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Nikola boss resigns
He wanted to be like Elon Musk, but his advertised wonder truck is said to be a scam
A Nikola brochure shows “Truck Two”, which never went into production
© DPA
From hype to scandal: Trevor Milton was considered by some to be the second Elon Musk. Now, the founder of the electric truck company Nikola has resigned after massive accusations of fraud.
What is appearance and what is, that is not always easy to assess in the world of start-ups. For years, Tesla founder Elon Musk had doubts about whether he could ever get a significant number of cars on the road. Today Musk stands as a celebrated genius who is even courted in Germany, the country of the automobile.
The story of another automotive visionary, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to end so well. Trevor Milton, founder of the American hybrid truck company Nikola, resigned on Monday following accusations of massive fraud against his company. It is the fall of a child prodigy in which some have already seen a second Elon Musk.
Nikola-Chef: Meister des Hypes
Because the parallels between the two founders seemed surprising for a long time. Like Musk, Milton dropped out of college to become an entrepreneur. And like Musk, he set out to do nothing less than revolutionize the auto industry. In 2014 he founded Nikola Motor Company, also named for electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla, to build hydrogen-powered electric trucks. Nikola wanted to produce the required hydrogen himself and build 700 filling stations in North America alone – at least that was the vision.
As an entrepreneur, Milton was as colorful as Musk and was able to win over major well-known investors. German car supplier Bosch, Italian commercial vehicle maker CNH and South Korea’s Hanwha group each invested more than US $ 100 million in Nikola. A large order from the Anheuser-Busch InBev brewing group, which ordered 800 trucks, although only prototypes existed until now, caused a stir.
The initial public offering in the middle of this year made Nikola’s boss, Milton, a billionaire. Forbes magazine ranked the 38-year-old on July 249 among the richest Americans with a $ 3.3 billion fortune, ahead of greats like Uber founder Travis Kalanick and Oprah Winfrey.
Is it all just a scam?
But on September 10, financial investor and short seller Hindenburg dropped a bomb. In a 60-page report, stock speculator Nikola accuses lies, “complex fraud” and nepotism. Trevor Milton has deliberately misled business partners with the “false claim that they have important technologies.” Nikola denied the accusations, but the stock plummeted.
Critics have been pointing out for some time that the car pioneer has announced a lot, but has yet to unveil a single fully developed car. Hindenburg’s allegations relate to, among other things, a famous promotional video from 2017 in which a Nikola truck can be seen speeding. In fact, Nikola let the truck roll downhill, as the company has now admitted. “Nikola never claimed that the truck moves on its own in the video,” the company said.
In any case, reality seems to be a flexible construct for Trevor Milton. In July, he said in a podcast that partner Bosch’s particularly powerful 720 kilowatt-hour truck batteries “had just rolled off the assembly line in Ulm.” A Bosch spokesman, on the other hand, clearly denied this to Hindenburg: “No, they are not finished yet. I don’t know the exact year, but we are working on it.”
Elon Musk war nie Fan
The SEC, which has started the investigation, needs to clarify which of Nikola’s big ads still qualify as marketing and which are already fraud. Mini-Musk Trevor Milton, who still owns 35 percent of Nikola, is now due to step down as company president. “The focus should be on the company and its mission to change the world, not on me,” Milton wrote when he left. You will defend yourself against false accusations.
Nikola’s new boss will be Stephen Girsky, who was already a member of the company’s board of directors and previously worked as a manager at General Motors. Nikola had only settled on a strategic partnership with General Motors in early September. As a result, the stock price skyrocketed and has halved since then.
By the way, Tesla boss Elon Musk has never been friends with Nikola. He has repeatedly made disparaging comments on Twitter about Milton’s company in the past. The fuel cell technology you are promoting is “stupid” and “just not possible.” Tesla is based on the competitive technology of lithium-ion batteries.
