3 ms·

I'm a little curious about the (allegedly?) rigged demos. There's dozens of youtube garage tinkers who could slam some off the shelf parts into a random salvag

I'm a little curious about the (allegedly?) rigged demos. There's dozens of youtube garage tinkers who could slam some off the shelf parts into a random salvage chassis in under a week. Maybe they won't meet many performance targets but they'll at least be able to show something moving under its own power. The point is, making one electric or H2 vehicle is a very low bar now. Making one manufacturable, and a production line to do it, is the hard problem. So why show a nonworking sham?

jboog 6y ago
Yeah you're right, it's all so bizarre. This dude IPOd a unicorn startup and is (for now) a billionaire by selling a vision of a manufacturing company with a non-working prototype that literally almost anyone with modest engineering skills could pull off. The Founder has no engineering background (in fact no college degree), no experience in the vehicle industry, no brilliant engineers or killer patent on technology. It smelled super fishy when they first IPO'd but I figured since all these VCs and vehicle manufacturers were partnering with them there must be something under the hood. Now it seems like such a transparent fraud. How did so many people that should have known better get conned into this?
samizdis 6y ago
See electrek article Nikola admits to faking video of driving prototype [1] And also Nikola press release [2], which states: "As Nikola pivoted to the next generation of trucks, it ultimately decided not to invest additional resources into completing the process to make the Nikola One drive on its own propulsion." [1] https://electrek.co/2020/09/14/nikola-nkla-admits-faking-video-driving-prototype-weak-response/ https://electrek.co/2020/09/14/nikola-nkla-admits-faking-vid... [2] https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-record-straight-on-false-and-misleading-short-seller-report-96 https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-recor...

jboog 6y ago

Yeah you're right, it's all so bizarre. This dude IPOd a unicorn startup and is (for now) a billionaire by selling a vision of a manufacturing company with a non-working prototype that literally almost anyone with modest engineering skills could pull off. The Founder has no engineering background (in fact no college degree), no experience in the vehicle industry, no brilliant engineers or killer patent on technology. It smelled super fishy when they first IPO'd but I figured since all these VCs and vehicle manufacturers were partnering with them there must be something under the hood. Now it seems like such a transparent fraud. How did so many people that should have known better get conned into this?

samizdis 6y ago

See electrek article Nikola admits to faking video of driving prototype [1] And also Nikola press release [2], which states: "As Nikola pivoted to the next generation of trucks, it ultimately decided not to invest additional resources into completing the process to make the Nikola One drive on its own propulsion." [1] https://electrek.co/2020/09/14/nikola-nkla-admits-faking-video-driving-prototype-weak-response/ https://electrek.co/2020/09/14/nikola-nkla-admits-faking-vid... [2] https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-record-straight-on-false-and-misleading-short-seller-report-96 https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-recor...