Nikola’s Collapse: What a $30 Billion Company Got So Wrong

Nikola's collapse is one of the fastest wealth destructions in modern automotive history. At its peak in June 2020, Nikola was worth more than Ford, close to $30 billion, without having sold a single truck. Five years later, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with just $47 million in cash and its shareholders were wiped out completely. In this video, we break down exactly what went wrong at Nikola: how a hydrogen truck startup with a prototype that couldn't drive under its own power convinced Wall Street, retail investors and General Motors that it was the next Tesla, and why the Nikola bankruptcy was baked in long before the filing. We cover the 2020 SPAC merger that took Nikola public, founder Trevor Milton's claims about the Nikola One, the Hindenburg Research report that detonated the stock, Milton's securities fraud conviction and subsequent presidential pardon, the collapse of the GM partnership, the Badger pickup that never arrived, the hydrogen fuelling economics that never worked, and the brutal unit economics of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on every truck delivered. The Nikola story isn't just a fraud story. It's a story about what happens when narrative replaces engineering, when a SPAC bubble rewards promises over production, and when a capital-intensive business runs out of road. The lessons apply far beyond EV stocks. #Nikola #NikolaBankruptcy #NikolaCorporation #TrevorMilton #CorporateFraud #EVBubble #EconomicStorytelling