An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Things keep going downhill for aspiring hydrogen truck-maker Nikola. Nikola’s stock plunged on Monday morning as the company announced that a previously announced deal with General Motors was not going to close. Instead, the two companies signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” related to the use of GM’s hydrogen fuel cell technology in Nikola’s future semi trucks. GM will not take a stake in Nikola as originally planned. Nikola’s stock is down 26 percent as I write this on Monday morning. The stock is down 58 percent since September 8, the day Nikola originally announced the GM deal.
The news means that Nikola is canceling the Badger, a planned pickup truck that critics have long derided as vaporware. Under Nikola’s September deal with GM, GM was supposed to design and build the Badger on a cost-plus basis. The deal would have enabled Nikola to sell a pickup truck it didn’t otherwise have the capacity to manufacture. But it was hard to see how Nikola was going to make a profit selling what would have essentially been a re-badged GM product. Moreover, it wasn’t clear that Nikola had enough cash to finance the development of the Badger alongside the company’s semi trucks and a planned network of hydrogen fueling stations. With the hype around Nikola cooling, Nikola may not be able to raise the necessary cash from Wall Street.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot