Who here hasn't faked a demo? And this is a very different case then Theranos. They faked the demos and never had a working product. Nikola faked the demo and now has an actual working truck.
The mess they are in isn't just about faking one demo one time when they were 2 employees in a basement building a landing page. They consistently lied about basically everything, including key and core components.
"In October 2019, Nikola announced it would revolutionize the battery industry. This was to be done through a pending acquisition, but the deal fell through when Nikola realized (a) the technology was vaporware and (b) the President of the battery company had been indicted months earlier over allegations that he conned NASA by using his expense account to procure numerous prostitutes.
Nikola has never walked back claims relating to its battery technology. Instead, Trevor continued to publicly hype the technology even after becoming aware of the above issues. The revolutionary battery technology never existed – now, Nikola plans to use GM’s battery technology instead."
"Inexpensive hydrogen is fundamental to the success of Nikola’s business model. Trevor has claimed in a presentation to hundreds of people and in multiple interviews to have succeeded at cutting the cost of hydrogen by ~81% compared to peers and to already be producing hydrogen. Nikola has not produced hydrogen at this price or at any price as he later admitted when pressed by media." [1]
How about a company that faked a working phone? A phone where there is only 1 set of workflow that actually was successfuly. A phone that could not play an entire song. And because the CEO knew the phone would crash, even during the only workflow that worked, he had multiple phones on stage that he would swap out when it crashed.
Is that also a lie? Because that's exactly what Steve Jobs did when he debuted the iPhone.
How is that a lie? On release day, when you got your iPhone, you got exactly what was demoed, not one feature was missing. As an Apple investor I would have no way to know what did and didn't work during that demo, and I wouldn't care because I got exactly what I was promised. I also would not expect everything to work, otherwise why would the release date be 9 months after the demo?
And when making that demo, Steve Jobs was convinced (and he made sure he was right) that everything he was demoing would be ready by launch. He did not pretend that the iPhone could do something he very well knew wasn't possible.
Trevor Milton promised things that he knew he would not deliver. He promised things that his company did not do, was not planning to do and did not have the capability to deliver.
Where is the Nikola One today? Where is that revolutionary battery that he promised even once he cancelled the deal to buy that (non-existent) tech? Where is that hydrogen he said he was already producing years ago?
That’s really not the same thing at all. Demos that crash when you go off the happy path are pretty common (Halo 2’s demo was like this too, for instance).
It doesn’t change that it’s still working software and doing everything its being shown to do (just not capable of doing things that aren’t being shown or demoed).
The equivalent of the truck stunt would be if the iphone demo were just a CGI video of an “iphone” but it was actually just a green-screen piece of metal.
1) I have never faked a demo. People who behave unethically often claim everybody else does it too, to assuage their guilt. These people are deluding themselves.
2) The faked demo is only the icing on Nikola's shit cake. I advise you read the Hindenburg report. Trevor is a serial liar, a true con-artist.
Don't lie. You've faked a demo before.