Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#271

Post by speedgoose » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #233

bagels wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if your hypothesis is that companies like Mazda won't wither in the inevitable electric car disruption.

My guess is fossil fuel cars will remain competitive with electric cars (cost per mile wise), since the more demand for fossil fuels drop, the cheaper it gets to operate fossil fuel cars. It really depends when the governments actually start banning fossil fuel cars. Or implements higher fossil fuel taxes, but I do not see a chance of that. And I do not see bans for new fossil fuel cars actually going into effect for…

Brand new fuel cars may be forbidden in many parts of the world.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#272

Post by nickik » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #233

bagels wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if your hypothesis is that companies like Mazda won't wither in the inevitable electric car disruption.

My guess is fossil fuel cars will remain competitive with electric cars (cost per mile wise), since the more demand for fossil fuels drop, the cheaper it gets to operate fossil fuel cars. It really depends when the governments actually start banning fossil fuel cars. Or implements higher fossil fuel taxes, but I do not see a chance of that. And I do not see bans for new fossil fuel cars actually going into effect for…

The problem is that the infrastructure of ICE and oil massively profits from scale, as this drops many of these assets will turn negative.

Even if per mile the car would be competitive, the lost of value of the car itself would be incredibly.

Who will still buy an ICE car in 2030.

And that is before the new regulation that potentially makes these cars even less wanted.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#273

Post by nickik » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

dreyfan wrote: post #2

And yet NKLA still has a $5B market cap despite the entire company being 100% fraud. Amazing. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/nkla

They have ~$900mm cash. So it’s only $80% bullshit, for whatever that’s worth.

Well they cheated so much money in and now they are on live suppor. But since they don't have much expenses they can survive for a long run on that money.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#274

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

yup00 wrote: post #155

_game_of_life wrote: post #48

This should not be surprising to anyone. Arstechnica has followed Nikola's terrible and obvious fraud(s) for years now: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02/nikola-admits-to-making... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/nikola-stock-craters-af... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-patented-a-stole... And many more... The speculation around this stock has been insane for many years now: https://arstechnica.c…

Financial markets are not coupled to real economics anymore. They’re coupled to speculative gamesmanship. Whoever can generate statistics to captivate the masses who do not understand them, via press releases, and media blitzes. That sounds cynical, but I “hob nob” with people invited to Davos, and run depts at Ivy League schools. Behind closed doors these are the conversations I’ve been privy too. How to captivate t…

Anymore? Keynes said this in 1936.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#275

Post by ansible » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

jfb wrote: post #182

ajross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla wasn't faking videos by rolling a nonfunctional truck down a hill. They're shipping almost a million cars a year now (looks to be like 850k in 2021 I think). Mine took me to Yellowstone a few weeks back. Now, sure, "overvalued" is a very reasonable argument. I'd even agree. That's not the kind of rhetoric that was deployed against the company and you know it. Which is why people didn't believe folks screaming t…

Right, these are very different things. I am very bearish on Tesla, but they are shipping cars !

After reading about quality issues for years and years about Teslas, I'm not rushing to buy one any time soon. Though I know many owners really love their cars. I see more than a few every commute to work.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#276

Post by gonehome » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #269

gonehome wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at the actual fraud (like Theranos) silicon valley funds are nowhere near it. The people that get duped are usually outsiders that are more easily manipulated. It can be hard to tell the difference between big ideas and bullshit, they can often sound similar. Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. In order to tell the difference you need to actually look at the underlying tech…

> Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. Ah yes. A certain billionaire promises robo-taxis and full Level 5 autonomy by 2020, and then in 2021, admits self-driving is hard as FSD is still Level 2, after duping their own customers on buying ahead of their 'promises'. This billionaire in 2019, surely knew what he was talking about. /s > In order to tell the difference you need to actually look…

FSD was advertised as paying for something that would come in the future - I bought it under that assumption (and so did everyone I know that has it). That was and remains true.

They've continued to make progress towards it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc

Autopilot is different and isn't advertised as level 5 - 'autopilot' implies fancy lane keeping not turn by turn point to point autonomy.

Elon's FSD timelines were wrong - that isn't fraud. People say everything he's trying to do won't work constantly, just because they're occasionally right doesn't validate all of the times they're wrong (e.g. Model 3 is vaporware will never ship, the company is bankrupt and will close in two weeks, the Model S will never ship, gigafactory is a mistake, roadster means Musk only cares about EVs for the rich etc. etc.)

If you can't tell the difference between Elon Musk and the success of Tesla and SpaceX or think it's equivalent to something like Theranos or Nikola I'm not sure what to say about that, there's just not much point in further discussion. Your pejorative use of billionaire also suggests some political element.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#277

Post by morpheos137 » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

yup00 wrote: post #155

_game_of_life wrote: post #48

This should not be surprising to anyone. Arstechnica has followed Nikola's terrible and obvious fraud(s) for years now: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02/nikola-admits-to-making... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/nikola-stock-craters-af... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-patented-a-stole... And many more... The speculation around this stock has been insane for many years now: https://arstechnica.c…

Financial markets are not coupled to real economics anymore. They’re coupled to speculative gamesmanship. Whoever can generate statistics to captivate the masses who do not understand them, via press releases, and media blitzes. That sounds cynical, but I “hob nob” with people invited to Davos, and run depts at Ivy League schools. Behind closed doors these are the conversations I’ve been privy too. How to captivate t…

Yeah it is all bullshit all the time these days. Spoken as an "elightened" but not Illuminated one. This is not a left vs. right issue. It is a 99.9% vs 0.1% issue. Sadly most of the 99.9% actually deserve what's coming in the future struggle for resources because they would rather accept what is fed to them and be led like lambs to where ever than actually think critically about the world. Most of those that "get it" are not interested in helping the masses and the masses don't want to be helped anyway. Next couple decades may be interesting times.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#278

Post by joering2 » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #198

ren_engineer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is pretty much the dream of what every nerd wants to become. There's a lot of jaded people on HN who think they are just as smart/talented as Musk but don't have anywhere near the success. They deal with the cognitive dissonance by calling him a fraud/scammer or wanting to see him fail. Fanboys of Musk aren't much better, Musk just seems to attract extremists on either side of the aisle who either love him or ha…

I agree, but regardless I dont see why we call cant agree that for all of the guy's faults, he is done some truly incredible things and he is still pretty young. He is a net positive for the world.

Because of my consulting gigs, I know of at least 3 multimillionaires (>$100MM), who are hoarding air tanks (similar to scuba tanks, but there is already a small company that produces much larger, home-style tanks for this purpose) because someone in Musk circles told them Musk is doing so, so they assume this could be end-of-the-world scenario.

Imagine our atmosphere to be like a giant balloon. And SpaceX rockets are scratching [2] that balloon surfaces every time they go up [1]. Who knows, maybe one day one of the rockets will scratch it enough and our ionosphere goes pop, so to speak.

[1] conspiracy theory much? Here is an article based on scientists approach: https://fortune.com/2018/03/26/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-ion...

[2] funny story, a friend who works for NASA told me years ago how upset the management was when they found out that SpaceX rockets are not flying flat enough to enter the Orbit in a gently manner. There is no gov. oversight (yet) because there are very few companies that can reach LEO so in theory regulations are not important, but few people know NASA spent more money flying rockets because they fly them in a way not to tore holes in an ionosphere which probably I don't have to tell you how important it is to ALL life on Earth. In some way, today's SpaceX is a space pirate, and had there been proper regulations, they would have not be saving anywhere near as much money as they do now flying when comparing to NASA.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#279

Post by ansible » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #133

ajross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla wasn't faking videos by rolling a nonfunctional truck down a hill. They're shipping almost a million cars a year now (looks to be like 850k in 2021 I think). Mine took me to Yellowstone a few weeks back. Now, sure, "overvalued" is a very reasonable argument. I'd even agree. That's not the kind of rhetoric that was deployed against the company and you know it. Which is why people didn't believe folks screaming t…

Well but Tesla is still calling their drive assist autopilot and Musk has at multiple times in the past said full independent driving is just around the corner and all these "around the corner" dates have past and there still is not fully independent autopilot. So yes there is a difference in scale, but not in principle I would say. Musk is also lying (I don't believe that by now he still believes we will have unassi…

So, full autonomous is... very hard. It is easy to get most of the way there, and then think you're nearly ready to ship a product.

Staying on the road, obeying traffic laws, not hitting other cars, this is just the beginning. There are so many oddball situations you see when driving that an autonomous system also has to handle.

One of the big ones is construction, and that alone brings a whole host of issues including wacky lane changes, following the direction of human workers, missing or misleading lane markings, debris, and more.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#280

Post by nickik » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #33

ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's very much a hindsight kind of thing. I mean, yes, Nikola was a scam. But in "the beginning" the only people willing to say that it was a scam were ones who sounded exactly like the much louder, better funded, and media-accessible people screaming that Tesla was a scam. This very site was filled with $TSLAQ nonsense. And it was all wrong, much of it deliberately so. The investment world is drowning in d…

In all fairness there was a non-zero chance of Tesla running out of money at one point. At the final word on Tesla being worth what it is hasn't been spoken neither. I do have to give Musk credit for being able to maintain Tesla the way he does, under everyone else the company wouldn't exist anymore. Not that I think Tesla is particularly well run so, but Elon's ability to entertain the market and keep money flowing…

While it is true that Tesla might have gone bankrupt. There is a big difference between 'this is a risk company with growth potential, be careful' and 'this company is fraud'.

Many TSLAQ people were far more extreme then saying 'they could go bankrupt, car industry is risky.

> Not that I think Tesla is particularly well run so, but Elon's ability to entertain the market and keep money flowing is impressive.

The haven't really need to raise that much money in a long time. They did some raises in the last couple years but that money is mostly in the cash balance now.

Its not like they are just raising more cash all the time.