Nikola goes 'mark to market' with working prototype claim

Remember how quickly the wheels came off
Enron and GM in their bankruptcies?

Now Nikola in quite apparently getting caught peddling vaporware to investors with a mark to market style bait and switch on having working technology and prototypes developed in house is now claiming in Enron 'mark to market' style that its ok because it has a working protype now. That is a version of "check is in the mail" and "money is in the bank" claims. But when dealing with ponzi can kickers you have to flip over the shells in their shell game and actually verify. Nikola needs to demonstrate right now to the world independently verified that it has working prototypes.

This also wasn't a case of GM bean counters getting tricked. GM too is a ad company that outsources its ads. GM right now is peddling some renders of the wheels of its "supertruck" to distract. Its an OEM it knew Nikola was peddling vaporware. What about its own obligation to the public and its shareholders. This is more distraction.

 

Did Anheuser Busch really order thousands of semis from Nikola when its never had a working prototype?

Not long after Enron married PG&E both went bankrupt. Of course PG&E is bankrupt again for similar reasons having of course to do essentially with natural gas (couldn't make it work any more than Enron could because its un unworkable ponzi based on first principles and functional society.) Skilling just got out way early and is back in 'energy.' Hydrogen is what you get when you marry the diesel gate measurement conspiracy scam to the Enron ponzi. So here Nikola despite always being fiction is Enron marrying PG&E (GM)
where GM is about to be a 2 time bankruptcy loser like already PG&E is. These marriages are distractions that attempt to present substance where there is none remaning or never was. But they can't fake it till they make it. They can't puff their way to success. They actually face competition.

Think of VW not long ago telling its US dealers less than 15% of its cars in the US will be EVs by 2025. But now it is saying it is certain it will produce more pure EVs than Tesla by 2023. I wouldn't bet on it even in Germany they are still an ICE perp with other baggage and the IDE 3 and 4 are simply not as good as the Model 3 or Model Y. They won't be able to improve as fast Tesla either. Better sell 5 million units a year by 2025 and even then their whole marketshare at that point globally (its getting cut in half) will be BEVs so are those dealers planning on 100% bevs by 2025? All the Germans have right now is to keep lying about Tesla quality and their own lack of it and keep writing off their ICE sunk costs.

Not the first round of Tesla semi batteries but the second which may have the semi range above 1000 miles likely by 2025- I can see those going 2.6 million miles like the Jeff Dahn stuff already does and I can see the semi motors with things like magnetic bearings lasting that long and with self driving no accidents or damage over that range and in convoy way lower than rail costs. But maybe battery day accelerates that.

No one will take Gates seriously on this stuff again. Remember he timed his Tesla Semi comments to try to help natural gas and fossil fuels- that hitching to fossil fuels defines him, that is who he is, its his legacy- puts him in with Cheny, Skilling, Lay, W. Hillary and of course Buffet. We will remember them by the mess they left us to clean up.

 

Thought I read that Nikola claimed they had billions in back orders like 12 billion or something. They kept claiming way more than then Tesla Semi. So this was all lies too about making the hydrogen scam look more plausible.

As for GM what they did was at best dirty. They are at best attempting to benefit from a scam which has victims. This is kick the can ponzi behavior.

Now that Nikola is turning out to be the long suspected scam the public and the market is just supposed to forget about it and sweep it under the rug like Enron? No, the turds have to stick or how do we move on?

 

Overheard someone saying Barra will be out over this. And unless this is GM trying to cover what I think is the kind of deal Ford made with Tesla she should be. GM right now is basically a moribund cadaver. It doesn't have the IP, it doesn't have the human resources in terms of expertise, it doesn't have the finances and lacks the good will and it can't get access to these. Its deep in the ocean with an o2 tank in the red. It needs someone to give it another tank of air. But in this situation its CEO talks about hydrogen which is code for idiot natural gas!



Hydrogen will get everyone killed in horrid mostly premature deaths in maybe 10 or 15 years if we're very lucky. It means we run past Paris and the politics of fossil fuels drag us into nuclear war likely well before 2050. The functional nukes left in the world will definitely kill us all off over night if we're dumb enough to light a fuse on nuclear war made of hydrogen. That is what it means. There is no Strangelovian escape. As far as we know Mars isn't ready yet. And why would we go an inch in that direction? So some total idiots can get a return on the dumbest of possible investments? Sorry no!!!! Surely well before that people with understanding will get utilitarian and put an end to this- but at what cost? I saw this natural gas site yesterday that said governments and the global public are intent on ending fossil fuels but fossil fuels are here to stay... clean natural gas is necessary to meet climate change, it is the cheapest energy and it is bridge fuel nirvana. Of course all of that appears to be dead wrong! So this is basically the perspective of know nothing idiot oligarchs who say they have a right to veto human existence if they don't get there way- its the resurection of the moronic spirit of the American South the one that was willing to go to civil war to save vile slavery- they called it a way of life- it was wrong! This isn't Russia and this isn't Israel- have to have way more faith in those peoples and their scientific competence and rationality. This is the dumb side of libertarianism. This is like some one throwing a precious infant in the air higher and higher to win a suicidal bet. Its someone playing chicken with everyone's lives for pure simple stupid greed and selfishness. And yet this is America a country that has actually used nukes. There are people in this country that will simply act to end the risk to their families, the nation and humanity- but that isn't peace and that could be how it all ends. But whether that happened or not when we're all killed off by it who would be at fault? No one ever really lost by trying to defend the good and yet why this??? This is so f-ing insane its like that scene from the Bhgavad Gita where Arjuna is saying "I can't fight these people" these are my friends and family and Krishna is saying you will and you will do it valiantly. But this isn't a drunken brawl and its not a video game this is taking what can never belong to us. So what are Bara and Milton? What do they actually represent? Maybe no one read the classics or the stoics on the board of GM and the training in business schools on how to be a psychopath stands in place of education. A better guess on what this is, is simply the logic of a ponzi. Its waiting for Godot. Its just continuing to walk down the only road you know- the wrong one based in denial and habit. Control is an illusion. Glad its not up to me.

 

@Domenick WJS said DOJ is investigating Nikola now too. Did you notice the kick the can, mark to market move in the Nikola response where they (if I have this right) even through the advice of counsel say it doesn't matter they didn't have a working product because they have working product now. Right. That is GM has working product with similar specs even as the Nikola specs kept dropping. This is the tell tale utilitarian thinking. Its the scammer Machiavellian mind set of "the act accuses but the result excuses." But in their minds a better result is just a bigger bluff. It wouldn't excuse and it wouldn't mitigate in the mind of a reasonable person or the public. This is like: WMDs don't matter anymore we got our war lets say it was about democracy.

It is crucially important right now to call that bluff. They need to show working product right now. But you know who else doesn't have it? GM. They are surely trying to BS regulators. Hydrogen isn't viable it can't be part of any true or adequate clean power plan. CA recently shut down Toyota's line of hydrogen BS in Long Beach surely because it was an obvious Diesel Gate and bait and switch.. The issue is this stuff is garbage because its "fool cells."
Mercedes dropped ICE development and dropped hydrogen. It dropped hydrogen because is stupid. MB is doing foot dragging things with its diesel trucks but Tesla will end that.
Hydrogen is as stupid as believing there is such a thing as surplus green energy in a duck curve when there is any natural gas plant that is still allowed to sell any energy at the same time- that is a pure lie. This stuff is just straight non-competive it can't even compete with a totally stacked deck.

Jeremy Rifkin almost ruined his reputation on hydrogen and has spent a couple decades atoning- but its still weird in his GND book he left out crucial details and stats that he included in his prior zero marginal cost society book possibly to try to coddle hook in the arse associated politicians. But then maybe not knowing better Munro brought up dead horse hydrogen but heavily qualified it. And Shirely Meng in a Limiting Factor interview with Jordan brought it up but she teaches it along with super capacitors and batteries. But why do it at all. Its suicidal if it comes from petrol which it would by scam. And even if you could cheaply produce it, outside of rocketry you don't drag around heavy nucli if there are better alternatives. And even rockets aren't always dragging it far before expending it. And even if it seems stable it sweats through things and is explosive and has to be compressed and chilled and requires a lot of failure prone moving parts and it needs high pressure seals, and special tanks and valves for storage. The only thing behind it is these cons that want to do Enron 2 and Diesel Gate 2. Its the Koch empire and ALEC and all that behind it.
What happened to US manufacturing? Crime and endless something-for nothing gigs started paying or paying a lot more in the US.

 

Looks more than one law firm going after Nikola now including Hagens and Berman also Bragar Eagel and Squire. They are encouraging Nikola investors with losses to reach out to them it seems. Should it widen to include or name GM?

Thing with GM is their EV program has been vaporware. They fought CARB. Bolt is a outsourced compliance joke
and Bara is on record saying fossil fuels will still be strong or majority of the market in the 2040 which is a sabotage of the Paris accord defiant pro fossil fuel attitude. Square that with her tripple zero double speak. She also said GM did due dilligence as would be required on the Nikola deal. Now they have a "Supertruck" with "crab mode" that is apparently just like the poster a fictional Chevy Colorado in after market garb known as the Badger. What will GM's October reveal be? Just like the Lyric another no show? Guessing they delay it and Bara announces retirement in the mean time. This is what green washing looks like. Remember 3 years ago when GM and Bara said a Bolt outfitted in Waymo sensors could navigate San Francisco City streets on its own because of its Cruz acquisition- a bit like Nikola. Remember when its affiliated Navigant propahandizer kept printing nonsense posters charts showing it in the lead on self driving?
Actions speak louder than words. They have Maven and Cruz and now Nikola. They cancelled the Volt which was credible to supposedly focus on BEV but now they are back to pushing total bs hydrogen. They did the outsourced the Bolt for compliance reasons. They are apparently trying to do on the sly the Lordstown plant which is jingoistic and dishonorable in concept with a vehicle out of GTA 3. They are also doing indirectly I think Workhorse presumably to an extent through Lutz. Cathy Wood likes Workhorse. Is Workhorse GM's only real or serious effort? Is Workhorse all that will survive of GM- it started out turning pick ups into hybrids now its bev delivery trucks.

Interesting how Bara called Nikola like minded to GM. I guess they are doing the best they can, but they have to stop with lying and the bragging and they need honest goals. They need to make the announcements Merecedes did in dropping all ICE development and ceasing of the hydrogen delusion. GM has been blathering about hydrogen since the late 80s. Its produced nothing. Toyota's new Mirai- already obviously inferior. Oh GM thinks Honda will bail it out. That is interesting but what does Honda get?
Japan almost just married Honda to Nissan. Does Honda have a real BEV up its sleeve? Why would customers choose GM to make it over Honda?

 

Two more law firms Portnoy also Block and Leviton signed on making 4 law firms recently in the news could be more are going after Nikola.

 

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2020/09/17/gm-nikola-deal-ceo-mary-barra/5820184002/

Now usual suspect Abulismid (Navigant level guy) is saying Tesla does the same thing and its the industry norm. Also Trevor is just like Musk and deception is just the norm you have to accept it. Other tactic is classic ponzi colition by saying none of the apparent co-conspirators are backing down. Its just stupid beligerance. Its like saying PG&E supports Enron and Enron supports PG&E.

Hydrogen is dirtier than coal and if allowed would use more fossil fuels than today rescuing the fossil fuel industry at the cost of everything else.

Hydrogen is a ponzi, it involves ripping off the public and the state. It is as big a lie as denying climate change, denying climate instability and denying that man must eliminate the man made contribution and risk. It has no role to play anywhere. It necessarily involves practices like setting radically high energy price floors keeping theiving energy rent seeking and unjustifiable toll road monopolies in place and directly defrauding the state and the people, it involves corrupting government and politics- to a point of no return and it is literally a recipe for nuclear war its lighting a fuse on one its dumber than Enron and its the same scam.

Thankfully it will never have opacity. It will always be totally obvious from the start. And fools on the already sinking fossil fuel ship ( e.g. EU right now deliberating on outright binding ban of ICE cars much sooner than 2050) will thankfully sink on this rock which take their money, power, relevance and maybe their liberty.

Right now in the EU over the deliberations there is whining about jobs when they don't give a damn about people's livelihoods- that's just more human schield hostage taking. The EU must also ban hydrogen and say they are doing it because its a fradulent scam. This stuff is really just basic criminal justice. People don't get to profit from directly and intentionally harming other people and trying to cover it over with lies only aggravates the offense.

 

@gooki

That sums it perfectly. "To intentionally do business with a fraudster."

 

No Southern Dude- concern about dumb plutonomy and it being terminal are not isolated at the moment. Concerns about technocratic structure also isn't new or obscure as its in the tradition of Veblen and Gailbraith. And this is being raised right now in the 'media' with for instance Robert Reiche criticizing Tesla (for not being fakr green really) while trying to legitimize his rhetoric by saying its now a contest of oligarchy vs democacy. Here's a new book title remuniscent of the 'Southern Dude' pseudonym by a historian at Boston College:
Heather Cox Richardson
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

But in thinking about fake liberals and natural gas I realized that Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton both seem like the same people to me almost identical. And they are both obsessed with saving natural gas.
That's the oligarchy they have worked to create and its just as backwards and for the same reasons as the civil war South.
These useless rent seekers are into economic slavery to benefit themselves their familes and their friends. They believe in oppression and inequity and they think injustice is anything that impedes that like democracy. Thankfully there are opposed human wills to stop that ancient depravity from recurring. Who wants this kiss the ring crap? But it is kind of binary a bit like Ron Hubbard its green or its the bmb. But its not hyperbole any more than knowing not to drive fast on black ice at Pikes Peak. We don't put everyone's lives at serious risk to save the wealth of people who made incredibly stupid investments. We say caveot emptor and move to safety.