Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/19/troubled-electric-truck-maker-nikola-files-for-bankruptcy/

by moose44 • 1 year ago

94 96 1 year ago

fullshark2• 1 year ago

Briefly more valuable than the ford motor company. SPACs were borderline criminal enterprises, though this one was outright criminal.

kjs32• 1 year ago

And 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• 1 year ago

They achieved the tallest of orders; made line go up!

stickfigure• 1 year ago

People still fervently defend Elizabeth Holmes.

Dozens!

pstuart2• 1 year ago

Hydrogen 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.

fullshark2• 1 year ago

This company was an elaborate con, legitimately. Its failure is justice.

tombert5• 1 year ago

So much so that the CEO was convicted of fraud over it. It's insane that it still had value after the Hindenburg report.

GJim2• 1 year 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.

mschuster912• 1 year 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.

standeven2• 1 year ago

I agree with most of what you’ve said, but there are some niche uses.

https://www.liebreich.com/hydrogen-ladder-version-5-0/

dismalaf4• 1 year ago

Electrolysis of water gives less hydrogen energy out than electrical energy you put in....

This is literally all energy storage... Lithium-ion batteries lose about 10-20% during charging and another 5% during discharge.

How do you figure any energy storage medium would give you more than 100% of the energy you put into it?

hot_gril8• 1 year ago

There are a lot of hydrogen vehicles on the road already, especially buses.

Sohcahtoa822• 1 year ago

I wish I could upvote this twice. I grow so tired of people simping for hydrogen when batteries just win in every metric aside from the initial build cost, which when amortized over the life of the battery, will beat out hydrogen.

On top of the storage problems, and the problems of the energy needed to create the hydrogen, you then have to have a massive hydrogen distribution network that's on par with the current gas distribution network. With battery EVs, it's just a matter of building chargers that connect to the existing power grid, with many (possibly most) EV owners charging at home.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody pushing for hydrogen fueled vehicles is simply falling for marketing bullshit. Producing a hydrogen-powered car would likely become cheaper than a BEV, but they'll never be better for the environment in the long run, and will never be cheaper to operate. It's always going to be cheaper to just put electricity directly into a battery rather than use it to create hydrogen, distribute it, and then pump it.

belorn• 1 year ago

Green hydrogen as a power source was and still is the primary plan in the Germany green party program in order to solve the grid-scale battery issue, and was the primary argument in EU when they defined natural gas as a green transition solution. Are you saying that this strategy was the natural gas industry all along, and that green hydrogen in grid-scale size is unlikely to solve the problem of climate change?

pstuart2• 1 year ago

> Hydrogen has its place in our energy economy
It certainly does not! (At least, not in any meaningful sense).

I was speaking to the use of hydrogen for ammonia production. When we experience grid imbalances from when there's too much solar or wind energy for the grid to absorb it would be nice to put it to use in that regard rather than dumping it.

I understand and do not contest the problems that working with hydrogen creates, it makes a lousy option for a battery.

cheema334• 1 year ago

That said, it's a pity to see this failure.

Nikola did not really make anything. They bought trucks from Iveco in Europe and resold them here. They would sometimes customize a few things including putting their logo on the trucks.

idontwantthis2• 1 year ago

Remember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn’t even drive?

m0llusk• 1 year ago

That was a classic. They should have pivoted to comedy.

sct202• 1 year ago

I couldn't believe people kept pumping this company like it had real promise after that came out.

Me000• 1 year ago

Imagine if someone had said this about Tesla. They would have been swamped if wall of text responses. At least Nikola delivered what they promised.

tombert5• 1 year ago

They 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.

idontwantthis2• 1 year ago

What did they deliver that they promised?

hot_gril8• 1 year ago

Imagine if Tesla copied another automaker's name then created a demo of their car rolling down a hill.

faefox• 1 year ago

Trevor, is that you?

DarmokJalad1701• 1 year ago

At least Nikola delivered what they promised.

Ah yes. The Nikola Gravity Drive™ has been a roaring success and is now powering millions of trucks worldwide. This bankruptcy is merely a blip in their continuing success.

tombert5• 1 year ago

I have no idea how they managed to survive for years after that. The CEO was found guilty of fraud, and it didn't seem like they had any actual product.

DC-3• 1 year ago

It's the natural extension of the startup ideology to non-software industries. How many times on this website have you seen 'founders' be celebrated for doing 'epic demo hacks' at least this fraudulent? How many tech startups achieve massive valuations with a broken product and a totally hypothetical pathway to profitability?

It's easy to see through this showmanship when the product is a car. So why not when the product is software?

lenerdenator• 1 year ago

Financial momentum.

You have a bunch of people who consider themselves "the smart money" who have been had, and if they pull out, that's an acknowledgment that perhaps they're not that smart.

dismalaf4• 1 year ago

How do you even make an electric car that can't drive? Electric drivetrains are way, way simpler than ICE ones...

SoftTalker• 1 year ago

No they aren't. We've been making ICE vehicles for 100 years. The drivetrains are well understood and don't present any technical hurdles. Especially in trucks. EV heavy trucks are still pretty uncharted territory.

cheema334• 1 year ago

How do you even make an electric car that can't drive?

The "pusher" truck was not supposed to be EV. It was supposed to be a Hydrogen truck. In reality it was neither.

immibis• 1 year ago

Reality has a surprising amount of detail: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

I have no doubt it's entirely possible to make an electric truck, but you still have to spend a year in the trenches actually doing it and solving all the little design problems before you have something to show off.

Especially if you weren't previously making ICE trucks. Then you have to learn how to make a truck from scratch, instead of just the new electric parts. You can of course buy an ICE truck and convert it for your prototype, which I think is what Edison Motors did, but then you'll be showing off a rusty old truck that won't get any venture capital or journalist attention because it's nowhere near shiny enough.

bayesianbot2• 1 year ago

I 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/

suraci• 1 year ago

SMCI 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/

before this, I didn't even know that a company that couldn't be audited could still be listed.

coliveira• 1 year ago

Auditing 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.

kimbernator• 1 year ago

It's almost like stock value and real value have been entirely decoupled

guywithahat• 1 year ago

I mean they still had ~$50 million in cash on hand, plus some teams and prototypes. I certainly wouldn't have invested, but if you have $50 million, the potential to sell more stock, and a prototype there's still a lot you can do.

hot_gril8• 1 year ago

People also bought Fisker cars again, even knowing that the company produced defective cars before going bankrupt last time (which they did again this time).

pkaye• 1 year ago

I think its because Fisker was in bankruptcy and the cars were sold at deep discounts as part of liquidation.

Yeul• 1 year ago

Maybe because investors assumed they could sell their shares to the next sucker.

How many people who own stocks actually give a shit about the company they invest in (for about 5 seconds)?

ricardobeat• 1 year ago

The reborn Fisker only inherited the brand name, everything from design to manufacturing was entirely new. In hindsight maybe they brought the curse onto themselves...

mempko• 1 year ago

I watched a Demuro video where he visited Nikola's factory. Yes, the founder defrauded investors, but it's clear the engineers were building real things. They just were nowhere near where the founder claimed. So there is probably some value there, as it's not complete vaporware. But clearly they couldn't turn it around.

cheema334• 1 year ago

but it's clear the engineers were building real things

Nikola did not build their own vehicles. They bought their vehicles from Iveco in Europe and made small modifications including putting their names on them.

hn_throwaway_99• 1 year ago

I totally agree. But it feels like, at least over the past 20ish years or so, that the increased "gambling-ification" of the stock market has made it so these events take longer to resolve (i.e it takes longer for the stock price to go to 0) even if all participants eventually think it will go to 0.

That is, even though the stock will (and, in this case, did) eventually go to 0 with very little statistical probably of an alternative, there is enough volatility in the interim that stock market participants are just playing that volatility in the short term (i.e. trying to time the market, trying to not be "bag holders" in WSB parlance) even if everyone knows in the long term it's going to 0.

hot_gril8• 1 year ago

This one in particular was the perfect storm because it was an EV company during an EV bubble / govt subsidy frenzy, combined with the overall auto market being out of wack at the time, and pandemic-era extremely low rates.

fohara• 1 year ago

Apparently some of the software in Nikola vehicles was written in Crystal [1]. [1] https://manas.tech/blog/2020/02/11/nikola-motor-company/

pbronez• 1 year ago

Interesting. 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• 1 year ago

in production

are there Nikola trucks on the road right now?

perihelions• 1 year ago

A sample of old HN threads (this one's the origin of the "HTML5 supercomputer" classic),

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 ("Nikola admits prototype was rolling downhill in promotional video (arstechnica.com)" (2020), 248 comments)

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 ("Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud charges (cnbc.com)" (2023), 186 comments)

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nikola&sort=byPopularity

soneca• 1 year ago

There is also this older one (when they launched?):

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• 1 year ago

So what companies is HN calling out in 2025?

Wondering who I should expect to collapse in 2030.

andix2• 1 year ago

If 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

German channel: https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker

sofixa4• 1 year 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.

andix2• 1 year ago

Thanks for pointing that out, I don't know a lot about Nikola and the Icevo partnership. The YouTube channel is still worth watching.

exabrial• 1 year ago

The 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• 1 year ago

In 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• 1 year ago

There’s quite a few driving around SoCal, mostly by WattEV for testing. Figured they were selling enough to keep going but guess not.

cheema334• 1 year 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• 1 year ago

“The stock is the product!”

bryanlarsen• 1 year ago

This is chapter 11, not 7. So they think there is still a viable business here after restructuring.

mikikian• 1 year ago

They filed a Sale Motion for all the assets.

rlewkov• 1 year ago

Electric truck ... nuff said

zdragnar• 1 year ago

Why 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• 1 year ago

They pivoted from pure BEV to bet their future on Hydrogen FCEV trucks. They were a flop and that's what sunk them IMO.

tim333• 1 year ago

In 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

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• 1 year ago

There'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

Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy

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