Nikola Motors | The Future of Transport

sponsored by private internet access for hundreds of years humans have been hauling cargo around the planet in a global web of trade natural resources shipped from every corner of the planet diamonds from russia spices from india iphones from china but in the last two centuries how we transport cargo has gone through a monumental revolution incredible new machines allow us to fly sail and drive ourselves around every corner of the planet and back in a fraction of the time it took before and at the heart of this technological revolution a single resource crude oil fueling trillions of dollars of cars ships planes and other vehicles every single day however after decades of research on its effects on the environment scientists aren't very keen as a result the transport industry is going through another revolution clean energy is in and there are a few options biofuel electric natural gas even propane but some were convinced that there was another answer hydrogen and they had a cutting-edge hydrogen cell battery to prove it nicola motors had plans for all pickup trucks jet skis off-road buggies but their crowning achievement wasn't any of that it was their cutting-edge hydrogen-powered semi-trucks they just had to build the fueling stations and they were good to go it was going to be massive the next evolution of transport was here and it was at nicola motors the year is 2014 and a man named trevor milton is looking to start a new business now trevor is armed to the teeth with business experience he'd previously founded three massively successful companies an alarm company he'd sold for 2 million just after leaving college an online sales site similar to ebay where he was seeing upwards of 80 million users per month and d hybrid a company that retrofitted trucks to run on natural gas which he'd just sold for 16 million dollars at 32 years of age trevor is doing all right but he wasn't done with business just yet trevor looks around he sees that green energy motor companies like tesla are actually starting to look viable he thinks the future is green and he wants a piece of the pie so he plans to build another green trucking company however this time he wouldn't just be converting trucks he'd be making them from the ground up he just needed a name and in 2015 nicola motis was born he gets to work on the designs immediately and after countless nights of work trevor's first design is finally finished the nikola won after reaching a massive breakthrough in hydrogen technology in 2016 that created the world's first hydrogen electric semi designed by trevor himself in his own basement he arranges a convention where he debuts a fully working nikola one on stage people are impressed two other nikola trucks are announced shortly after people are more impressed okay so nicola has a few trunks but what was their actual business plan simple step one they acquire design and patent all of their own cutting-edge tech step 2. they manufacture their trucks in-house at their own factory currently under construction in arizona and sell the fleets of trucks off to buyers step 3 profit however the profits weren't coming from the trucks they were coming from the fueling of the trucks here's how it worked they'd also build over 700 hydrogen stations around the us here they'd use solar energy and wind farming to cheaply electrolyze water into hydrogen then store it in fuel cells for incoming trucks the sales servicing and repairs of the trucks wouldn't cost buyers a thing but nicola would charge them one dollar for every mile they drove if they could just sell a few fleets of their trucks buyers would have to rely on nicolas fuelling stations indefinitely guaranteeing nicola a stable cash flow for years to come it was bulletproof they just needed to get a few major corporations on board which they did in droves beer conglomerate anheuser-busch places an 800 truck pre-order german manufacturing giant bosch agrees to supply them with battery tank ivaco also agrees to help with components the following month see a few new vehicles announced including a pickup truck and a buggy but in november of 2019 nicola has an electric battery breakthrough this was the big one two times the charge 800 mile ranges 50 cost reductions some bold statements were made and naturally people were skeptical but the tech was 100 real trevor had seen it with his very own eyes nicola had the technology the partnerships and the business plan now they just needed the money early 2020 tesla's stock has just quadrupled in under a year and other ev companies are also heating up retail traders were ravenous so in march nicola announces they're going public through a reverse merger giving investors a chance to buy into the company early now they just needed to create some hype but there was a problem being a company that was still in the development phase nicola doesn't really have that much to show off so they load up blender and get to work they slap together some 3d renders and put them on their website which people log on to immediately my god the renders looked incredible it was clear it was time to go all in and shares end up tripling in value weeks before the merge is even set to happen retail was dribbling with excitement but finally on june the third nickel emerges and goes public and people go crazy they buy all the shares they can stomach that combined with certain other market factors pumps nicola to a valuation of 34 billion dollars within two days of being public making it worth more than ford motors and with 700 million dollars now in the bank from the merger nicola was set trevor had assembled one of the best teams in the world and valued at more than 30 billion dollars nice it's fair to say that he had the full faith of the market behind him however the pompous valuation blasted nicola into the public eye and some eyebrows were immediately raised for starters the company didn't currently have any source of revenue in fact they'd made just 36 000 in the third quarter of 2020 and that was from installing solar panels for trevor they'd claimed to have revolutionary battery tech but were suddenly outsourcing battery tech from companies like bosch cathy wood a well-known hedge fund manager basically says their entire business plan is completely funked had retail missed something investors become uncertain and a rocky wave of sell-offs hit the stock in fact the company's valuation halves in just over a month things were not looking good was nicola a fraud but just as the sell-off settles something incredible happens on the 8th of september negotiations of a 2 billion deal with general motors are announced investors rejoice immediately if anyone was going to do their due diligence it was one of america's most prestigious motor companies someone as big as gm would surely vet the company they're dealing with before announcing a deal with them worldwide investors were immediately reconvinced and shares of both companies saw this was it trevor had done it nicola was real and they were the future before we move on the internet an almost endless source of riveting entertainment and home to an unimaginable wealth of knowledge it's incredible however it's not all good turns out there are other people on this internet and some of them want your data share an unsecure internet connection with any of these people and your online activity all swiped in an instant my god he's got everything or does he with private internet access you can knock your internet down under an encrypted connection located almost anywhere in the world meaning that when a hacker tries tracking your device to them you're now in venezuela also your online activity is virtually invisible and untouchable just open up private internet access and click a server but there's more access to geo-restricted content including content on netflix youtube and other social media networks better deals online play games blocked in your region and protect your identity by keeping your data fully encrypted not enough how about a strict no log policy a 30-day money-back guarantee one subscription covering 10 devices at once cnet says yes pc mac has said yes five years in a row windows mac android ios whatever you're on you'll be set and you can get private internet access for 77 off through the links in the description and the pinned comment below that's 2.59 a month plus three months free of charge start protecting yourself today so it looked like nicola was in fact legit investors pour back into the stock and this time they're riding it out for the long run nicola truly was the future of logistics however this post deal optimism would be short-lived a few months prior to gm negotiations a short-selling research firm called hindenburg had heard about nikola when their groundbreaking tech they weren't convinced so they start doing a little digging they start by interviewing some of trevor's ex-employees and they hear some interesting allegations according to ex-employees trevor's old companies weren't quite as successful as he previously made out in 2004 trevor partnered up with a friend to create a door-to-door sales business selling security systems in utah he ends up selling the company two years later for around 850k with 300k paid upfront it was a done deal and everything went through fine until the buyer finds out the company was a complete lie and demands trevor takes it back trevor does and the buyer takes a 300k loss trevor then sells the business for a second time this time without any issues however allegedly he doesn't tell his business partner and stashes the second paycheck for himself in july of 2009 trevor launches upilla.com an ebay type website where you could post classified ads to sell stuff online trevor says that it goes amazingly quickly reaching 80 million users a month and even beating amazon in numbers in reality this wasn't the case in fact ex-employees of youpillar say they had so little to do while working there they spent most of their time just approving ads it wasn't long before u-pillar was shut down trevor claims it was because the company was growing too fast that was a lesson for me as at that time was not to grow too fast and it really kicked our butt and we shut down the company lost everything in november 2009 trevor tries again this time he launches d hybrid a company that would convert trucks to partly run on natural gas it goes well and he secures a 16 million dollar contract to convert 800 trucks the buyer puts in 2 million dollars for a 10 ownership of the hybrid and asks them to convert 10 trucks up front before fully committing to an 800 truck deal easy enough however issues arise quickly see the hybrid has a little bit of trouble actually converting the trucks due to the fact their tech wasn't actually finished but they give it a good crack nonetheless a few weeks later and they actually do manage to convert five trucks however those trucks didn't work too well they're sued immediately okay this was not good capitals drying up and the hybrid is in desperate need of some more so trevor searches for new investors and he gets desperate he tells potential investors that the hybrid's previous deal was actually worth 250 million dollars and that they'd save buyers of their gas turbines almost 40 percent of fuel costs in reality her number was closer to 20 but that didn't matter eventually a company called sustainable power group like what they hear and enter negotiations perfect a few months in and the deal is close to being finalized but sustainable power group back out at the last minute having found out that hybrid hadn't even completed development of the gas system they were trying to sell nor had the legal certifications to actually sell them they also sue okay let's try again this time we'll add a chief technical officer to the pitch to look more professional uh one problem we don't have one not an issue trevor then proceeds to bring a random man into investor meetings claiming he was their chief technical officer still no luck right clearly none of this was working time for another approach in 2012 trevor registers d hybrid systems a totally new completely unrelated business and in 2014 trevor finally manages to sell the company magging 16 million dollars it was finally over but in 2015 trevor steps back in the ring and establishes nicola motors the issues start almost immediately december 2016 the nikola one is showcased to the world for the first time the truck on stage was a fully functioning prototype of the world's first viable hydrogen electric semi-truck however an ex-nicola employee disagrees according to him the truck on stage wasn't even fitted with hydrogen tech at the time but natural gas turbines from an earlier version even though it still had hydrogen written on the side there were also no gears or motors in the truck and apparently the truck wasn't even running on its own battery but an electric cable coming out of a panel in the floor okay so the truck on stage didn't work then but then obviously get the truck to run eventually right well turns out that's a bit more difficult than previously thought around a year later and nicola is still struggling to get the thing moving but on january the 25th they drop a video and they'd finally done it a video of the nikola one actually driving it was incredible but hindenburg still wasn't convinced so they send a guy over to the road they'd recorded the video on he realizes something strange in the video it looks like a flat even road but in real life it was a massively inclined hill did they just roll the truck down a hill and angle the camera nikola responds to the allegation immediately yes yes we did according to another rex employee the truck's development was abandoned straight after its reveal and isn't functional to this day ok that's not great but at least the nikola 2 seems to work and according to trevor all major components are made in-house at least they have some working tech wait is that a third party component with some tape just slapped over the logo it was evident that the trucks had a few issues november 2017 elon musk has just announced that he's stepping into the game and reveals a prototype of tesla's very own semi-truck trevor retreats to his basement this was not good wait hold on a second that truck looks oddly familiar had they stolen the patented design of the nikola one nicola conjures a lawsuit immediately they sue tesla for two billion dollars alleging that tesla's semi looked substantially like nicolas trunk and leading to potential issues like customer confusion and damage to the nicola brand tesla denies the allegations vehemently no but nicola is adamant two years later and the law suits his little progression however in september 2020 a bombshell drops trevor milton had lied turns out that the nikola one's patented truck design wasn't even created by nicola in fact after doing a little digging the financial times find out that nicola had actually bought the design off a croatian man a few years prior making trevor's claims about designing it himself in his basement not only very sad but also potentially avoiding the truck's pattern entirely [Music] in november 2019 nicola announced their breakthrough electric battery it was revolutionary and the best part of all trevor would even share it with the competition for the greater good again hindenburg weren't too convinced so they hit up some dms turns out that back in mid-2019 nicola was in the market for a little bit of proprietary battery technology around the same time a small company in england claimed they've cracked a battery that can be charged in just five minutes sounds interesting so nicola begins talks with them they tell nicola that they expect to be seeing annual revenues of up to four billion dollars by 2024. nicola likes what they hear so they offer to acquire them for 50 million dollars worth of nicholas stock they enter negotiations not long after and trevor hops online to flex their breakthrough battery to the world but hold on the deal's not actually finished yet and turns out things are going downhill quickly during negotiations nicola had sent a guy across the pond to check the company out a bit further just to make sure they weren't being swindled turns out that's exactly what was happening the company's battery wasn't even finished and the company was on the brink of bankruptcy also the company's president of u.s operations was indicted a few months prior for purchasing prostitutes on nasa's expense account nice but no thank you the deal was cancelled shortly after and no battery was purchased investors were never updated on the situation [Music] july 2020 a promotional nicola video comes out on youtube in it trevor states that he's assembled one of the best teams in the world let's dive a little deeper into that first up the director of hydrogen production a pretty key role for a hydrogen trucking company and it's trevor milton's younger brother okay must have some good experience in the field wait construction paving driveways okay what about the chief engineer also a pretty major job previous work pinball machine repairman uh okay who's the head of infrastructure development again a pretty big role he's a former general manager of a golf course right i think we've covered enough ground here and on the 10th of september just two days after the gm announcement hindenburg released their findings [Music] it was hideous the stock halves again and gm's two billion dollars worth of nicolas stock proposed in the deal falls to one billion dollars worth in just two weeks but it was all right trevor wasn't just gonna back down cowards run leaders stay and fight he tweets investors were clearly in safe hands but then allegations of sexual assault come out against trevor from his cousin alright i'm out boys trevor steps down and goes offline he leaves the company with three billion dollars worth of stock no this was not happening something was wrong very very wrong the gm deal is proof the company is real investors said well turns out gm was no longer that keen and investors were annihilated again towards the end of september a number of finance youtubers start reporting on the story naturally this involves using some of nicholas footage notably the video of their truck rolling down a hill nicola were furious they jump on youtube's copyright system immediately thankfully youtube's foolproof copyright policies meant that all youtubers in question were completely safe from any abuse of the system they never stood a chance use any footage of our trunks taken down clips of nicola world going offline what's that tesla footage that we don't even own the rights to see you later by censoring anyone that talked about the company nicola had cleared their name from any wrongdoing and the company's public image was restored for good [Music] wall street is no stranger to fraud from the ex-chairman of the nasdaq defrauding thousands of people out of almost 70 billion dollars to startups like theranos reaching a valuation of over 10 billion dollars without a working product fraud is clearly rampant but executives at nikola motors insist they're different there may be a few hiccups here and there but big things are still happening day-to-day operations remain unfaulted as directors continue plans designers render models and engineers tweak tech and even though the share price continues to trickle downwards and scandals hit the company on an almost monthly basis rest assured everything at nicola motors is absolutely fine so that is that true that's delightful um you know what is that actually that actually happened of course it happened i think i think this is a reflection of how like don't forget private internet access is 77 off through the links below that's 2.59 a month for encrypted connections 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Channel: big boss

Views: 416,614

Rating: 4.9579644 out of 5

Keywords: Nikola Motors | The Future of Transport, big boss, nikola motors, the next tesla, nikola motor, nikola trucks, tesla motors, tesla, trevor milton, elon musk, tesla stock, nikola stock, stock market, nikola documentary, nikola motors faud, fraud documentary, nkla, nikola trevor, nikola motors factory, hindenburg, hindenburg research, hindenburg nikola, theranos, theranos fraud, enron fraud, enron, nikola badger, nikola two, nikola tre, nikola fraud, nikola one, nikola elon

Id: 1oqqnkkTKVM

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fucky_fucky]

I already know the story but watched this anyways because it's fucking awesome.

[u/Ihavealpacas]

LIES THE TRUCKS ARE POWERED BY GRAVITY!!!

[u/upvotemeok]

the greatest EV investor i mean incestor

[u/Psychological_Sir412]

I bought at 23 I’m fucked god please go up

[u/Nikola_Insider]

Really well done. I honestly don't know of an article that has hit as many key points as this video did.

[u/HODLTheLineMyFriend]

How is the stock not at $1 already?!?