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It does sound pretty bad, doesn't it? The guy certainly seems to have a problem with telling the truth. I think it's crazy to compare him to Musk, since Musk is

It does sound pretty bad, doesn't it? The guy certainly seems to have a problem with telling the truth. I think it's crazy to compare him to Musk, since Musk is actually extremely smart and knowledgeable about multiple areas of engineering. This other guy is just parotting the same lines, like "we are an advanced energy company that just happens to sell cars!". It's like the cargo-cult version of Tesla without any interesting technology or innovation. All that being said, I hope the author of this write-up has a good lawyer!

sokoloff 6y ago
Musk has also had some interesting/uneasy relationship history with the truth. This guy does seem to be taking it quite a bit farther and leaving a lot more daylight visible between his statements and the truth.
- saberience 6y ago
  Musk has actually delivered ground breaking tech in multiple fields though. He talks big but he usually (eventually) backs it up. No other company has managed to send rockets to space and then land them again. No other company has managed to sell fully electric cars en-masse like Tesla has done.
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > No other company has managed to send rockets to space and then land them again. * orbit
    - grey-area 6y ago
      Not yet. The boosters don't reach orbital velocity, that's the second stage.
      - liability 6y ago
        NASA was reusing orbital 'upper stages' (although not boosters or ETs) for a few years. This little thing called a 'Space Shuttle.'
        throwanem 6y ago
        Given how much of a dog the Shuttle was, you're not really making as strong an argument as you think here.
        liability 6y ago
        What argument do you think I am making? It was never my intention to make an argument. I'm just pointing out that the Shuttle was a reusable rocket. I'm certainly not talking about practicality or economics. I'm not detracting from anything SpaceX has done, though it seems like you have to walk on eggshells around some fanboys who perceive mere mention of the Shuttle as an attack I guess.
        throwanem 6y ago
        That's a shame. I've got nothing against people dragging Musk for indulging the same fantasies I grew out of around age fourteen, I just prefer they be good at it.
        liability 6y ago
        Mentioning the reusability of the shuttle is not "dragging Elon Musk", please get a grip. I am a fan of what SpaceX is doing. I would not drag on Elon Musk by criticizing the accomplishments of SpaceX, there are far better ways to do that.
        Robotbeat 6y ago
        That's valid from a certain perspective. Technologically, Shuttle was a tour de force, although economically extremely terrible. Once it was decided to retire Shuttle,p probably the most common perspective among industry experts was that Shuttle "proved" reuse was not economically feasible and expendable was the way to go. So while Shuttle pushed technology to the limit, in many ways it actually held back development of reusable rocket technology (at least from a national policy perspective, which might have actually been for the best as it created the space that SpaceX needed to develop their solution commercially). So in practical terms, Shuttle might have actually held back reusable rocket use more than advanced it. Fantastic achievement, though, and really not too bad economically when you consider all of its capabilities (only a fraction of which were used for any given mission, though).
  - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
    It’s not Musk, but the workers that did all of that.
    - unwoundmouse 6y ago
      ???? who corralled those workers? I always see this argument, if Milton has the same ability to bring together talented people as Musk does, his bullshit will be gladly accepted - both have proven the ability to bullshit, but only one has brought together groundbreaking teams thus far
      - liability 6y ago
        The Bailey: Elon Musk is a great engineer. The Motte: Elon Musk is great at hiring engineers.
      - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
        Corralling the workers does not mean doing the technical work. they are different skill sets, and the original comment conflated the two.
  - brohee 6y ago
    They only land the first stage(s), and those don't see space...
    - tankenmate 6y ago
      The first stages regularly exceed the Karman line; the first stage's apogee is normally 10 to 20 kilometres higher than stage separation.
  - ukie 6y ago
    Yeap, like a pig with telepathic abilities /s Seriously, stop being so naive.
  - empiko 6y ago
    Yeah, he certainly invests in innovative high-tech industries and I like that a lot. But he also overpromises a lot, e.g. coast-to-coast tesla autopilot (probably not happening anytime soon) or something actually useful with the neurochip (also years ahead). some of his remarks on AI also tells me that he has a feeling that he knows everything about everything but that might not be exactly the case. he is a smart guy and he got rich basically by having a really good electronic payment system. but that does not make him a universal engineer/scientist/philosopher.
    - gxon 6y ago
      “Shoot for the stars but if you happen to miss shoot for the moon instead.” There's something to be said about the value of setting wildly unachievable goals. It takes you further than you might have thought possible.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - untog 6y ago
    There’s always danger of “smelling your own farts” syndrome, though. Like the whole submarine thing: it didn’t work! No doubt that Musk is very smart and knowledgable in the areas he has excelled. But a few times now he seemed to have decided that this means he’s smart in a whole load of other areas too, without much evidence. Another example is almost any time he talks about AI.
    - nickik 6y ago
      Not to go threw this again but ... if you actually read in detail what was going on, the 'submarine' was developed as a contingency only for the smallest child. It was developed because expert at the scene were not sure they could get the kid out. It was a worst case contingency plan for 1 kid from the very beginning (that's what it was sized for). Of course in the media it was all like 'Elon rides in on spaceship and promises to build submarine to save everybody'. And we don't know if it 'didn't work' as it was not tried, because the smallest kid was eventually brought threw with the same methods. The whole point here is that Elon wanted to help but clearly he couldn't help with diving, so with a team of engineers they tried to work on a small part of the problem. Only to then get shit on relentlessly for working something out of the box. It was similar to when everybody was shitting on Elon because apparently he delivered the wrong products to help with Covid. Later turned out that Tesla had excellent contact with doctors in China because of their production facilities in China and focused on delivering what doctors in China told them was useful. All in all there is no way around it, Elon has started many successful companies and pretty much all of them have done some or many impressive things. Very often with the experts in the field claiming his plans were impossible or buissness suicide. He might say something wrong once in a while, but you better actually listen what exactly he is saying and why, before dismissing it claiming he is just smelling his farts.
  - JJMcJ 6y ago
    No other company? Nissan Leaf? Close to 1/2 million sold.
    - ordinaryperson 6y ago
      The Leaf came years after Tesla and was a cautious, follow-the-leader side bet by Nissan. The Tesla Roadster was a radical re-thinking of the automobile -- an industry that had been stagnating for over 50 years -- and an all-in investment in electric vehicle future by an eccentric billionaire. Nowhere near as bold or life-or-death in either financial outlay or feature design. Do a side-by-side feature comparison of the original Leaf and Roadster to see just how far apart the two were in thinking, design and ambition. The Leaf was and is essentially the belief that Tesla's vehicles would be too expensive for the average customer so Nissan could ride Tesla's tailwind to sell a more affordable model. And they have, and that's fine. But it boggles my mind when people imply that Nissan's efforts in electric vehicles are in any way a reasonable comparison to what Tesla has done.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        The LEAF however is a fine rebuttal to the GGP claim “No other company has managed to sell fully electric cars en-masse like Tesla has done.”
- deleted 6y ago
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- fossuser 6y ago
  Not close to the same thing. Musk has a history of building and shipping successful products company after company in spite of a constant amount of people saying he would fail. (X.com, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring). Nikola is a complete fraud that collected money from know-nothing investors riding on EVs and Tesla's name. They haven't shipped anything and probably never will. Bizarrely positively portrayed in the press alongside negative Tesla stories - I imagine because it's good for clicks? I find it hard to believe the SPAC that brought them public wasn't solely for the purpose of allowing them to steal as much as they could from the public before they shut down. No idea how well they played it - I guess we'll see if anyone ends up in prison. At least he got to con his way into a fancy ranch in the mean time: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-14/nikola-motor-head-trevor-milton-2000-acre-utah-ranch https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-1... People like this make the world worse for the rest of us (and make it harder for honest startups to raise money).
  - neolog 6y ago
    Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Demos of existing tech are even better than what Nikola has.
      - pas 6y ago
        In general yes, but the Solar Roof Tile thing is still vaporware despite the demo.
    - adventured 6y ago
      > Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech? Are complex, difficult, expensive products or services usually built and launched quickly? Do they occasionally require long cycles of iteration? Maybe the iPhone should have been thrown away at version one. It's 2005, does the Falcon 9 exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they could hardly launch the Falcon 1 without it exploding every time. It's 2009, does the Model S exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they'll never mass-manufacture electric vehicles.
- superfrank 6y ago
  I'm no Musk fanboy and this isn't meant to be a defense of Musk, but in my opinion, Musk exaggerates and over promises. He'll say intentionally vague things and let people fill in the blanks and not correct them when they are wrong. It's all a little slimy and grey, but there's usually at least a modicum of truth to the things he says or he at least believes what he's saying at the time he says it. From what I've heard recently Nikola just seems like straight up lies and fraud from trying to piggy back on the success of Tesla. Neither are good, but one is much worse in my opinion.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    > Musk exaggerates and over promises True. But he also delivers on most of them. What I find most optimistic about his statements are basically the timeframes. Self-driving is taking longer than initially thought, and so is Mars. But there's been major progress across multiple (difficult) industries. We can't compare him with the copycat company (not even the name is original!)
    - superfrank 6y ago
      I mean, if he gives a timeline and the timeline is wrong, he's still wrong. Obviously people deserve a bit of leeway because shit happens, but it seems to keep happening. In my mind that either means he's stupid (not learning from his mistakes) or deceptive. Personally, I don't think he's stupid, so...
- marvin 6y ago
  You're pointing at exactly what allows a skilled conman to succeed: To a casual, or even non-expert observer, the difference between a genius and a skilled impersonation of a genius will appear very small. You might not be able to make the distinction, and erroneously consider them equivalent.
- pfarnsworth 6y ago
  The FTC should look into Musk's statements about self-driving, how it's almost done, etc. All that does is trick Tesla owners into paying for the $8000 upgrade for a product that will never, ever come, guaranteed. It just won't happen and he keeps peddling the product like it's only a year away, for the last several years. It's outright fraud and he should be taken to task for it. And for the record, I'm a Tesla-owner.
- risyachka 6y ago
  If you set an unrealistic goal that you won't accomplish but try really hard to reach it, in most cases your end result and the progress you made along the way will be far far better than when you set a realistic goal and reach it. I always set unrealistic bars for myself. And in the end I get more from not reaching my goal than I would from reaching a lower one.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  the big difference between a pitch and a fraud is eventual intention. Seriously, even company name implies fraud by association
perl4ever 6y ago
It sounds bad, but I thought of another way to look at it. Nikola's product is the brand of being a hip, "with it" electric car company, like Tesla, but different, and they are selling it to GM. It's a simple straightforward win-win, and everything that looks like fakery is beside the point. It has solid value to GM precisely because of the inflated, arguably irrational value of Tesla. Now, I'm not investing, but it did occur to me to look at it that way. They are not actually in the same business as Tesla or GM. They're laundering cool factor.
coliveira 6y ago
I don't see it as very different from Tesla, since when they started there was no real technology to talk about. The CEO of Tesla is also well known to be untrustworthy with his promises, having even being formally investigated by the SEC for stock price manipulation. I don't know the future, but there is a possibility that they will also develop the needed technology to make it all work.
- orestarod 6y ago
  I have met people like Nikola's CEO, and I bet my dear life that nothing will ever be delivered, except if the technology exists to completely - I mean exactly 100% - outsource it using the cash given by others and slap a logo on the result, failing in the end anyway. When you see a company so hell bent and putting so much effort in tricking investors AND actively avoiding doing any real work, you know what's happening. If you, and more importantly people with money to invest, are persuaded that "it's not different from Tesla", that's a victory for Nikola, and their sole source of income.
- nickik 6y ago
  > since when they started there was no real technology to talk about That is flat false, making a automotive battery out of laptop batteries was quite a technology development. They also made their own engines and inverters from the beginning. > The CEO of Tesla is also well known to be untrustworthy with his promises Actually the opposite, it is well known that when he says something its very likely going to happen. As most of the things he say, no matter how crazy to turn out to actually happen. Arguable there is no other human alive in the world today, that when he say 'We are gone do X' that more people believe could actually do it. > having even being formally investigated by the SEC for stock price manipulation. He wasn't investigated for stock price manipulation, he was investigated for improper communication to stock holders. > I don't know the future, but there is a possibility that they will also develop the needed technology to make it all work. So even after 10 years of consistently laying every year, announcing dozens of technologies that all turn out to be totally fake you still think they can do it. That seems beyond utterly blue-eye to me.
f00zz 6y ago
He even ripped off the company's name...
- _fat_santa 6y ago
  This might be a coincidence but I thought it was funny that the NKLA stock symbol mimicks Tesla's TSLA symbol.
ghgdynb1 6y ago
I really like the cargo cult note. There are a lot of people building runways in the jungle hoping planes will land and bring cargo, so to speak, in tech. These people can and do make it into public markets (see Nikola) but it’s even more prevalent in private markets. It’s more important than ever to have technical people in private equity, not just VC.
heimatau 6y ago
> The guy certainly seems to have a problem with telling the truth. I actually disagree with this take but it gets close to the problem with Trevor Milton. Trevor is very unpolished. I'm skeptical of how detailed he gets with all the in's and out's with the technologies he's trying to innovate and make more efficient. What's going for him is a few things, he's partnering with many companies which means he's mitigating the company's risk. Now that Musk created the market, others want to join in and try whatever route that sticks. Musk on the other hand, speaks in more precise words when describing a topic. Musk does sell vaporware but...eventually (behind 'schedule') Musk delivers. This lazy focus on manifesting a specific vision what what Musk is doing. He'll let the entire engineering department go, if they aren't willing to work hard at making the future a reality. Going full circle, the energy density of hydrogen fuel cell is the future. I don't see how it's not. All you need now is for Toyota to join forces with them and you'll have an unstoppable force that will help reduce emission drastically and at a large scale. The technology is very close (1, maybe 2 iterations away) and I doubt they are far away from a breakthrough. I don't believe Milton could've focused on Hydrogen semi's prior to the success of Tesla, he doesn't have that skill but...he's making due with what he's after. He's also being wise at selling electric trucks too because the market is primed for it (read: Musk primed it). In conclusion, there are a lot of investors deep into Nikola. If Milton gets in the way of bringing this realistic engineering challenge to market, the investors will change it up. I'm not certain of how much voting say that Milton has but...it's a good sign that he stepped back from CEO role. He's way too sloppy with his words but...he brings the hype and investors are still wanting his hype. It's messy but nothing worth doing is ever blameless. P.S. I don't own either stock. Nor any energy/battery/car/electric stocks. I'm just interested in advancing our technology.
- bayesianbot 6y ago
  What possibly could they have to offer for Toyota? It doesn't look like they did any work or even had anyone capable of researching hydrogen cells working for them. Instead of advancing technology, they might have taken funding and credibility actual companies could have used. The founder has so far answered just one real question on twitter, about what they were going to bring to the GM produced car: "100% a badger. We will use common parts for example; tires, window regulators, hvac, brakes & batteries to drive down cost, but the badger is completely a badger. The infotainment, displays, software, ota, app, cab, interior, user experience, sales, service, warranty etc is ours" That's a long way to say they'll use their software and sales team.

sokoloff 6y ago

Musk has also had some interesting/uneasy relationship history with the truth. This guy does seem to be taking it quite a bit farther and leaving a lot more daylight visible between his statements and the truth.

saberience 6y ago
Musk has actually delivered ground breaking tech in multiple fields though. He talks big but he usually (eventually) backs it up. No other company has managed to send rockets to space and then land them again. No other company has managed to sell fully electric cars en-masse like Tesla has done.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > No other company has managed to send rockets to space and then land them again. * orbit
  - grey-area 6y ago
    Not yet. The boosters don't reach orbital velocity, that's the second stage.
    - liability 6y ago
      NASA was reusing orbital 'upper stages' (although not boosters or ETs) for a few years. This little thing called a 'Space Shuttle.'
      - throwanem 6y ago
        Given how much of a dog the Shuttle was, you're not really making as strong an argument as you think here.
        liability 6y ago
        What argument do you think I am making? It was never my intention to make an argument. I'm just pointing out that the Shuttle was a reusable rocket. I'm certainly not talking about practicality or economics. I'm not detracting from anything SpaceX has done, though it seems like you have to walk on eggshells around some fanboys who perceive mere mention of the Shuttle as an attack I guess.
        throwanem 6y ago
        That's a shame. I've got nothing against people dragging Musk for indulging the same fantasies I grew out of around age fourteen, I just prefer they be good at it.
        liability 6y ago
        Mentioning the reusability of the shuttle is not "dragging Elon Musk", please get a grip. I am a fan of what SpaceX is doing. I would not drag on Elon Musk by criticizing the accomplishments of SpaceX, there are far better ways to do that.
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        That's valid from a certain perspective. Technologically, Shuttle was a tour de force, although economically extremely terrible. Once it was decided to retire Shuttle,p probably the most common perspective among industry experts was that Shuttle "proved" reuse was not economically feasible and expendable was the way to go. So while Shuttle pushed technology to the limit, in many ways it actually held back development of reusable rocket technology (at least from a national policy perspective, which might have actually been for the best as it created the space that SpaceX needed to develop their solution commercially). So in practical terms, Shuttle might have actually held back reusable rocket use more than advanced it. Fantastic achievement, though, and really not too bad economically when you consider all of its capabilities (only a fraction of which were used for any given mission, though).
- Ar-Curunir 6y ago
  It’s not Musk, but the workers that did all of that.
  - unwoundmouse 6y ago
    ???? who corralled those workers? I always see this argument, if Milton has the same ability to bring together talented people as Musk does, his bullshit will be gladly accepted - both have proven the ability to bullshit, but only one has brought together groundbreaking teams thus far
    - liability 6y ago
      The Bailey: Elon Musk is a great engineer. The Motte: Elon Musk is great at hiring engineers.
    - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
      Corralling the workers does not mean doing the technical work. they are different skill sets, and the original comment conflated the two.
- brohee 6y ago
  They only land the first stage(s), and those don't see space...
  - tankenmate 6y ago
    The first stages regularly exceed the Karman line; the first stage's apogee is normally 10 to 20 kilometres higher than stage separation.
- ukie 6y ago
  Yeap, like a pig with telepathic abilities /s Seriously, stop being so naive.
- empiko 6y ago
  Yeah, he certainly invests in innovative high-tech industries and I like that a lot. But he also overpromises a lot, e.g. coast-to-coast tesla autopilot (probably not happening anytime soon) or something actually useful with the neurochip (also years ahead). some of his remarks on AI also tells me that he has a feeling that he knows everything about everything but that might not be exactly the case. he is a smart guy and he got rich basically by having a really good electronic payment system. but that does not make him a universal engineer/scientist/philosopher.
  - gxon 6y ago
    “Shoot for the stars but if you happen to miss shoot for the moon instead.” There's something to be said about the value of setting wildly unachievable goals. It takes you further than you might have thought possible.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- untog 6y ago
  There’s always danger of “smelling your own farts” syndrome, though. Like the whole submarine thing: it didn’t work! No doubt that Musk is very smart and knowledgable in the areas he has excelled. But a few times now he seemed to have decided that this means he’s smart in a whole load of other areas too, without much evidence. Another example is almost any time he talks about AI.
  - nickik 6y ago
    Not to go threw this again but ... if you actually read in detail what was going on, the 'submarine' was developed as a contingency only for the smallest child. It was developed because expert at the scene were not sure they could get the kid out. It was a worst case contingency plan for 1 kid from the very beginning (that's what it was sized for). Of course in the media it was all like 'Elon rides in on spaceship and promises to build submarine to save everybody'. And we don't know if it 'didn't work' as it was not tried, because the smallest kid was eventually brought threw with the same methods. The whole point here is that Elon wanted to help but clearly he couldn't help with diving, so with a team of engineers they tried to work on a small part of the problem. Only to then get shit on relentlessly for working something out of the box. It was similar to when everybody was shitting on Elon because apparently he delivered the wrong products to help with Covid. Later turned out that Tesla had excellent contact with doctors in China because of their production facilities in China and focused on delivering what doctors in China told them was useful. All in all there is no way around it, Elon has started many successful companies and pretty much all of them have done some or many impressive things. Very often with the experts in the field claiming his plans were impossible or buissness suicide. He might say something wrong once in a while, but you better actually listen what exactly he is saying and why, before dismissing it claiming he is just smelling his farts.
- JJMcJ 6y ago
  No other company? Nissan Leaf? Close to 1/2 million sold.
  - ordinaryperson 6y ago
    The Leaf came years after Tesla and was a cautious, follow-the-leader side bet by Nissan. The Tesla Roadster was a radical re-thinking of the automobile -- an industry that had been stagnating for over 50 years -- and an all-in investment in electric vehicle future by an eccentric billionaire. Nowhere near as bold or life-or-death in either financial outlay or feature design. Do a side-by-side feature comparison of the original Leaf and Roadster to see just how far apart the two were in thinking, design and ambition. The Leaf was and is essentially the belief that Tesla's vehicles would be too expensive for the average customer so Nissan could ride Tesla's tailwind to sell a more affordable model. And they have, and that's fine. But it boggles my mind when people imply that Nissan's efforts in electric vehicles are in any way a reasonable comparison to what Tesla has done.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      The LEAF however is a fine rebuttal to the GGP claim “No other company has managed to sell fully electric cars en-masse like Tesla has done.”
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fossuser 6y ago
Not close to the same thing. Musk has a history of building and shipping successful products company after company in spite of a constant amount of people saying he would fail. (X.com, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring). Nikola is a complete fraud that collected money from know-nothing investors riding on EVs and Tesla's name. They haven't shipped anything and probably never will. Bizarrely positively portrayed in the press alongside negative Tesla stories - I imagine because it's good for clicks? I find it hard to believe the SPAC that brought them public wasn't solely for the purpose of allowing them to steal as much as they could from the public before they shut down. No idea how well they played it - I guess we'll see if anyone ends up in prison. At least he got to con his way into a fancy ranch in the mean time: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-14/nikola-motor-head-trevor-milton-2000-acre-utah-ranch https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-1... People like this make the world worse for the rest of us (and make it harder for honest startups to raise money).
- neolog 6y ago
  Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Demos of existing tech are even better than what Nikola has.
    - pas 6y ago
      In general yes, but the Solar Roof Tile thing is still vaporware despite the demo.
  - adventured 6y ago
    > Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech? Are complex, difficult, expensive products or services usually built and launched quickly? Do they occasionally require long cycles of iteration? Maybe the iPhone should have been thrown away at version one. It's 2005, does the Falcon 9 exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they could hardly launch the Falcon 1 without it exploding every time. It's 2009, does the Model S exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they'll never mass-manufacture electric vehicles.
superfrank 6y ago
I'm no Musk fanboy and this isn't meant to be a defense of Musk, but in my opinion, Musk exaggerates and over promises. He'll say intentionally vague things and let people fill in the blanks and not correct them when they are wrong. It's all a little slimy and grey, but there's usually at least a modicum of truth to the things he says or he at least believes what he's saying at the time he says it. From what I've heard recently Nikola just seems like straight up lies and fraud from trying to piggy back on the success of Tesla. Neither are good, but one is much worse in my opinion.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > Musk exaggerates and over promises True. But he also delivers on most of them. What I find most optimistic about his statements are basically the timeframes. Self-driving is taking longer than initially thought, and so is Mars. But there's been major progress across multiple (difficult) industries. We can't compare him with the copycat company (not even the name is original!)
  - superfrank 6y ago
    I mean, if he gives a timeline and the timeline is wrong, he's still wrong. Obviously people deserve a bit of leeway because shit happens, but it seems to keep happening. In my mind that either means he's stupid (not learning from his mistakes) or deceptive. Personally, I don't think he's stupid, so...
marvin 6y ago
You're pointing at exactly what allows a skilled conman to succeed: To a casual, or even non-expert observer, the difference between a genius and a skilled impersonation of a genius will appear very small. You might not be able to make the distinction, and erroneously consider them equivalent.
pfarnsworth 6y ago
The FTC should look into Musk's statements about self-driving, how it's almost done, etc. All that does is trick Tesla owners into paying for the $8000 upgrade for a product that will never, ever come, guaranteed. It just won't happen and he keeps peddling the product like it's only a year away, for the last several years. It's outright fraud and he should be taken to task for it. And for the record, I'm a Tesla-owner.
risyachka 6y ago
If you set an unrealistic goal that you won't accomplish but try really hard to reach it, in most cases your end result and the progress you made along the way will be far far better than when you set a realistic goal and reach it. I always set unrealistic bars for myself. And in the end I get more from not reaching my goal than I would from reaching a lower one.
AzzieElbab 6y ago
the big difference between a pitch and a fraud is eventual intention. Seriously, even company name implies fraud by association

perl4ever 6y ago

It sounds bad, but I thought of another way to look at it. Nikola's product is the brand of being a hip, "with it" electric car company, like Tesla, but different, and they are selling it to GM. It's a simple straightforward win-win, and everything that looks like fakery is beside the point. It has solid value to GM precisely because of the inflated, arguably irrational value of Tesla. Now, I'm not investing, but it did occur to me to look at it that way. They are not actually in the same business as Tesla or GM. They're laundering cool factor.

coliveira 6y ago

I don't see it as very different from Tesla, since when they started there was no real technology to talk about. The CEO of Tesla is also well known to be untrustworthy with his promises, having even being formally investigated by the SEC for stock price manipulation. I don't know the future, but there is a possibility that they will also develop the needed technology to make it all work.

orestarod 6y ago
I have met people like Nikola's CEO, and I bet my dear life that nothing will ever be delivered, except if the technology exists to completely - I mean exactly 100% - outsource it using the cash given by others and slap a logo on the result, failing in the end anyway. When you see a company so hell bent and putting so much effort in tricking investors AND actively avoiding doing any real work, you know what's happening. If you, and more importantly people with money to invest, are persuaded that "it's not different from Tesla", that's a victory for Nikola, and their sole source of income.
nickik 6y ago
> since when they started there was no real technology to talk about That is flat false, making a automotive battery out of laptop batteries was quite a technology development. They also made their own engines and inverters from the beginning. > The CEO of Tesla is also well known to be untrustworthy with his promises Actually the opposite, it is well known that when he says something its very likely going to happen. As most of the things he say, no matter how crazy to turn out to actually happen. Arguable there is no other human alive in the world today, that when he say 'We are gone do X' that more people believe could actually do it. > having even being formally investigated by the SEC for stock price manipulation. He wasn't investigated for stock price manipulation, he was investigated for improper communication to stock holders. > I don't know the future, but there is a possibility that they will also develop the needed technology to make it all work. So even after 10 years of consistently laying every year, announcing dozens of technologies that all turn out to be totally fake you still think they can do it. That seems beyond utterly blue-eye to me.

f00zz 6y ago

He even ripped off the company's name...

_fat_santa 6y ago
This might be a coincidence but I thought it was funny that the NKLA stock symbol mimicks Tesla's TSLA symbol.

ghgdynb1 6y ago

I really like the cargo cult note. There are a lot of people building runways in the jungle hoping planes will land and bring cargo, so to speak, in tech. These people can and do make it into public markets (see Nikola) but it’s even more prevalent in private markets. It’s more important than ever to have technical people in private equity, not just VC.

heimatau 6y ago

> The guy certainly seems to have a problem with telling the truth. I actually disagree with this take but it gets close to the problem with Trevor Milton. Trevor is very unpolished. I'm skeptical of how detailed he gets with all the in's and out's with the technologies he's trying to innovate and make more efficient. What's going for him is a few things, he's partnering with many companies which means he's mitigating the company's risk. Now that Musk created the market, others want to join in and try whatever route that sticks. Musk on the other hand, speaks in more precise words when describing a topic. Musk does sell vaporware but...eventually (behind 'schedule') Musk delivers. This lazy focus on manifesting a specific vision what what Musk is doing. He'll let the entire engineering department go, if they aren't willing to work hard at making the future a reality. Going full circle, the energy density of hydrogen fuel cell is the future. I don't see how it's not. All you need now is for Toyota to join forces with them and you'll have an unstoppable force that will help reduce emission drastically and at a large scale. The technology is very close (1, maybe 2 iterations away) and I doubt they are far away from a breakthrough. I don't believe Milton could've focused on Hydrogen semi's prior to the success of Tesla, he doesn't have that skill but...he's making due with what he's after. He's also being wise at selling electric trucks too because the market is primed for it (read: Musk primed it). In conclusion, there are a lot of investors deep into Nikola. If Milton gets in the way of bringing this realistic engineering challenge to market, the investors will change it up. I'm not certain of how much voting say that Milton has but...it's a good sign that he stepped back from CEO role. He's way too sloppy with his words but...he brings the hype and investors are still wanting his hype. It's messy but nothing worth doing is ever blameless. P.S. I don't own either stock. Nor any energy/battery/car/electric stocks. I'm just interested in advancing our technology.

bayesianbot 6y ago
What possibly could they have to offer for Toyota? It doesn't look like they did any work or even had anyone capable of researching hydrogen cells working for them. Instead of advancing technology, they might have taken funding and credibility actual companies could have used. The founder has so far answered just one real question on twitter, about what they were going to bring to the GM produced car: "100% a badger. We will use common parts for example; tires, window regulators, hvac, brakes & batteries to drive down cost, but the badger is completely a badger. The infotainment, displays, software, ota, app, cab, interior, user experience, sales, service, warranty etc is ours" That's a long way to say they'll use their software and sales team.