Nikola, an electric vehicle start-up that had once hoped to become the Tesla of heavy trucks, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.
Founded in 2015, Nikola promised to develop long-haul semi trucks powered by hydrogen and electricity, and listed itself on the stock exchange in 2020 before it had sold a single vehicle. Its share price surged briefly as individual investors and some Wall Street firms clamored to bet on companies that they thought could replicate Tesla’s success and its soaring stock price.
Investors’ short-lived enthusiasm for Nikola made its founder, Trevor Milton, and other early investors wealthy. But before long, significant doubts emerged about Mr. Milton’s claims about the company’s technology and orders from customers. He was soon ousted, and later convicted on fraud charges.
In recent quarters, Nikola had begun delivering small numbers of electric trucks but far too few to make money. Late last year, the company said it had $200 million in cash and $270 million in long-term debt. Its stock plunged in early February on reports that the company was nearing a bankruptcy filing.
The company said in a release it had about $47 million in cash on hand, and intended to continue “limited” service and support for trucks out on the road. The bankruptcy filing listed liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion, and put the number of creditors it owes at between 1,000 and 5,000. Its largest creditor is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is owed $80.2 million for a settlement the company reached with the agency in 2021.
The company said it intended to use the bankruptcy process to sell many or all of its assets and wind down its businesses.
Nikola is one of several fledgling electric vehicle companies that have struggled to turn their ideas into actual cars and trucks.
Lordstown Motors, which had tried to make pickup trucks in a shuttered General Motors plant in Ohio, sought bankruptcy protection in 2023, and in 2024 was charged with misleading investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A start-up based in Britain called Arrival planned to make electric vans and buses. But it struggled to make its vehicle and manufacturing ideas work and then sold its assets to another start-up, Canoo. That company filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
A few electric vehicle start-ups are still operating though their share prices have tumbled and it’s not clear how or when they will become profitable.
Rivian, which makes electric pickups and sport-utility vehicles, has had trouble ramping up production to the levels it originally aimed for, and its stock now trades at just under $13 a share — a tenth of where it was in late 2021. But the company secured an important lifeline last year when it established a partnership with the German automaker Volkswagen, which has taken a big stake in Rivian.
Lucid Motors makes luxury electric cars and S.U.V.s but has fallen well short of its original sales and production targets. It, too, is hoping to make deals in which it sells its technology to other automakers.
“Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic factors that have impacted our ability to operate,” Steve Girsky, Nikola’s chief executive, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, our very best efforts have not been enough to overcome these significant challenges.”
Before founding Nikola, Mr. Milton started a security alarm business and another that tried to make diesel engines run on natural gas. He named his firm after the inventor Nikola Tesla, whose last name was used by the founders of the electric car company.
Nikola planned to make trucks that run on hydrogen and build a network of hydrogen fueling stations. Mr. Milton told investors that Nikola had working prototypes of emissions-free long-haul trucks, and had billions of dollars’ worth of binding orders.
In 2020, Nikola joined the stock market by merging with a “special purpose acquisition company,” which has a listing but little else. That strategy, which was also used by other electric vehicle start-ups, avoids the greater scrutiny that accompanies initial public offerings.
A few months after Nikola shares began trading, a small investment firm, Hindenburg Research, issued a report that said Mr. Milton had greatly overstated how much technology the company had developed. The report also said that the company produced a video in 2017 in which a truck was rolled down an incline to make it look as if it had a working prototype.
Initially, Nikola called the report “false and defamatory,” but weeks later Mr. Milton resigned. In 2023, he was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of securities and wire fraud. Mr. Milton, who is appealing his conviction, could not be reached for comment.
By 2023, two new chief executives had come and gone, and Mr. Girsky, a former vice chairman of General Motors who was involved in taking Nikola public, took the top job. Nikola eventually began producing trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells and sold 200 in the first nine months of last year.
