The assembly lines that Nikola was supposed to have at the German Iveco plant are still not in operation, and Nikola has to produce prototypes almost on his knees. The tractors will not be ready until the end of 2021, the paper writes Financial Times. Delaying dates for Nikola – but also for most start-ups – is nothing new. But there are already so many unfulfilled Milton promises that the company is losing credibility.
Some shareholders believe that some of the proclamations could already be considered fraud, which is to be investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission together with the Department of Justice.
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The company reflected criticism on several fronts. In addition to Milton’s tweets, Jeff Ubben, founder of the US hedge fund ValueAct and longtime investor and board member of Nikola, spoke for the Financial Times. He commented on the case by saying that the technology company was just misunderstood. Critics reportedly focused more on the production of trucks, rather than the hydrogen business itself. At the same time, it has much greater business potential, explains Ubben.
Milton himself tried to suppress the importance of tractors last week, when he described the company as a technological player in the field of infrastructure, whose revenues will be generated primarily by the sale of fuel, not the sale of trucks.
“The sale of tractors is a decent business, but if you include the sale of hydrogen, you earn five times as much,” Milton said, adding that one truck could earn around thirty million crowns throughout its life cycle.
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One of Nikola’s biggest critics, the financial company Hindenburg, points to other ills of the company. For example, she doesn’t like the fact that Milton’s brother or a manager who was previously the director of a golf course hold key positions. However, other investors downplay this criticism, saying that forged experts also work in Nikola, such as Jesse Schneider, a former manager at BMW.
The Hindenburg company, which mainly deals with the short-circuiting of shares, or a bet that their price will fall, but also published facts that Nikola was no longer able to defend. For example, the start-up had to admit that in one of the videos, which was supposed to present the functionality of the technology, the prototype of the tractor was powered only by gravity, not fuel cells. The truck was driving downhill, which the company cleverly disguised in the video.
Other questions, according to experts, are raised by the fact that the planned pick-up, on which Nikola is cooperating with the giant GM, will not use hydrogen technology from Nikola, because the one from GM is allegedly more mature. However, the car concern is still defending Nikola. “Our company has already worked with many partners and we have a truly capable team that can thoroughly inspect every company we invest in,” said GM head Mary Barra.
However, the batteries necessary for the operation of hydrogen cells are also a problem. According to experts, Nikola is rather below average. Last year’s acquisition of the specialized technological start-up ZapGo did not help it either.
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