty much no value in it, but the stock only lost 50% in the following week. [1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/ https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
- suraci 2y agoSMCI lost 60% after its auditor failed to audit and resigned after that, it roses 300% SMCI is also a target of hindenburg https://hindenburgresearch.com/smci/ https://hindenburgresearch.com/smci/ before this, I didn't even know that a company that couldn't be audited could still be listed.
- coliveira 2y agoAuditing a company is not a normal procedure. Many companies, even in the S&P500, may have trouble during an audit. I remember there was a serious report about GE at one time, they decided to split the company as a response.
- fitchjo 2y agoBy law, any public company in the US (and most other countries) are required to have a financial statement audit. I am sure there are instances where it is not required, but substantially all private companies that have debt are required per their credit agreement to have a financial statement audit completed. I would be interested where you are getting your information that auditing a company is not a normal process.
- howlingfantods 2y agoPublic companies have to undergo a financial audit every year. If you’re referring to a tax audit from the IRS, then yes, those are rarer.
- hot_gril 2y agoPeople also bought Fisker cars again, even knowing that the company produced defective cars before going bankrupt last time (which they did again this time).
- fohara 2y agoApparently some of the software in Nikola vehicles was written in Crystal [1]. [1] https://manas.tech/blog/2020/02/11/nikola-motor-company/ https://manas.tech/blog/2020/02/11/nikola-motor-company/
- pbronez 2y agoInteresting. That’s only the second time I’ve heard of crystal being used in production. The first is Kagi, which uses it in search query processing.
- TremendousJudge 2y ago>in production are there Nikola trucks on the road right now?
- sofixa 2y ago> are there Nikola trucks on the road right now Importantly, under their own power, and not going downhill.
- perihelions 2y agoA sample of old HN threads (this one's the origin of the "HTML5 supercomputer" classic), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721 ("Nikola: How to Parlay an Ocean of Lies into a Partnership with GM (hindenburgresearch.com)" (2020), 414 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24473231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24473231 ("Nikola admits prototype was rolling downhill in promotional video (arstechnica.com)" (2020), 248 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996321 ("Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud (cnbc.com)" (2021), 509 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38685607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38685607 ("Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud charges (cnbc.com)" (2023), 186 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nikola&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nikola&sort=byPopularity
- soneca 2y agoThere is also this older one (when they launched?): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683508 To give HN credit, the overwhelming sentiment at the time is that this was a very suspicious and scammy endeavor already right at launch.
- AbstractH24 2y agoSo what companies is HN calling out in 2025? Wondering who I should expect to collapse in 2030.
- andix 2y agoIf somebody is interested in how the Nikola Trucks drive, there is a great YouTube channel from a German truck driver, that drives the European version (IVECO) of the Nikola truck on a daily basis across Europe. https://www.youtube.com/@electrictrucker https://www.youtube.com/@electrictrucker German channel: https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker
- sofixa 2y ago> the European version (IVECO) of the Nikola truck on a daily basis across Europe That's a wildly misleading way of wording that. Iveco make trucks and vans and buses. Nikola bought some of them and rebadged them and tried to pass them off as their own revolutionary prototypes. There's a YouTuber driving the real thing, which is entirely unrelated to Nikola in any way.
- andix 2y agoThanks for pointing that out, I don't know a lot about Nikola and the Icevo partnership. The YouTube channel is still worth watching.
- exabrial 2y agoThe entire purpose of Nikola was to create proliferation route for taxpayer dollars into private bank accounts. To this end, they were moderately successful. A few other ding dongs, like GM, didn't do their due diligence and also fell for it.
- nradov 2y agoIn GM's defense, the deal with Nikola didn't really cost them anything. It only damaged their reputation. Some other clueless investors then assumed that GM had done due diligence before signing the agreement, which was never the case.
- dawnerd 2y agoThere’s quite a few driving around SoCal, mostly by WattEV for testing. Figured they were selling enough to keep going but guess not.
- cheema33 2y ago> Figured they were selling enough to keep going but guess not. They were buying their vehicles from Iveco in Europe. Putting their name on them and selling them at a loss here in the US. Making money by selling vehicles was never the goal with this company. Defrauding foolish investors was the primary money maker.
- cellis 2y ago“The stock is the product!”
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThis is chapter 11, not 7. So they think there is still a viable business here after restructuring.
- mikikian 2y agoThey filed a Sale Motion for all the assets.
- rlewkov 2y agoElectric truck ... nuff said
- zdragnar 2y agoWhy is that? Light duty trucks and SUVs outsell cars in the US. They are comfortable to ride in, have better leg room and head room, and have a heavier duty frame that enables them to haul and tow more as needed. You can fit a plow on many trucks as well in snowy regions. Electrifying them has only upsides with the exception of road weight and range, but I'm repeatedly told that's not a problem for cars anymore. Granted, the F150 lightning hasn't done well compared to Ford's expectations, which might say a lot about the reality of range concerns (especially when towing).
- jmcnulty 2y agoThey pivoted from pure BEV to bet their future on Hydrogen FCEV trucks. They were a flop and that's what sunk them IMO.
- tim333 2y agoIn contrast to the failed Nikola approach there's a small Aussie company that seems to be doing quite well with electric truck conversions. Rather than build in batteries like in cars they swap packs using a forklift - vid https://youtu.be/9eYLtPSf7PY?t=145 https://youtu.be/9eYLtPSf7PY?t=145 Seems quite a good idea to me - it's a different market to cars where no one wants to muck around with forklifts, whereas with trucks they use forklifts to load stuff anyway and people don't especially want to have to plug it in for hours to recharge. Also you can charge the batteries while not installed using things like solar, whereas with built in batteries like on the Tesla semi you need a lot of grid power to supercharge.
- rfwhyte 2y agoThere's also a small Canadian company called Edison Motors that's doing some very interesting work in developing hybrid diesel-electric logging and back-country hauling trucks. They've taken a far saner approach to growth (Ie. not the typical SV hyperscalling model) and are actually building trucks that solve real world problems and I am personally a huge fan of them. They might not have the glitz or funding of your typical "Startup" but they are actually building a sustainable business that has a very good chance thriving for decades to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6e2Lh9u58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6e2Lh9u58