Nikola Motor: disaster foretold 

To think my job application was rejected last year and now I somehow feel better about it.

Nikola should change their name to Newton since they use gravity for propulsion...

Correction: GM did not get 11% for 2 billion dollars, they got 11% for FREE, which was worth 2 billion on equity at the time, AND Nikola had to PAY GM to fund all the manufacturing

Everybody want to be the next Steve Jobs, but they forget something he said: “Real artists ship”

7:11 A pie chart makes no sense to show a 53% percent increase in stock value. Pie charts are for data that adds to 100%, whereas price increases are theoretically unlimited.

you gave Milton too much credit, it was a scam all along.. the comparison to Tesla are insulting

It took eighty years, but Hindenburg finally got its revenge on hydrogen

For real doing this RU-vid channel is such a brilliant way to advertise your services. If I had any need whatsoever of professional business presentations I would 100% use you guys, just because of these videos.

Yeah a company with billions in valuation, absolutely no revenue, and burning up money so fast it could make your head spin. I've never seen this go badly in the past.

Holmes : jobs Milton : musk Gimme some other comparisons

Watching this channel, I've learned that personal branding is a BIG part of startups. When people know who you are and have heard good things, it travels far. That leads to more investment and fast growth. Thumbnail was great but very confusing. You guys should start putting "Company Forensics" in the title. That would make them super easy to find and recommend when I'm tweeting or ranting to people about them.

Elon Musk: Degree in Physics, programmed own games and Software since he was a boy and started multiple successful companies, and gets hands down with the engineering and has its own vision. Trevor Milton: Dropped out of college first semester and pursued a career in marketing and sales. The investors: They are the exact same thing!

"If it's too good to be true then you're probably talking to a rookie" Nikola's end is Nigh. He should change his name to Trevor Mudoff

I'm on the side of "If you do it, I buy it", but come with a production model, not a pre-pre-pre-pre order early access beta

“Can u paint Ferrari on a civic and call it a Ferrari” ~ caya well said 🙏🏽💯

This video was mapped out in pure excellence! Really love the chapters and build-up!!

How has Milton not been arrested yet 😓

Bought two puts on nikola after the GM deal, best option play I ever made

So it's yet another Theranos, We work, and to a lesser degree Uber. This seems to have become a trend/recurring issue in modern silicon valley.

Reminds me of Theranos plus dude doesn’t exactly exude visionary charm

Nikola is like the Fyre Festival of vehicles.

Around 7 minute mark you said that GM wanted 11% of Nikola in exchange for $2B. This is incorrect. GM was to get 11% share of free. Nikola wanted legitimacy that came with partnership with GM.

What I'm surprised by is how when Trevor tells you they outsource everything and actively uses the words "vertical integration" wrong is anyone surprise that it was all bullsh*t.

That stock footage at 9:56 though, lol.

Nowadays start ups only rely on stock prices, no productivity just marketing. No liquidity just assets. Giant bubbles of dollar bills that are plain empty. Then they explode and you never know where the money went.

Gracias Caya ! No one bother you more than me for this episode. I love you Slidebean. I get it this episode it’s hard to create because their circus hasn’t ended yet 😂。

And for this reason... I'm subscribing. You know how to build and tell a great story

great explanation on the situation. also it always saddens me to see people hating on elon. he's far from a perfect personality, but humanity should be very grateful to have him

I think I've said this before-- even if I never own any products by slidebeam, I would recommend them due to the quality and depth of this series. The honesty and precision of this series is, in a word, spectacular. You are not allowed to ever stop :D

What is an even bigger disaster is GM still considering parternership with Nikola and some retail investors still listening to the Lamestream Media such as CNBC and some "analysts". Poor guys, it's going to hurt in december

Finally waiting for @Caya's reaction 😍😍😍 #Slidebean❤

That clip of Grant Imahara at 1:06 hit right in the feels.

You can tell their level of creativity and originality when they thought up the name nikola. Nothing sets you apart from your rival more than choosing the other half of the rivals name

off the bat you look great in this new lighting

Rolled it down the hill, LOL this guy is a Troll CEO

Love your title intro!

Really good video's, keep it up!

An excellent video with contents, quality pictures...👏👏👏

This video aged beautifully. :D Very well done. Thank you! $5 by next week.

I was really excited about Nikola motors. I planned on pitching my wireless hydrogen generation platform to them. The report disappointed me and I decided against it. Thank you for your great videos.

Love these. Had a real Theranos feel to it, this Nikola business. Another CEO promising more than they had whilst hoping to make up the difference down the road.

The fact that so many were conned suggests that science and logic are two topics ignored in schools churning out MBAs by the millions. No one with an 8th-grade education in physics or chemistry fell for it. No one who learned what due diligence was in investing, invested. A simple on-line search for Milton's track record and all prior 4 businesses he created were scams and investors lost their money, while he alone profited. The Wall street frenzy over the future of this company completely ignored that the most basic business analysis proved Milton was BSing, everyone. The business model was not supporting his claims, and the lack of any tech or understanding of building such a vehicle were key elements in wall street's failure to evaluate the business plan that changed monthly. Going by his words alone, without seeing the faked mockups, was enough to spot the fraud. Every claim was BS. For example, he made the claim the real income was from selling hydrogen that they had gotten down to $3/kg compared to the established industry which makes and distributes hydrogen for decades, experts in the field have gotten it down to $16/kg, a figure that would make a long-range truck more expensive per mile than existing diesel trucks. When asked how he could get that low price he said "optimization", improving the efficiency of the current industry and no one questioned that absurd statement. His claims of proprietary tech and patent that produced batteries with twice the energy density than the most advanced cells today, created by a secret team of 15PhDs from some unidentified university were not questioned by the business press or RU-vid experts. That is not how the science works, a lot of universities are working on battery tech, but they all are known and they all publish because that is what gives them priority on patents, demonstration of first development, by publishing studies, otherwise, they can't justify their patent application as first to develop it. Besides, every major lab working in this is known by everyone else in the field. The claim that it was a team of 15 secret PhDs is not how a research lab works, there might be 1-2 on a project with dozens of undergrads and postdocs doing the grunt work. The improvements and patents are streaming but they all involve small incremental steps so advanced battery tech relied on dozens of patents. So a search of the literature and patents revealed nothing related to Milton's claim of double the energy density, 1/2 the weight, and 1/3rd the cost of the industry leaders. That claim was nonsense to anyone at all familiar with the field or however industrial development works. The basic physics of hydrogen as a fuel contradicted Milton's claims and the complexity of making it, distributing it , storing it and making it safe enough for general use were all major hurdles that have stopped much larger better-engineered projects by other companies. Compressed or liquid hydrogen is very hard to hand material. Liguidified means cooling it down to 20.3 degrees Kelvin and assuring it is never allowed to rise about 30 degrees Kelvin...that is hard in a lab in controlled conditions, never allowing it it boil and rapidly expand(explosion) during the entire path from creating it, storing it, transporting it and fueling a truck. 20.3 degrees Kelvin is 20 degrees above absolute zero...and requires tremendous energy use to for the compound refrigeration systems, that has to be utilized at every phase including inside the truck. The other option is simply compressing the gas but that requires a much larger storage area, which was not provided for in any of the renderings of the truck. At atmospheric pressure, there is not enough energy density to have the performance claimed. Milton did not know the science so just made it up as he went and the wall street press never bothered to follow up with any research before hyping the stock and jumping on the bandwagon. The fraud was at every level and it is amazing how experts in finance and business were so easily conned. Everyone who dealt with him in the past was burned but they were individuals who simply believed in the spin he was churning out. And how so many of the same press and RU-vidrs failed to see the authentic genius of the Tesla business plan while hyping the Nikola nonsense. CNBC has been dangerously incompetent in their valuation of both these polar opposite approaches, one based on engineering and first principles and the other on fast-talking flimflammery. The financial press and hundreds of RU-vid channels are clearly out of their league and were willing accomplices in the fraud., yet deny the solid engineering prowess of Tesla. They are not qualified to name winners and losers and so are dangerous to the trusting public. The fact that Milton was given instant credibility despite a track record of 100% scams should scare people who believed the press and 3rd party enabling hype and disinformation. The same disinformation and blatant propaganda drives all main stream media in politics and foreign affairs, and the public is so overwhelmed by the constant flood of is disinformation they have almost nothing to believe that is true. I moved outside the US 20 years ago and can see it from the perspective of not being immersed in the information bubble that clouds everything inside the US. When nothing people believe is actually true, good sound choices are almost impossible and the current chaos is the logical result. It is very hard to even talk to old friends now, because everything they truly believe and is used to base their choices and passions is false, no connection to reality yet those inside that controlled information bubble are certain that only they know the real truth and can cite hundreds of conspiracies and fantasies their solid foundation of belief. Most of my friends back in the US were consumed with 4 years of the Russiagate hoax, they still believe despite every bit of the evidence they believed in turned out to be nonsense. Those millions of expat living outside the US information bubble spotted it from the beginning as a big con. Such a radical difference between belief and observable reality has probably never existed before. The exact same lack of critical thinking and believing the unbelievable is what made Nikola a $28 billion-dollar company and Milton a multimillionaire overnight.

I was waiting for you to cover Nikola! Let me go get a snack.

Only 190k? You deserve more dude

This reminds me of the guy (who dressed like a girl) and hyped his nothing car called the "Dale" in 1974.

Working with smart people but who are not 'in that industry' sometimes works really well. A guy who had a government contract producing plastic parts (camera bodies, knife handles) - overhead two military generals discussing a new contract side-arm. He asked if he could bid on it, and they jokingly told him 'Yes you should totally bid on it'. He didn't know it was a joke and got to work, his people were not firearm experts, but they understood cameras (intricate machines with tight tolerances). He later came back with a bid and working model a year later. That man was Gaston Glock, you may have heard of his guns - they are about 60% of the handgun market and the favorite of law enforcement agencies everywhere.

Great video

Elon should buy the company, just to revive it again, drive up the Stock price and create Nikola Tesla as a whole Name.

Some "visionary" start-ups today run themselves as hype machines instead of businesses, that's the problem

"Bryne Hobart" quotes are perfect accurate. I can't imagine how NIKOLA ceo lives with himself.

Love the video, hate the comparisons to Musk. The only parallel with Tesla is that both are in the BEV market. Tesla is a company that's been shipping vehicles since the Roadster. Nikola hasn't shipped a single one.

Elon musk is not founder of Tesla tho...

7:09 what does a pie chart do at that place?

A lot of large corporations are already working on hydrogen cars for years. Strange that many think that some random guy could outpace them like that.

I remember hearing about Nikola and thinking "I'll believe it when I see it" then watching this pump up into a crash and burn. Definitely one of the "knock-off" indicator was the name not being original, but it was obvious from their website it was all concepts. Never did they show a legit manufacturing line or processes. It's weird that larger companies did business with them when even a layperson such as myself had a healthy dose of skepticism from simply browsing their website.

I liked the hype too and wondered why it wasn't further along. Plug Power has their 100 kW fuel cells, Muritor their class 8 electric axles, Toray 10,000 psi carbon fibre tanks made for hydrogen, power converters, batteries.... A prototype could be hobbied together in months. The hard bit is to evolve this prototype and return to the seperate manufacturers to build custom spec components that better match the total system and perhaps evolve those second round systems to the first production article. You could even work with a company like Peterbuilt to get custom cabs and the trucks assembled. Most will do custom builds with your label on the outside, since it has no risk to their brand if it has teething problems. That's about a 35 team member project in scale. A shop to work on the prototypes and no factory. Seriously a company like Peterbuilt would be doing good to make a profit off an alternative brand displacing their regular diesel trucks. Likely they would also be willing to build Tesla's trucks. No matter how the technology changes I am sure they intend to keep building trucks for many more years.

Like I've always said I believe in their technology but their leadership is something else.

I think that Elon Musk did not technically found Tesla - it was apparently Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and Musk got in after investing.

Nice video. A small critique, some of your sentences seem to fade as you talk. So it's hard to hear what you say. It's a style of speaking thing.

Glad to see you do a piece on Nikola. This is the perfect example of why investors should do their research and not follow the crowd. Anyone holding their stock should dump it now because after December insider shareholder will dump all their stock making the company worthless.

Excellent video and well-timed. I am all for entrepreneurs taking the risk, but lying is the problem here. If they have been lean with their approach, he might have not become a billionaire overnight, but they could have built a real business.

Yet the stock remains up... I need to go longer on my shorts. I knew this company was a fake when i read their patent lawsuit. I researched their patents and they are minuscule in their reach and mostly design related. They literally said on their earnings call that they are buying tech from other companies to build its trucks.

can you make a video with examples of companies on cross - product marketing.

Croatian designers are pretty good

You say somthing wrong the legal battle is resolved because tesla found the person that made the Nikola truck design.

It's kinda impressive when someone gets so far on bullshit alone.

Good looking vehicles. Say what you will

Nikola to the moon! In CGI motion only, allegedly..

carefool not to get sued because of the nikola truck "in motion" clip in your video

I’m so glad that I sold out! So many better opportunities than NKLA! The GM deal still hasn’t been sealed as yet either which could potentially be another disaster for NKLA.

Nikola Tesla in his grave : Am I a joke to you?

Whenever he’s interviewed he talks fast, fidgets and sweats. Looks like a nervous squirrel.

They are legit as the flying unicorn 🦄 I saw last night. You know the ones that investors look for but hardly find.

I was thinking to comment in your any video to talk about Nikola failure but what a wavelength 😯

"Dethrone the f150" the best selling vehicle of all time? Come on man

Trevor must've been inspired by Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos

I don't think people learned their lesson with Theranos yet. Prob didn't learn their lesson with Nikola either. Nor WeWork. Just keep waiting for the next one and watch people be surprised again.

Used a hindenburg in the thumbnail I hope you get the reference

Damn! Nikola has been announcing their second model without even producing their pilot model 🤔

We like to thank Tesla for sponsoring this video.

it would have been a mad colab.

This is how I know you’re a good guy. Cause I would have torn him about in this video for all his shadiness. Nikola and Trevor can have it’s own documentary on it that could easily be 1.5 hours long

Great content, but really lightweight as it is missing a lot of key information and ended half way through...

So, Nikola is the new theranos?

I would love to see hydrogen fuel cells (or even methanol fuel cells) in active production but I think they won't ever get to the point where batteries are now, even though they have advantages over batteries.

Just as theranos CEO wanted to imitate Steve Jobs, nikola CEO wanted to imitate Tesla.

Ouch. Just, ouch.

Theranos brought me here.

Technology moves as fast as I go to the store for beer.

Glad I believed in my gut feeling of this company failing and did not Invest in their stock while all EV noise was happening.. except Tesla and nio all the companies associated with ev came down hard.

7:35 Waiting for people to realise this applies to Lucid/ CCIV aswell

Very similar to Theranos before it went under. A CEO making outrageous claims that everyone wants to hear.

I never would've put a penny of belief in Nikola, if your very name is a copy rip off of Tesla, that's a dead give away to me to never touch it. There's a book called the 22 immutable rules of marketing, it's an audio book on youtube, and one of the rules is you have to be first in whatever domain you choose to have dominance in a buyers mind, or you will forever be forgotten.

"Hindenburg Research" what a brilliant company name 🤣😂😂😂

Business model seems too ambitious. Create a nationwide fuel network & cutting edge vehicle. Electric cars just need specialized stations connected to existing electric grid (going solar/wind). To help environment should've gone to fuel cell short or long haul locomotives, but railroads aren't chic and likely wouldn't attract VC. Prob too late to get localized fleets like Amazon, UPS, USPS, ... on board. Right now I don't see much difference between Nik & Theranos - lots of hype, valuation albeit allegedly with fraud + misrepresentations to investors.

Nichola had everything except engineering . Who knew something as mundane could be important

Uff, not the best title to see when you're sitting around waiting for their stocks you hold to go up again :|

9:15 in the words of Coffeezlla, it is an honorary Ferrari lmaoo

Why not to invest a little in researchers? They can save big investors from companies like Nikola. Why give them so much for just good appearance?

Your videos are excellent. But, glossing over this company taking a branding approach of copying and then picking fights with Tesla is a missed opportunity. They literally chose a name designed to cause confusion with Tesla and then threw frivolous lawsuits at tesla to force the public to connect them. Might as well be called Fesla Motors.