Remember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn’t even drive?
I have no idea how they managed to survive for years after that. The CEO was found guilty of fraud, and it didn't seem like they had any actual product.
Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
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Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#12Hydrogen has its place in our energy economy but its got too many issues to be used to power vehicles. Batteries have won, and synthesized hydrocarbons will be the alternative for where batteries won't work (i.e., most commercial air travel). That said, it's a pity to see this failure.
This company was an elaborate con, legitimately. Its failure is justice.
So much so that the CEO was convicted of fraud over it. It's insane that it still had value after the Hindenburg report.
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#13Apparently some of the software in Nikola vehicles was written in Crystal [1]. [1] https://manas.tech/blog/2020/02/11/nikola-motor-company/
Interesting. That’s only the second time I’ve heard of crystal being used in production. The first is Kagi, which uses it in search query processing.
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#14Remember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn’t even drive?
Imagine if someone had said this about Tesla. They would have been swamped if wall of text responses. At least Nikola delivered what they promised.
They decidedly did not deliver what they promised. Their hydrogen truck did not work, which is why their promo video had to tow a truck up a hill and film it rolling down.
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if someone had said this about Tesla. They would have been swamped if wall of text responses. At least Nikola delivered what they promised.
They decidedly did not deliver what they promised. Their hydrogen truck did not work , which is why their promo video had to tow a truck up a hill and film it rolling down.
At least funnily the video delivered its promise as it was titled “Nikola One in Motion”
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#16Remember when they rolled a car down hill because it couldn’t even drive?
I have no idea how they managed to survive for years after that. The CEO was found guilty of fraud, and it didn't seem like they had any actual product.
It's the natural extension of the startup ideology to non-software industries. How many times on this website have you seen 'founders' be celebrated for doing 'epic demo hacks' at least this fraudulent? How many tech startups achieve massive valuations with a broken product and a totally hypothetical pathway to profitability?
It's easy to see through this showmanship when the product is a car. So why not when the product is software?
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#17A sample of old HN threads (this one's the origin of the "HTML5 supercomputer" classic),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721 ("Nikola: How to Parlay an Ocean of Lies into a Partnership with GM (hindenburgresearch.com)" (2020), 414 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24473231 ("Nikola admits prototype was rolling downhill in promotional video (arstechnica.com)" (2020), 248 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996321 ("Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud (cnbc.com)" (2021), 509 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38685607 ("Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud charges (cnbc.com)" (2023), 186 comments)
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#18Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#19I always wondered how it kept some value for a long time after the Hindenburg Research report[1]. To me, the report (and the CEO's empty response to it) made it clear there was pretty much no value in it, but the stock only lost 50% in the following week. [1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
SMCI lost 60% after its auditor failed to audit and resigned
after that, it roses 300%
SMCI is also a target of hindenburg
https://hindenburgresearch.com/smci/
before this, I didn't even know that a company that couldn't be audited could still be listed.
Re: Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy
#20Hydrogen has its place in our energy economy but its got too many issues to be used to power vehicles. Batteries have won, and synthesized hydrocarbons will be the alternative for where batteries won't work (i.e., most commercial air travel). That said, it's a pity to see this failure.
> Hydrogen has its place in our energy economy
It certainly does not! (At least, not in any meaningful sense).
A) How do you store it?
Hydrogen does not compress to a liquid (except a cryogenic temperatures), meaning storage requires bulky, heavy and dangerous high pressure storage..... or cryo kit.
B) Where do you get the hydrogen from?
Electrolysis of water gives less hydrogen energy out than electrical energy you put in.... its more efficient to use the electrical energy directly. Currently we obtain hydrogen from natural gas, which itself is a finite resource (not to mention CO2 is emitted when extracting the hydrogen from gas).
Seriously, the sums don't add up and hydrogen is a looser however you look at it. The only people promoting it here are the natural gas industry who are looking to get money pushing the "hydrogen economy" vapourware.