A truck company founder was indicted for fraud. California still paid $50 million for its vehicles
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Set us as preferred Trevor Milton, the founder and former chief executive of Nikola Corp., helped raise over $1 billion by touting the company as an emerging rival to Tesla.He boasted that Nikola, founded in 2014, had developed the world’s first fully functional hydrogen-powered semi-truck — the Nikola One.
He told investors that the company had over 14,000 preorders, representing billions of dollars of future revenue.He claimed Nikola operated the largest hydrogen production facility in the Western Hemisphere to fuel the company’s fleet.The only problem was, none of that was true: Nikola did not develop the world’s first hydrogen truck, and the Nikola One was never fully functional.
Also, the company never had that many preorders, and it never developed a hydrogen production facility.Even after Milton was criminally indicted in 2021 and the company reached a costly settlement, the California Air Resources Board allowed Nikola to compete for state funding and sell vehicles through its Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project in 2022.
State officials ultimately paid more than $50 million to help Nikola customers purchase more than 166 of the company’s electric and hydrogen-powered semis — making them the most heavily subsidized vehicle in the program on average.Less than three years later, the company collapsed.
Most of Nikola’s trucks that eventually went to market were recalled for fire-prone batteries and hydrogen tank issues.In February 2025, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving its customer base — mostly in California — without vehicle warranties, a limited supply of spare parts and additional costs for maintenance.
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