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GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

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Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#61

Post by renewiltord »

ponker wrote: post #57
renewiltord wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no company is 'worth' its market cap since you can rarely exchange it for that value in total. But of course the only meaningful notion of absolute 'worth' of something like this is the value as determined by the market. Of course it may not have been worth it to you at the marginal clearing price, but that's because the value to you is a function of the valuer and the thing being valued.

If a guy is selling sandwiches on the street for $1 million and a hungry Jeff Bezos happens to wander by and purchase one, the sandwiches still aren't worth $1 million.

Well, that's because 'worth' is ill-defined on its own. The 'worth' of that sandwich could be any of "last clearing price", "current ask", "current bid", or any other metric you choose.

So the sandwich isn't worth a million but it isn't worth any sum because 'worth' isn't a concept on its own.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#62

Post by trianglem »

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #54
tuna-piano wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the "framed for extortion"... what is the evidence that Trevor framed him?

Trevor told Jonny Robb to stop posting about his behavior towards women, and in exchange he would give him $500,000. He told Jonny to come and collect $50,000, and that $50,000 would be paid in successive increments as long as he continued not to post. When Jonny arrived to meet Trevor he found that Trevor was with the police and it was a sting operation. He was arrested for extortion and possession of a controlled s…

Sounds like Robb was blackmailing the guy by cashing in on the metoo movement

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#63

Post by tokipin »

slg wrote: post #42
gwern wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You feel that way because you realize that it's a calculated attempt to ride the coattails of an infinitely more successful and reputable company, a deliberate confusion, like if you opened a coffee chain named 'Farbucks' (slogan: "We'll make your dollar go further!"), or the small pennystocks which aim for stock tickers deliberately similar to real companies (Matt Levine covers the occasional bumps in the stocks of…

Is there official word on that being the reason for the name? That is certainly one of the theories I had and it shows a lack of ethics. However it isn't the only theory I had and they all looked bad. For example, maybe they weren't being sleazy and they thought this was a clever play off Tesla. It isn't clever. It is unprofessional. It also shows a lack of clear vision in that they are fundamentally defining a compa…

I think it follows a general theme where some people have a "tricks"-based mindset. Some people look at Tesla and think it's just tricks. Such as the idea that people are buying Teslas because of the drivetrain - which would be a simple trick, rather than the reality that Teslas are just all-around great cars - something much harder to understand.

The Nikola founder probably thought Musk had succeeded in unlocking a series of successful tricks, and set out to reproduce them. But when you don't know the reason for the formula, you don't know what steps you can leave in or out, so you just follow it mechanically.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#64

Post by new_realist »

gwern wrote: post #29
slg wrote: post #18

I know we aren't supposed to judge a book my its cover and I can't even put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, but simply naming your company Nikola when your biggest competitor is Tesla has always seemed like a huge red flag to me.

You feel that way because you realize that it's a calculated attempt to ride the coattails of an infinitely more successful and reputable company, a deliberate confusion, like if you opened a coffee chain named 'Farbucks' (slogan: "We'll make your dollar go further!"), or the small pennystocks which aim for stock tickers deliberately similar to real companies (Matt Levine covers the occasional bumps in the stocks of…

I don’t think so. Nobody knows the word Nikola. That reference is pretty subtle. It’s Tesla Motors, Inc. that tried to ride the coattails of the famous inventor.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#65

Post by jariel »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #41
jariel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was before the RobinHood trading nation era of hyper speculative investors. Just like ~15% of the US population believes Trump when totally fabricates facts about the election, he could take a run at perennially duping investors in 2020 and beyond. "We're about to sign a huge deal for a Moscow property" ... and then it doesn't really happen. "We signed a huge deal with Macau developers" ... but it's not material…

That's normally when the SEC gets involved.

The SEC can't do anything if Trump says 'we signed huge deal' and did actually sign a deal of some kinds, there's plenty of room for hype that's not illegal.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#66

Post by joshxyz »

slg wrote: post #18

I know we aren't supposed to judge a book my its cover and I can't even put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, but simply naming your company Nikola when your biggest competitor is Tesla has always seemed like a huge red flag to me.

Totes. Nikola Tesla himself even shook his head after learning about it.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#67

Post by MattGaiser »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #59
MattGaiser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM was also taken in. Either GM corporate is insanely inept or the scam was at least somewhat credible. I am not judging the retail investors too harshly on this as credible organizations gave it a thumbs up too.

From GM's perspective they stood to lose nothing and potentially gain. It didn't matter if the guy was running a scam, might as well give him a shot in case he pulls it off since the buy in is so low (some tech they didn't care about). Oh "what about their reputation" you say? The only people who will know or care about this already have their driveways filled with Model 3s and 4runners and turn up their nose at GM.…

But they still committed engineering and corporate resources, even if just to do planning and run estimates. I get that it is not a lot in the grand scheme of things for them, but it went quite far if the scam was so obvious.

Or can I get a meeting with GM with an animator and mockups?

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#68

Post by bob33212 »

cultus wrote: post #9
edoceo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the WSB crowd is having a field day with this one. Calling in Theranos 2.0

Theranos at least fell apart once the WSJ put out extremely strong evidence that it was fradulent. The innovative tech that Nikola claimed to have was shown to be fradulent months ago, but they're still worth billions of dollars.

It is because of TSLA, there is a significant number of people who do not understand that the EV industry isn't the same thing as the furniture industry. You can't just spin up a real EV company the way you can spin up a real furniture company. But they don't see it so they want to get in on the ground floor of the next TSLA.

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#69

Post by cultus »

chadash wrote: post #21
cultus wrote: post #3

It's an incredible testament to the distortions of the capital markets that Nikola's current market cap is still $7.84 billion, and not zero. There's nothing that justifies that other than the hope that one will be able to leave others holding the bag.

The beauty of public markets is that you can make a handsome profit if this is your conviction, you put your money where your mouth is and it turns out to be true.

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." - Keynes I think

Re: GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola

#70

Post by csours »

MattGaiser wrote: post #67
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From GM's perspective they stood to lose nothing and potentially gain. It didn't matter if the guy was running a scam, might as well give him a shot in case he pulls it off since the buy in is so low (some tech they didn't care about). Oh "what about their reputation" you say? The only people who will know or care about this already have their driveways filled with Model 3s and 4runners and turn up their nose at GM.…

But they still committed engineering and corporate resources, even if just to do planning and run estimates. I get that it is not a lot in the grand scheme of things for them, but it went quite far if the scam was so obvious. Or can I get a meeting with GM with an animator and mockups?

> "Or can I get a meeting with GM with an animator and mockups?"

Yes, that and a $34b market cap.

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