Thread by @InsiderNikola

OK, so let's talk about ZapGo. For those of you who have not read the Hindenburg Report, one of the allegations is that the "game changing battery tech" that Nikola teased back in November was a failed attempt to buy British vaporware company ZapGo.

Now it has always been obvious what Nikola's response was going to be "Oh, we weren't talking about THAT vaporware company, it's a different one". And indeed, VP Jason Roycht, who plays a role as the hapless dipshit who was conned by these guys, is already telegraphing this.

Now, is it possible that this disaster of an acquisition is different from whatever disaster led to the premature announcement in April? Sure, never count out anything with these clowns, perhaps they signed two doomed Letters of Intent last fall. But let's look at the facts.

We know from the lawsuit that on October 31 Nikola signed a letter of intent with ZapGo. Two days earlier Trevor had started hinting that a world changing announcement was coming. He hyped and teased it for a couple of weeks before finally the press release came out.

The press release claimed that "Nikola" had developed a battery cell that was twice as good as anything out there, though the fine print noted that really they had signed a letter of intent to acquire a company that had developed a cell.

Trevor and Nikola did not hold back in their declarations. They claimed the world was changed forever. Trevor mused that the tech was worth hundreds of billions of dollars. They tried to get other OEMs to join some bullshit "IP Consortium" so they could share the tech.

Trevor declared that the tech was a done deal, the cell worked and that a demonstration of it would be the main event at Nikolaworld 2020. Then after a few days of gushing neither Trevor nor Nikola seem to have ever voluntarily brought it up again.

OK back to ZapGo. Jason, who was the point man on this cautionary tale, finally got around to googling the founders of the company that Nikola had agreed to buy for $56 million plus $8 million in development costs on Dec. 5, over a month after the LOI.

Wasn't hard to find the guys. The President of ZapGo, Charles Resnick, had made national news earlier that year when he was arrested for trying to expense his prostitutes to his NASA account. Jason confronted the other founders and they told them they didn't know about Charles.

Incredibly, Jason and Trevor believed these guys and MOVED FORWARD with the project, continuing to throw a million bucks a month at them. But their troubles were not over. By early 2020 it finally made it through their skulls that these guys were vaporware fraudsters.

In early February Nikola was informed that they were not going to get any cells in 2020 (i.e. by Nikola World). In a panic, they terminated the agreement and yet another Trevor Milton production ended in mutual lawsuits.

So is the ZapGo disaster Trevor's "game changing tech"? Maybe, and maybe not. The timeline obviously fits perfectly. Jason's argument is that it's different because ZapGo was making supercaps. ZapGo does appear to be some kind of hybrid capacitor.

Like most vaporware companies, it's hard to comprehend entirely what they "have". And when Trevor described the "game changing" tech in interviews, it was clear that he was talking about some kind of exotic structure but didn't understand what he was describing.

Jason's other argument is that it couldn't be the ZapGo device because Trevor said it was extremely energy dense while the ZapGo device is not dense at all--worse than Lead Acid. But claiming that sucky things are amazing is literally what Trevor does. So that doesn't say much.

But maybe it was a different LOI! So does Nikola own "game changing" battery tech? Definitely not. Like I said, they haven't voluntarily mentioned the tech since November. But Trevor is occasionally asked. And his answers just become more and more word salad over time.

Most recently, the Tesla Superfans asked him and he mumbled something about how they had thrown some dollars at a university team, who knows if it would ever be commercialized, he hates cell production, etc. ect., he "hoped" it could be shown at Nikola World.

And anyway, we know what they have. Patents are public and Nikola does not own any cell patents. And since they are now public they have to list their subsidiaries. They do not own any cell companies.

And if that is not all, three days ago they gave up on batteries completely to buy units from GM. Trevor was asked why he would do this when he had "game changing" battery tech and he said well GM is cheaper. Give me a fucking break.

So sure, maybe Nikola signed TWO letters of intent doomed to failure last fall and hyped one as a done deal that was the biggest development in alternative fuel history. If that is their defense they are more screwed than I thought.

But for sure if tomorrow morning Trevor claims that they do own game changing battery tech but he can't tell you what it is, he is lying.

That is what he does.