Trevor Milton, founder of electric truck company Nikola, was sentenced today to 4 years in prison following his 2020 guilty verdict on fraud charges. Nikola was one of the more promising EV startups, making Milton a billionaire, until unpleasant facts popped out like confetti from a party cannon.
allegations regarding false and misleading statements were uncovered by short-seller Hindenburg Research. … Milton, who was the company's largest shareholder, stepped down as executive chairman of Nikola in September 2020. He did so amid an internal probe after the Hindenburg report, which characterized the company as a house of cards built by Milton.Since Milton's resignation, shares of Nikola have crated and the company has failed to retain executives.
Here's a quote from Milton about the company's trucks:
"The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."
People constantly compare Milton to Elizabeth Holmes but she worked her fraud almost from childhood, constantly performing and refining her Steve Jobs cosplay while ruthlesslessly dealing with adversaries. She drove her chief scientist to suicide and threatened his widow to cover her ass. Then this stupid fratboy conman comes along, blurts out the most ignorant stuff about tech you ever heard, and sailed it to a $30bn valuation.
