Hydrogen and EV Truck Maker Nikola Is Bankrupt
It’s been a wild ride for the ambitious maker of large trucks, including a big-dollar deal with GM and a high-profile fraud conviction for its founder. But now, it’s bankrupt.
Nikola’s rise was dramatic, but its fall was a little slower. Like any startup, the promises were rosy: zero-emissions heavy trucks, for long- and short-haul routes, to decarbonize roadgoing transport of goods. At one point, even GM was going to put some serious chips on Nikola’s bold bet, with a $2 billon deal to supply powertrain tech to the fledgling company. And then along came Hindenburg Research, a short-seller, whose intervention was the catalyst for the company’s downfall.
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In 2020, the short-seller accused Nikola founder Trevor Milton of fraud. At trial, prosecutors pointed to a promotional video that appeared to show a Nikola truck driving down the road, but alleging that it was a non-runner that Nikola employees actually rolled down a hill. Milton resigned, and was later convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years in prison.
The fallout was predictable. Nikola shares were routed. GM scaled back its investment into a nonbinding agreement to become the exclusive powertrain provider. Oh, and there was the Nikola Badger, an ambitious consumer pickup truck that GM was, at one point, going to help Nikola produce. That, of course, did not happen, but that’s a story worthy of a Hollywood dramatization at some point.
Nikola, struggling, attempted to stay afloat. It produced a modest number of trucks—just 88 of its Class 8 Tre cabover semis were sold in the third quarter of 2024—but lost a prodigious amount of money on each one. By the reckoning of one trade magazine, it cost the company more than $1 million to build a truck, which sold for $380,000. It appears that the company wasn’t able to scale properly to broach that yawning gulf between costs and revenue.
Nikola has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means it will be supervised by a bankruptcy court as it attempts to sell off enough assets, find investors or other sources of funding, or whatever else it needs to do to keep the lights on. Nikola says that it can provide service, support, and upkeep of its hydrogen refueling network for existing vehicles through March. After that, things get uncertain, and more dire, for the star-crossed company.
Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
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