Thread by @InsiderNikola

I have spoken before about the Nikola One mockup, but I will go into more details now. The truck was actually designed to be functional, but Nikola couldn't pull it off. Trevor hired a team from Portland OR to develop the drivetrain. #Trevorgate #Nikolagate $NKLA #NKLA #NKLAQ

He claimed to have turbine technology but of course he didn't. He hired Brayton Energy to do that part of it. E-Axles were designed by AM Racing Inc, Inverters were off the shelf from Rinehart Motion Systems. EVDrive Inc. did the batteries and other system design.

But the progress was really slow. Trevor was late on payments, slowing things way down (always blaming "Worthington Corporate). Inexperienced chief engineer Kevin Lynk struggled getting all the components placed properly in the truck.

Just two months before the unveiling, the truck was just two frame rails on a Meritor suspension and some radiators (see my profile pic). Only a couple of guys were working on it because most components weren't there because they had been ordered late.

Things didn't start showing up until about November. The e-axle housings, which were required to make the truck appear finished, didn't show up until the last day of October, then they had to spend a week being anodized so they would look good.

There was no time (and no motor cores and gears) to assemble them so they were just put empty into the truck on November 11.

Worthington was supposed to make the fueling system through their dHybrid division, but by this time they had figured out that they had been had, so they backed out and Morgan and some former dHybrid people slapped one together a few weeks before the show. Never tested it.

Battery was still just sitting in a holder waiting for something to happen as of late October. There was nothing to plug it into.

Brayton showed up in November to deliver their turbine. But Trevor hadn't managed to come up with a generator to plug it into. So they just put it in with an empty output. It was deep in the truck so no one would see it. By this time they were pretending the truck was Hydrogen.

Body didn't arrive until two days before Thanksgiving. The team from N2A spent Thanksgiving Day (just a week before the show) getting it fitted onto the frame while Trevor headed down to St. George to eat dinner with his family.

Once the body was on, we dragged it onto the stage for the show. Trevor brought in an artist to stencil on the US Xpress livery and the H2 sticker. Nothing in the truck worked, but Trevor insisted that the screens be powered so he could point to them as functionality.

So we just snaked up a cable through the stage to power the 12V systems since the high voltage system wasn't hooked up and the DC/DC converters were not operational.

This is the truck that Trevor said was "fully functional" and "Not a pusher" #Trevorgate #Nikolagate $NKLA

At the show, Trevor made up numbers. He listed mileage numbers "based on our testing". Of course no testing had occurred. He was simply taking the range that the Natural Gas truck had and keeping it for the Hydrogen version, working backwards making up numbers as needed.

When he lost access to Worthington and Brayton and had to do a quick pivot to Hydrogen, he just kept the numbers the same, copying and pasting the numbers for Natural Gas to Hydrogen cause he knew if the range went down people would complain.

Look at the comparison of the Natural Gas vs Hydrogen versions. Just a cut and paste job instead of being utterly different. Compare items 6 and 7. Just so sloppy. But he literally had no Hydrogen technology so he just had to BS his way through it.

Of course in the years since, they have quietly cut the range in more than half. Apparently the numbers "based on their testing" were off by a factor of two. But they claimed to have billions in preorders by the time they pivoted to Hydrogen (LOL) so they couldn't cut the range.