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GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola
- slg 6y agoI know we aren't supposed to judge a book my its cover and I can't even put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, but simply naming your company Nikola when your biggest competitor is Tesla has always seemed like a huge red flag to me.
- tomrod 6y agoI would have expected Edison to keep the theme consistent.
- freeone3000 6y agoGE still holds that trademark, from when it was founded (as Edison General Electric).
- frogpelt 6y agoWell they need to make electric cars then.
- topkai22 6y agoHow about an all electric Hummer? Seriously though, GM does make plenty of electric cars. Or are you suggesting they should use the Edison brand?
- zrobotics 6y agoWell, GE was making chargers for electric cars in 1914,so... http://www.american-automobiles.com/images2/1914-General-Electric-Charging-Station.jpg http://www.american-automobiles.com/images2/1914-General-Ele...
- lowdose 6y agoThat's what others would consider a healthy amount of competitiveness when you literally run against one of the most innovative companies of all time. What a luxury to witness this narrative unfolding in real time.
- gwern 6y agoYou feel that way because you realize that it's a calculated attempt to ride the coattails of an infinitely more successful and reputable company, a deliberate confusion, like if you opened a coffee chain named 'Farbucks' (slogan: "We'll make your dollar go further!"), or the small pennystocks which aim for stock tickers deliberately similar to real companies (Matt Levine covers the occasional bumps in the stocks of 'accidentally' similar stock tickers).
- slg 6y agoIs there official word on that being the reason for the name? That is certainly one of the theories I had and it shows a lack of ethics. However it isn't the only theory I had and they all looked bad. For example, maybe they weren't being sleazy and they thought this was a clever play off Tesla. It isn't clever. It is unprofessional. It also shows a lack of clear vision in that they are fundamentally defining a company based off being an alternative to competitor. This shows a lack of leadership. Or maybe they are even stupider than we gave them credit for. They saw the company was named Tesla and assumed Nikola Tesla had a direct hand in designing electric cars and were too lazy to look up the rather tangential connection between the man and the company. This shows a lack of knowledge or desire for knowledge. I couldn't think of any positive reason for the name.
- tokipin 6y agoI think it follows a general theme where some people have a "tricks"-based mindset. Some people look at Tesla and think it's just tricks. Such as the idea that people are buying Teslas because of the drivetrain - which would be a simple trick, rather than the reality that Teslas are just all-around great cars - something much harder to understand. The Nikola founder probably thought Musk had succeeded in unlocking a series of successful tricks, and set out to reproduce them. But when you don't know the reason for the formula, you don't know what steps you can leave in or out, so you just follow it mechanically.
- new_realist 6y agoI don’t think so. Nobody knows the word Nikola. That reference is pretty subtle. It’s Tesla Motors, Inc. that tried to ride the coattails of the famous inventor.
- joshxyz 6y agoTotes. Nikola Tesla himself even shook his head after learning about it.
- Judgmentality 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKlZgI65gEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKlZgI65gEk If anybody wants a very entertaining synopsis of what transpired.
- cultus 6y agoIt's an incredible testament to the distortions of the capital markets that Nikola's current market cap is still $7.84 billion, and not zero. There's nothing that justifies that other than the hope that one will be able to leave others holding the bag.
- edoceo 6y agoYea, the WSB crowd is having a field day with this one. Calling in Theranos 2.0
- cultus 6y agoTheranos at least fell apart once the WSJ put out extremely strong evidence that it was fradulent. The innovative tech that Nikola claimed to have was shown to be fradulent months ago, but they're still worth billions of dollars.
- bob33212 6y agoIt is because of TSLA, there is a significant number of people who do not understand that the EV industry isn't the same thing as the furniture industry. You can't just spin up a real EV company the way you can spin up a real furniture company. But they don't see it so they want to get in on the ground floor of the next TSLA.
- miohtama 6y agoHopium is strong in RobinHood bag holders. See: already bankrupted Hertz shares.
- MattGaiser 6y agoSeveral stimulus cheques went there: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hertz-stock-sec-1.5616307 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hertz-stock-sec-1.5616307
- esalman 6y agoIndeed. Much like DOW hitting record highs while people line up at food banks.
- jariel 6y agoNKLA has nothing now, what we're left with is evidence of the new era of 'RobinHood' traders et. al. thinking they're on to something, or not realizing that it's really over, keeping some kind of valuation in place. We may be in a new era of equities, where the unfortunately under-informed masses are able to really move the needle on a lot of stocks, throwing all sorts of value-trading strategies out the window. In this kind of market, all you need is a Donald Trumpish like figure and nothing else to keep the fake-valuation going on forever. Honestly, if Trump were smart he should literally wrap up his businesses in some kind of non-transparent black box, IPO the meta entity right now and get his zillions of 'backers' to hype up is stock perpetually.
- ProAm 6y ago> In this kind of market, all you need is a Donald Trumpish like figure and nothing else to keep the fake-valuation going on forever. Or due diligence? This is GM's fault really not Nikola (the latter was simply selling snaked oil).
- bonestamp2 6y agoAbsolutely. I talked to two former GM executives after the original Nikola deal was announced and they couldn't wrap their heads around why GM was involved with Nikola. Both came to the same conclusion, that GM was somehow wrapped up in the same hype that Nikola shareholders were, and I think the scaling back proves they were right.
- vmception 6y ago> We may be in a new era of equities, where the unfortunately under-informed masses are able to really move the needle on a lot of stocks, throwing all sorts of value-trading strategies out the window. nah, we just need valuations another order of magnitude higher in more companies. when the market is flooded with money the price of everything goes higher because there is nothing else to buy. that's literally what "inflation linked assets" means. Like most financial terms, it is a euphemism where the financial professional tries to keep a straight face for the longest time.
- bjarneh 6y agoThey will be sorry when Trevor Milton shows off his HTML5 super computer later on...
- enjeyw 6y agoHyper Teraflop Machine Learning 5uperComputer?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- asteroidb612 6y agoWell done I haven't logged in in years, but this was so well done.
- teraflop 6y agoHey, don't drag me into this.
- ponker 6y agoI wish I had the balls to short this on IPO but I saw what was happening with Tesla and I chickened out.
- renewiltord 6y agoThere were Jan 20, 2023 puts on this guy. And there still are. The problem here is that I don't actually know anything about NKLA or the business they're in. If you think they'll go under in the next two years, you could make bank on just debit spreads. And if you think they're a shite company but don't know where they're gonna go, do you really know anything?
- opportune 6y agoThe max upside for these are all less than 3x. I wouldn't call something with >2 years to execute with a max upside of 3x "bank"
- renewiltord 6y agoYou're real damn sure, right? You got another sure shot at 3x over 2 years? There's enough in the order book there for you to turn $30k into $100k.
- opportune 6y agoI'm not sure, just because I think something is intrinsically worthless doesn't mean there won't be other people who still think the stock has value in 2 years. I think it's a malinvestment unless you are reasonably certain there will be a drop soonish but want to hedge that bet with something long-dated. Anyway, I was simply responding to your statement that you could make bank on it, which I highly disagree with. So much uncertainty is already priced in that the max upside is only 3x even if the company becomes completely worthless in the next 2 years.
- renewiltord 6y ago
- omarforgotpwd 6y agoTrevor Milton invited me to his headquarters to prove his trucks weren't fake. While we were having lunch I asked him about the longtime friend of his (15 years, went to his wedding) who he had framed for extortion. The friend later committed suicide when he got out of jail. This was all happening during the Nikola reverse-IPO process. After a recording of our conversation was posted online, a bunch of women came forward with accusations against Trevor Milton. That and the Hindenburg report are why GM can't do this deal anymore. They weren't investing anything. They were getting the equity for free essentially, just to let them use the GM hydrogen tech that GM was planning to throw away anyway. So why would GM back out of a deal that was so sweet for them? It was really that bad. https://heyamifat.com/robb.mp4 https://heyamifat.com/robb.mp4
- ct0 6y agoAfter listening to the recording it's pretty clear that this guy is a fraud. what is the lethal dose of acid? thanks, ill wait.
- redisman 6y agoI bet if you eat 20lbs it would do something bad to your stomach
- ALittleLight 6y agoNot to mention that, if he had done 10-15x the lethal dose of acid, wouldn't he be dead?
- omarforgotpwd 6y agohahaha exactly his story makes no sense
- walrus01 6y agoJust to be clear, did you record this in a jurisdiction that is single-party consent for recording audio?
- shoo 6y agoIf anyone missed it, Hindenburg Research's piece on Nikola is an entertaining read: https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/ https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
- Thorrez 6y ago> Hindenburg Research Is their company dedicated to watching/causing others to go up in flames?
- shoo 6y agoWell, they're activist short sellers. So in the worst case they're destroying capitalism by crafting and broadcasting carefully designed payloads of viral misinformation to portray the efforts of innocent companies in the worst possible light, in order to influence market opinion and drive down the share price to profit from short positions. In the best case, they're aiming to profit from short positions by doing the hard investigative work of discovering fraud, helping the market more efficiently arrive at fair prices for fraudulent or otherwise over-valued stocks, and helping unsuspecting investors avoid ruining their plans to retire by trading hard-earn cash for worthless stock based on lies from company management / stock promoters.
- mwfunk 6y agoI know it's petty but literally the fact that it was named Nikola was reason enough for anyone to think they're shady or uninspired or a straight up scam. I would be equally skeptical about wannabe Apple competitors named Banana or Dragonfruit, or a Microsoft competitor named Megahard, or a Burger King competitor named Hamburger Aristocrat. If the best someone can come up with for their own name is a joke pointed at their primary competitor, it does not inspire confidence.
- neilfrndes 6y agoWell, Whole Foods used to be SaferWay (Spoof of SafeWay). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market
- Triv888 6y agoThats what I thought when I first heard about Tesla... I.E.: why would Elon steal an historical name?
- gwern 6y agoWell, he didn't. Tesla was named 'Tesla' by the founders, not Musk. And Tesla the man was more obscure back then than he is now (and that's in large part thanks to Tesla the company plus various pop culture ephemera like a certain webcomic).
- Triv888 6y agoI always new about the real Tesla which is why I thought the way I did...
- ALittleLight 6y agoI've been too afraid to short this stock - especially since it seems like all the information I know about it (Hindenburg report, few YouTube summaries of the situation) is public knowledge. I naively figured that information was priced in - yet, as recently as Friday this stock was trading at 28 dollars a share. Following Nikola has really made doubt the capabilities of the stock market. It might be dangerous for me, I might begin to think a bit of reading and casual YouTube watching might make me informed enough to take meaningful positions. On the other hand, maybe it is...