Nikola, a start-up of electric vehicles that once he had hoped to become the Tesla of the heavy trucks, presented bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.
Founded in 2015, Nikola promised to develop long -range seed seeds powered by hydrogen and electricity and listed on the stock exchange in 2020 before it had sold a single vehicle. Its actions price has increased briefly as individual investors and some Wall Street companies ask to bet on the companies that thought they could replicate the success of Tesla and its expected actions price.
The short -lived enthusiasm of investors for Nikola made its founder, Trevor Milton, and other first rich investors. But in a short time significant doubts have emerged about the statements of Mr. Milton on the technology and orders of the company by customers. He was soon ousted and subsequently sentenced with accusations of fraud.
In recent quarters, Nikola had started to deliver a small number of electric trucks but too few to make money. At the end of last year, the company said it had $ 200 million in cash and $ 270 million in long -term debt. Its title crashed in early February as regards the company that was approaching a declaration of bankruptcy.
The company declared in a press release that had about $ 47 million in cash at hand and intended to continue the “limited” service and the support for travel trucks. The presentation of the bankruptcy listed liabilities between $ 1 billion and $ 10 billion and has put the number of creditors who owe between 1,000 and 5,000. Its greatest creditor is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was due $ 80.2 million for an agreement that the company reached with the agency in 2021.
The company said she wanted to use the bankruptcy process to sell many or all its activities and close its activities.
Nikola is one of the many novice electric vehicles companies that have fought to transform their ideas into a car and real trucks.
Lordstown Motors, who had tried to make trucks in a Shuttering General Motors factory in Ohio, sought bankruptcy protection in 2023 and in 2024 he was accused of misleading investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A start-up based in Great Britain called Arrival expected to produce vans and electric buses. But he struggled to make the ideas of vehicle and manufacturing work and then sold his resources to another start-up, canoeing. That company submitted a bankruptcy protection application last month.
Some electric vehicles start-ups are still working although their actions prices have collapsed and it is not clear how or when they become profitable.
Rivian, who makes the electric pickups and vehicles with sporting utility, has had difficulty in increasing production at the levels he initially aimed, and his actions now exchange to just under $ 13 for a tenth-tenth action of where he was at the end of the 2021
Lucid Motors produces luxury electric cars and SUVs but has been well below its original sales and production objectives. He also hopes to do business in which he sells his technology to other car manufacturers.
“Like other companies in the electric vehicle sector, we have faced various market factors and macroeconomic that have influenced our ability to operate,” said Steve Girsky, CEO of Nikola, in a note Wednesday. “Unfortunately, our best efforts were not enough to overcome these significant challenges.”
Before founding Nikola, Milton started a security alarm activity and another who tried to make the diesel engines work with natural gas. He called his company after the inventor Nikola Tesla, whose surname was used by the founders of the electric car company.
Nikola has planned to create trucks that work on hydrogen and build a network of hydrogen power stations. Milton told the investors that Nikola had a long -range working truck prototypes without emissions and had billions of dollars of binding orders.
In 2020, Nikola joined the stock market by merging with a “acquisition company for special purposes”, which has a list but little else. This strategy, which was also used by other start-ups of electric vehicles, avoids the greater control that accompanies the initial public offers.
A few months after the Nikola shares started negotiating, a small investment company, Hindenburg Research, published a report that Milton had significantly overrated how much technology had developed. The report also says that the company produced a video in 2017 in which a truck was rolled down to make it seem as if it had a working prototype.
Initially, Nikola defined the “false and defamatory” relationship, but weeks after Mr. Milton resigned. In 2023, he was sentenced to four years in prison after being sentenced to titles and fraud wires. Mr. Milton, who is appealing to his sentence, has not been reached for a comment.
By 2023, two new managers had come and Veniti, and Mr. Girsky, a former vice -president of General Motors who was involved in taking public Nikola, took the best job. In the end Nikola began to produce trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells and sold 200 in the first nine months of last year.