Nikola said it had since built fully functional models.
The deal with GM held the prospect of providing crucial help in assembling a pickup truck that Nikola hopes to introduce by the end of 2022. In exchange,GM took an 11 per cent stake in the company valued at the time at $US2 billion.
GM on Monday affirmed its resolve to go forward with the deal.
"We will work with Nikola to close the transaction,"the company said in a statement."Our overall goal is to put everyone in an EV and accelerate adoption."
Nikola listed its shares in June and at the end of trading Friday was worth nearly $US13 billion,although it essentially has no revenue and has not yet sold or produced a single truck.
Analysts have been predicting that traditional carmakers like GM would form partnerships with fast-moving electric car startups to catch up with Tesla,which has a considerable lead in battery technology. GM's deal with Nikola illustrates the hazards of that approach.
Whatever the state of its technology,few companies have experienced Nikola's meteoric rise. Milton,39,is a college dropout who started a security alarm business and then a company that sought to convert diesel engines to run on natural gas before it ran into legal trouble and was sold. In 2014,he founded Nikola with a plan to produce zero-emission semitrucks that run on hydrogen fuel cells and batteries.
His ambitions mirror those of Tesla,another company that aimed to shake up the automotive industry. Milton even drew on the same source for his company's name — inventor Nikola Tesla,who achieved breakthroughs in electric motors in the late 1800s.
Milton unveiled a semitruck,called the Nikola One,in 2016,and said it was operational.
"It's not a pusher,"Milton said at the event,using an industry term for a mock-up vehicle that cannot be driven and must be pushed.
In its report,Hindenburg Research contended that the promotional video showing the moving 2017 prototype and Milton's statements were part of"an ocean of lies."It also accused Milton of claiming Nikola had proprietary technology,when it sourced components from suppliers.
Hindenburg's founder,Nathan Anderson,37,declined to say how much money his company had put into shorting Nikola shares or how much it had made since the report was released.
In a message posed on Twitter on September 11,Milton said Hindenburg's allegations were"lies"and noted his company had retained law firm Kirkland&Ellis to work with the SEC on Nikola's complaints about the Hindenburg report.
"To be clear,this was not a research report and it is not accurate,"Nikola said in a statement."This was a hit job for short sale driven by greed."
In a lengthy written rebuttal to Hindenburg's claims,Nikola acknowledged the truck shown in the 2017 promotional video was not moving on its own,but it said that a semitruck,called the Nikola Tre,was being produced in a joint venture with Iveco,the Italian truck-maker,and said it would be available by the end of next year. Republic Services,the trash hauler,has placed an order for,500 electric garbage trucks,Nikola added.
Milton also posted pictures of what he said are five trucks being assembled in Ulm,Germany.
"Do these look fake?"he wrote.
The day-to-day running of Nikola is in the hands of Mark Russell,the chief executive,whose ties to Milton go back several years. Before joining Nikola as president last year,he was chief executive of Worthington Industries,a diverse maker of steel products like tanks for propane,hydrogen,helium and natural gas. Worthington acquired Milton's diesel conversion company,dHybrid Systems,in 2014 and also invested in Nikola.
The New York Times
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