[HN Gopher] Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankr...
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Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
Author : moose44
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-02-19 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| fullshark wrote:
| Briefly more valuable than the ford motor company. SPACs were
| borderline criminal enterprises, though this one was outright
| criminal.
| kjs3 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They achieved the tallest of orders; made line go up!
| stickfigure wrote:
| > People still fervently defend Elizabeth Holmes.
|
| _Dozens!_
| pstuart wrote:
| 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.
| fullshark wrote:
| This company was an elaborate con, legitimately. Its failure is
| justice.
| tombert wrote:
| So much so that the CEO was convicted of fraud over it. It's
| insane that it still had value after the Hindenburg report.
| GJim wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| jes5199 wrote:
| synthfuels will catch up eventually, the economics keep
| getting better and there's really no alternative
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| There are some enormous issues regarding hydrogen storage
| that will need to be resolved before it will be usable on
| aircraft.
|
| Pressure vessels are heavy, hydrogen is explosive, both of
| those are incompatible with aircraft.
| standeven wrote:
| I agree with most of what you've said, but there are some
| niche uses.
|
| https://www.liebreich.com/hydrogen-ladder-version-5-0/
| dismalaf wrote:
| > 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?
| ggreer wrote:
| The efficiency of using electricity to split water, then
| compressing and transporting the hydrogen, then using that
| hydrogen in a fuel cell to power an electric motor, is much
| worse than using electricity to charge a battery to power
| an electric motor.
|
| Also electricity is available almost everywhere. Hydrogen
| is only available at a few specialized fueling stations.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Electrolysis is actually around 80% efficient. The main
| issue is infrastructure, you're right about that.
|
| But the comment I initially responded to said there's
| energy loss as though that's not the case with literally
| every type of energy storage.
| hot_gril wrote:
| There are a lot of hydrogen vehicles on the road already,
| especially buses.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| sofixa wrote:
| > 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
|
| Batteries suck in energy density and weight and in some
| cases, that _really_ matters. Battery electric planes are
| not even close to being feasible other than for very small
| in size and range planes. Hydrogen is at least feasible.
| wstrange wrote:
| Bio-Fuel seems more practical.
|
| It reuses all the existing infrastructure and requires no
| engine modifications.
| sofixa wrote:
| No. It's practically impossible to scale them to the
| required level
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADpsUhdIO4w a video by a
| pilot on SAF and why it just won't cut it.
| belorn wrote:
| 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?
| huijzer wrote:
| The fact is that we are now years and years into hydrogen
| and we still have (almost) nothing to show for it. The
| number of electric cars and trucks vastly outnumbers the
| number of hydrogen cars and trucks. So the hydrogen people
| moved on to factories. But with the history of cars and
| trucks in mind, it will probably lead to nothing too. Also
| note that all hydrogen cars and trucks are funded by
| subsidies and still they one by one go out of favor. It
| just appears that it doesn't work. It's probably time to
| call it a day by now.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > 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.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Remember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn't
| even drive?
| m0llusk wrote:
| That was a classic. They should have pivoted to comedy.
| sct202 wrote:
| I couldn't believe people kept pumping this company like it had
| real promise after that came out.
| Me000 wrote:
| 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.
| tombert wrote:
| 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.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| At least funnily the video delivered its promise as it was
| titled "Nikola One in Motion"
| tombert wrote:
| Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| What did they deliver that they promised?
| hot_gril wrote:
| Imagine if Tesla copied another automaker's name then created
| a demo of their car rolling down a hill.
| faefox wrote:
| Trevor, is that you?
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| > At least Nikola delivered what they promised.
|
| Ah yes. The Nikola Gravity Drive(tm) has been a roaring
| success and is now powering millions of trucks worldwide.
| This bankruptcy is merely a blip in their continuing success.
| tombert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| tombert wrote:
| Can't speak for anyone else, but I have an issue when it's
| software too [1].
|
| I think the reason that it's more prevalent with software
| is that it's easier to hand-wave away stuff, because you
| can say "well we're _creating_ the market for this field ".
| I don't fall for that stuff anymore, but I did when I was
| first starting in this field.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41723417
| martinky24 wrote:
| Can you point me to one single example of "a founder being
| celebrated on this website for 'epic demo hacks' that are
| fraudulent"?
|
| Genuinely asking.
|
| Be sure that the fraud is obvious at the time of the post
| (and not in retrospect), is actively celebrated at the
| time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You mean anyone that uses growth hacks? There have been
| many growth hack posts here. Pretty much every single
| start up has used some to attract investors.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > Can you point me to one single example of "a founder
| being celebrated on this website for 'epic demo hacks'
| that are fraudulent"?
|
| Something, something [..] bulletproof Cybertruck [..]
| lenerdenator wrote:
| 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.
| dismalaf wrote:
| How do you even make an electric car that can't drive? Electric
| drivetrains are way, way simpler than ICE ones...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| dismalaf wrote:
| There were literally electric cars 140 years ago. Getting
| enough energy density in a battery is a definite
| technological problem that's difficult, but making a car
| move with an electric motor isn't.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| fitchjo wrote:
| By 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 wrote:
| Public 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.
| kimbernator wrote:
| It's almost like stock value and real value have been entirely
| decoupled
| guywithahat wrote:
| 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.
| michaelt wrote:
| If a business has $50 million in cash on hand and no
| significant liabilities, the business is worth at least $50
| million, no doubt.
|
| However that still leaves $29.95 billion of the $30 billion
| valuation unexplained.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think its because Fisker was in bankruptcy and the cars
| were sold at deep discounts as part of liquidation.
| hot_gril wrote:
| People also bought them well before bankruptcy. I saw them
| around, and someone at work was telling me how he's buying
| one.
| Yeul wrote:
| 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)?
| hot_gril wrote:
| But these are customers, not investors.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| 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...
| hot_gril wrote:
| It was also the same founder.
| mempko wrote:
| 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.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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_gril wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >in production
|
| are there Nikola trucks on the road right now?
| sofixa wrote:
| > are there Nikola trucks on the road right now
|
| Importantly, under their own power, and not going downhill.
| perihelions wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| andix wrote:
| 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
| sofixa wrote:
| > 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.
| exabrial wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There's quite a few driving around SoCal, mostly by WattEV for
| testing. Figured they were selling enough to keep going but guess
| not.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| This is chapter 11, not 7. So they think there is still a viable
| business here after restructuring.
| mikikian wrote:
| They filed a Sale Motion for all the assets.
| rlewkov wrote:
| Electric truck ... nuff said
| zdragnar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
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