Nikola, Crippled Badly, Faces Truck Fires

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 24, 10:30AM EDT

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Nikola, Crippled Badly, Faces Truck Fires — © Nikola Tre FCEV IAA 2022 (DSC05829) (CC BY-SA 4.0) by MarcelX42

The last thing EV truck maker Nikola needed was truck fires. Five burned near its headquarters. Management said the reason was sabotage. The company stated: “Foul play is suspected as a vehicle was seen in the area of the affected trucks just prior to the incident and an investigation is under way.” Battered and in trouble, the company cannot handle much more bad news, regardless of the source.
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Nikola’s stock traded at $19 two years ago. Recently, it dropped to $1.30 and briefly was below $1.

In the most recent quarter, Nikola had only $11 million in revenue. It lost $169 million. It lost $153 million in the same quarter a year ago. CEO Michael Lohscheller said: “Nikola had a very solid quarter, building sales momentum with Class 8 battery electric truck deliveries to customers, and orders for 140 hydrogen fuel cell trucks from customers.” That is perilously close to zero.

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Recently, Nikola moved out of Europe. It cut 270 jobs at about the same time. That means it has less than 900 people still employed.

Nikola is one of the new generations of alternative fuel charge vehicle companies that won’t make it. The list also includes Rivian and Lucid. They have brands the public barely knows. At the same time, nearly everyone has heard of Tesla, Ford, and Chevy. It takes years to develop a powerful brand and a short time for one to die. (These are the car brands with the best and worst dealership experience.)

The truck fires were not Nikola’s fault, but they drove another set of negative headlines. Nikola can’t afford any more of those.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.