Nikola Electric Truck stock scam

Some things never seem to change, just the size and color of the Mirrors :slight_smile:

Enjoy!

“Prosecutors alleged Trevor Milton repeatedly claimed had had developed working prototypes of his Nikola trucks, but that no such vehicle ever existed.”

Interesting, sounds a lot like another well-known EV company that has faced very limited legal penalties so far.

It seems like it’s all about how much money you have to spend on advertising and marketing and less about the actual product you’re selling. Sad that a promising start up had to resort to lying and deception, but I wonder how often this really happens and we never know about it (until they get caught/exposed). It’s such a cut-throat business word that sometimes you need to resort to this type of behavior as acceptable business practice. Accountability and humility are no longer valued it seems.

$100 million bail bond and he’s out of jail. Not too difficult for him since,

It doesn’t seem fair that he would get to keep the spoils of his crime. The stock market was being used like a Ponzi scheme, Italian Stamps or Dutch Tulips scams.

@Muto, What other EV company are you talking about?

Bonds are usually 10% of your bail, so he probably paid $10 million for his freedom. He won’t get to enjoy that for long though sonce his assets will probably go to cover legal fees, fines, and restitutions.

I think that any company that starts with prototypes of complex products is a risky investment.
Somehow Tesla was an exception.

Normally a successful company will start by mass-producing and selling a basic cheap part, then another & another, until it has the money to build more and more complex things, like the engine, then being able to assemble a whole car

I don’t know, sounds like the cybertruck will be vaporware for quite some time, despite about a million people giving tesla a downpayment.

Well electric Commercial trucks are sort of a unicorn in the trucking industry. Unlike a car, you can carry a lot more batteries on board for longer range. With electric trucks, tucking companies don’t have to deal with excessive maintenance expenses (oil for engine gearbox, differential changes, overhauls, new brakes, etc), they aren’t dependent on budgeting for the price of diesel, which goes up and down, although electricity does too (i presume they would do the majority of recharging at night when electricity is cheaper), in the long run it wiuld be cheaper. What’s left to be seen is the payload capabilities and range. 300 gallons of diesel gets you a long way (figure 6 mpg avg. That’s 1800 miles- easily halfway across the USA without refueling).

At first I thought this was old news but I didn't know they actually brought a case against him. All I can say is Good! - dude should have been held to the irons ages ago. Quite the debacle last spring and summer as it all played out. I wonder if GM is involved in the suit...surely to some degree but they were smart and didn't fully vest in him before ditching him entirely. I've wondered if Canoo is in the same boat, no pun intended. This was Theranos revisted almost verbatim.