EV truck maker Nikola files Chapter 11 bankruptcy – will liquidate completely.

Photo above - Before filing bankruptcy Nikola actually produced 2 EV semis, and more than a dozen hydrogen trucks. None looked remotely like the futuristic rendering shown above.

And poof – just like that – 50 million shares of Nikola (ticker NKLA) are worthless. Well, not completely. They dropped to 41 cents (from $30), which suggests a few diehards have hope. Even a last minute pivot by Nikola from electric to hydrogen didn't help. Renaming the company "Cavendish" (after the discoverer of Hydrogen) was never an option.

Don’t snark that Nikola's failure is Musk’s doing. Ignore that fact that Tesla is designing an EV semi eerily similar to the imaginary Nikola pictured above. IMHO both trucks are DOA. The problem is not only production cost. That anticipated breakthrough in affordable EV batteries never happened. It’s also range - a paltry 250 under optimum conditions. Meaning no hills, no chilly weather. And who's going to build those high-capacity truck chargers, needed every 200 miles.?

I’m not cheering. I’d love to see a herd of bison-like EV 18 wheelers roaming our prairie highways. Piloted by artificial intelligence. But anyone with a basic understanding of aerodynamics can tell you why that was unlikely. At Mach speed a fighter jet uses 98% of its engine thrust just overcoming aerodynamic drag. And those jets are streamlined as hell. An 18-wheeler is like driving a brick wall. One which is towing the equivalent of another dozen brick walls behind it.

So Nikola’s assets are for sale. I doubt if Tesla, GM, Ford, Volvo, Freightliner, Kenworth, Mack, or Peterbilt will be lining up to bid. I doubt if the Trump administration come to the rescue with billions for subsidized charging stations and hydrogen truck stops, as the government did for EV cars. If any of this does happen, I will apologize, and then explain why it's a waste of taxpayer dollars.

There WILL be better/safer fuels in the future. But that day isn’t today. We’re already running out of electricity just charging our EV cars, and teaching ChatGPT how to compose simple paragraphs without typos. We’re running out of places to stick solar panels or put up wind turbines which won’t be navigation or flight hazards. If Trump wants to be helpful, he could auction off some worthless federal tracts of desert to the highest bidder, for solar and wind and development. Stop ruining cornfields and wheat fields to just generate electricity.

We don’t need all of the 600 million acres the federal government is hoarding. Auction off the tracts where the only endangered species are spiders and worms. Use the money to pay down the national debt. Help the developers connect their solar and wind farms to the grid. This is what China would do.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Nikola goes bankrupt, to sell assets in latest EV market turmoil | Reuters