In the world of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, people are always looking forward to the emergence of the next Elon Musk, an entrepreneur who leads the development of the industry. Sometimes, however, these expectations are just empty of words, and they are nothing more than a bunch of fraudsters. Nikola founder Trevor Milton is a prime example. Once known as the "Musk of trucking", Trevor Milton was sentenced to 4 years in prison for cheating investors, lost all his property, and paid a $1 million fine. His fraud involved exaggerating the company's technology, resulting in more than 6$600 million in losses. But before we dive into Trevor Milton, let's take a look at how he came to the brink of fraud.
Born in 1982, Trevor Milton started his business when he dropped out of college in a small rural town in Utah, USA. He started running a security services franchise and successfully sold the store for $300,000 in funding. He then started upillar, a car classified, but it wasn't profitable. He then co-developed a natural gas conversion technology and founded DhybridSystems in 2009. The company was acquired by metal manufacturer Worthington Industries in 2014 for $15.9 million**, and Trevor Milton chose to leave and founded Nikola to begin working on electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks. Trevor Milton is confident in his company's prospects, and he believes that Nikola will be the next Elon Musk.
However, Trevor Milton's self-confidence didn't last long, as Nikola quickly collapsed after the fraud**. But before Nikola's collapse, they managed to attract the attention of many investors, as they claimed to be able to build advanced hydrogen fuel cell technology that would enable "zero-emission and zero-pollution" truck production. This allowed Nikola to obtain an extremely high valuation in the capital market and was known as the "Musk of the truck world". Even General Motors invested $2 billion in Nikola in 2020 and signed a cooperative car manufacturing agreement. However, lies cannot escape the fate of being punctured after all.
In reality, Nikolai's products or techniques have never been as good as they claim. After being revealed, a series of frauds and lies were discovered by Nikolai. For example, the Nikolaone truck that Nikolai showed at the launch was made from parts from other vehicles, and even the shell was improvized. The so-called "test drive"** released by Nikola is actually just placing the truck on a hillside and using gravity to slide to create the illusion that the truck is moving on its own. In addition, Nikolai has never developed the core technical components such as hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors as advertised.
And Trevor Milton himself is a master of deception, frequently lying. He once boasted that the company had received a large number of sales orders from businesses, but in reality many of these customers did not exist. All these lies were finally exposed by the Hindenburg Research Center, who pointed out that Nikolai was a ** built on dozens of lies. The release of the report caused an immediate uproar, and Trevor Milton had to resign as CEO.
After being revealed, Nikolai was in a huge predicament. In order to salvage the decline, Nikolai carried out a series of self-rescue actions, including hiring Steve Girsky as president and changing the CEO several times. In April 2019, Nikola began delivering the Nikolatre electric truck, but the number of deliveries was not ideal, and there was even a recall. In the first three quarters of this year, Nikola's production and deliveries declined, and the company's revenue and net loss also fell sharply. Nikola's market capitalization has also experienced waves of halving, and currently only 9$8.7 billion.
Trevor Milton's story is a thought-provoking case. He was once expected to be known as the "Musk of the trucking world", however, he fell into the quagmire of fraud. This makes us reflect on whether we should look more rationally at those hot entrepreneurs and tech companies while we look forward to the next Musk. Fraud has caused huge losses to investors and has also affected the credibility and development of the industry.
On the road of scientific and technological innovation, integrity and authenticity are indispensable qualities. Both founders and investors need to be vigilant and conduct thorough due diligence on the technology and business model. In addition, regulators and financial institutions should also strengthen the supervision of technology companies to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents.
Fraud not only harms investors, but also negatively impacts the industry as a whole. We should take this as a warning, not only to focus on the company's innovation and technological innovation, but also to the background and reliability of the entrepreneurs. Only in this way can we build a truly honest and sustainable ecosystem of scientific and technological innovation.