Nikola, a hydrogen-electric semi-truck maker, filed Chapter 11 after a spectacular market collapse.
With news of another green company going under, the green industry would never have fully developed if the federal government had not chosen winners and losers. [emphasis, links added]
It’s another victim of the climate change cult.
Nikola, a hydrogen-electric semi-truck company, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week after a spectacular collapse in market value.
Riding high on the Democrats’ loudly touted Green New Deal, investors flocked to Nikola when the company went public in June 2020, with the company’s market value jumping to $27 billion, putting it higher than Ford — even though Nikola had yet to sell a single vehicle.
But green was the future, or so Democrats and the Biden administration insisted, and investors jumped on board the green dream gravy train, fearful of being left behind.
The trouble is that this green dream train suffered from the same limits that plague all EVs. They cost too much and fail to deliver on the promised results.
To be fair, Nikola, whose founder was Trevor Milton, was found guilty of fraud in 2022.
Nikola’s commercial depicting the company’s new semi-truck was infamously rigged. The truck depicted was, in fact, empty of any batteries and was rolled downhill in a deceitful effort to portray it as pulling a load.
The ad included the caption: “The Nikola Hydrogen Electric trucks will take on any semi-truck and outperform them in every category: weight, acceleration, stopping, safety and features — all with 500-1,000 mile range!” But that was never true.
Furthermore, Nikola delivered fewer than 500 of its initially reported orders of 14,000 heavy trucks. It also struggled with development problems. In 2023 the company had to recall 209 trucks over electric battery fire issues.
Meanwhile, the price tag on these trucks was $351,000, nearly twice the price of an internal combustion engine (ICE) truck.
To make matters worse, the sale price was half of the truck’s production cost. Even with Nikola buyers getting a $40,000 tax credit from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, Nikolas was still far more costly than ICE trucks.
Another problem that plagued the company was the lack of an established hydrogen refueling network nationwide.
Ann Rundle, vice president for electrification and autonomy for truck market forecaster ACT Research, observed, “How do you expect somebody to adopt that truck if there wasn’t a practical way to fuel it?”
In the end, the reality of free market forces finally caught up to Nikola. CEO Steve Girsky admitted, “Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic factors that have impacted our ability to operate.”
Translation: We couldn’t survive in a free market.
Nikola joins a growing number of failed EV companies, including Fisker Inc., Lordstown Motors, and Last Electric Mile Solutions, who have gone under in the last couple of years.
And if it weren’t for a $6 billion bailout from Joe Biden’s Energy Department, Rivian Automotive would have been added to the list.
If the EV industry is going to survive and grow, it needs to do so on its merit. It will need to compete in the free market without relying on handouts and favorable regulations from the government, artificially juicing its existence.
Furthermore, if EVs are the future, they must innovate well beyond their current limited capabilities. If they do so, they will win over the market.
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