[Interview file]'Nicola' dreaming of'Tesla'... Who is Trevor Milton?

Nikola Tesla, the father of AC electricity, is a leading inventor who made modern science and technology civilization possible with Edison.

Tesla invented alternating current electrical systems, wireless communications, and Tesla coils.

There are no home appliances that do not contain Tesla's inventions, such as electric fans, refrigerators, and air conditioners.

Just as Elon Musk named the electric vehicle leader Tesla Motors, the surname of the genius inventor Nikola Tesla, the founder of Nikola Motors, Trevor Milton, named his hydrogen electric vehicle company. It is said to be named after Nikola Tesla.

Hindenburg Research, a short-selling firm that makes money by selling frothy stocks, argued that it should be distinguished from tech founders who present their visions with groundbreaking ideas and scammers who lie completely.

Trevor Milton has been raising a company over the past decade, claiming that they are own rather than developing their own skills, and lied as if it were a tremendous source of technology.

Trevor Milton, who dropped out of junior college and started business in 2009 by creating a security company selling security devices, entered the automobile business by converting diesel engines to CNG turbo engines, and then into the hydrogen electric vehicle business. It attracts GM as a business partner and hits the so-called jackpot.

However, the CNG turbo engine that Milton sold was a defective product, Hindenberg argues, and the hydrogen electric vehicle did not have its own technology.

As the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Ministry of Justice undertook an investigation, the controversy over the'Nicolas fraud' raised by Hindenberg is heating up.

The 39-year-old Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, a hydrogen electric vehicle company that was recently named as a pioneer in the future automobile industry, is based on a report from Hindenberg Research, an exploration research firm and short selling company.

Trevor Milton, who dropped out of

College in

St. George Security and Alarm, an alarm sales company in Utah, USA.

Trevor sold the security company for $300,000, but the acquirer says Milton overstated his business.

The sale price of the business seems to have been significantly less than $300,000, as a 50/50 partner, who operated an alarm company with Trevor, said it received $100,000 for the sale of an alarm vendor.

After selling the alarm company, Trevor founded uPillar, an online advertising company that sells used cars, but eventually failed.

In November 2009, Trevor formed a company called dHybrid to enter the alternative energy vehicle business.

Trevor partnered with Mike Shrout, who has the technology to convert diesel engines into compressed natural gas (CNG) engines.

Mike will provide CNG engine technology and Trevor will provide business experience.

The departure of DHybrid came smoothly.

Trevor decided to replace 800 pickup trucks from transportation company Swift with CNG engines, and first decided to build 10 CNG engine trucks for testing.

Swift paid $2 million to buy a 9% stake in DHybrid, as well as a $322,000 loan.

However, the business suffers when DHybrid fails to deliver CNG trucks.

Only five out of the ten promised were delivered, and the performance of the five delivered CNG engine trucks did not meet the promise.

Swift has filed a lawsuit claiming that DHybrid broke its promise to use it only for technology development and research, and that a portion of the $2 million advance payment was useful for employee labor and private use.

As the two hundred and a half dollars he received from Swift was running out, Trevor Milton set out to find new investors.

When Trevor contacted Ryder Systems CEO Anthony Burns at the time, Hindenberg said, "Swift is reducing fuel costs by 38%, and supply contracts range from $250 million to $300 million." However, the actual amount of fuel savings was about 24%, and the contract amount was only $16 million, Trevor revealed the contents of an email sent to Anthony Burns at the time.

In May 2012, Trevor Milton signed a contract to sell DHybrid with Sustainable Power Group LLC in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, but was sued a month later in June.

The reason was that the performance of the hybrid system did not meet the promise and the business performance was exaggerated.

Trevor Milton also introduced in the spring of 2012 that there was an experienced Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who wasn't even in the process of fundraising negotiations with Salt Lake City venture capital Park City Angels, Hindenberg said.

In October 2012, when

became involved in a lawsuit, Trevor Milton formed a company called dHybrid Systems LLc with his father, Bill Milton. Breaking up with partners.

The new company DHybrid Systems, which has a similar name to the previous company DHybrid, took over the CNG fuel supply system business that DHybrid had been doing.

The difference is that the owners are entirely rich in Trevor and Bill Milton.

Trevor introduced the new company, DHybrid Systems, as if it were the previous company DHybrid, with years of business experience and achievements.

Hindenberg argued that the new company was founded as if it was 2011, not October 2012.

In October 2014, Trevor Milton sold a 79.59% stake in The Hybrid Systems to Worthing Industries, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, for $15.9 million.

This is the moment when the value of DHybrid Systems, created by the rich Milton, was recognized at $19.9 million in two years of establishment, and succeeded in realizing profit.

However, Trevor was found to overpack the technology of DHybrid Systems at the time of negotiations with Waterington to sell its stake.

Hindenberg posted a testimony from a former employee on YouTube that DHybrid Systems was traveling the country in a waste truck converted to a compressed gas turbine engine.

The employee said to Waterton, which was negotiating the purchase of shares, that he drove the compressed gas engine truck of The Hybrid Systems, which was full of rags like a rag, to hide technical flaws, and had to repair frequent breakdowns.

After successfully selling the stake to Waterington, Trevor Milton used Waterington's credibility to hype Nikola's original technology to start the electric vehicle business, Hindenberg said.

In May 2015, Nikola (then Bluegentech) finally signed a contract with EVDrive in Wyoming to develop a power train to make a four-wheel drive semi-electric truck.

The contract stipulates that Bluegentech's original turbine technology will be combined with EV drive technology.

However, the claim that Blue Gentech possesses the original gas turbine technology has also begun to turn out to be fake.

Two months after the decision to develop EV drives and electric vehicle powertrains, Trevor Milton set out to negotiate to purchase a turbine from another company called Brayton Energy.

Trevor conducted negotiations as the representative of Waterton, who was conducting the joint venture at the time.

Hindenberg falsely claimed that Trevor Milton had the original turbine technology in an email addressed on July 24, 2015 that was exchanged during the turbine purchase negotiations at the time. It claimed that it was procured by another company.

It claims to possess the original technology of the turbine, and in reality, it is to develop a power transmission system for an EV drive, and the turbine was bought from Brayton Energy.

In December 2015, Waterington noticed a problem with Trevor Milton's acquisition of TheHybrid Systems, and recorded a loss of $2.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, followed by a loss of $1.5 million in 2016.

Nicola was once a subsidiary of Waterington, and Nikola's close relationship with Waterington was able to form several joint ventures.

Bluegentech, which has succeeded in procuring electric vehicle parts by tricking

, changes its name to Nikola.

Trevor Milton forms a parts procurement lineup with third-party companies to get the parts needed for truck assembly.

According to employees and joint venture partners who were involved in the development of Nikola One, the development of the semi-truck was sluggish from the outset.

Nevertheless, on May 9, 2016, Nicolas suddenly declared a transport revolution.

Nikola released a press release, and announced that they would complete and showcase the Nikola One in December 2016, seven months later.

In October of that year, when doubts began to arise about the launch of Nikola One in December, Nicolas reconfirmed that it would unveil a working truck, not a design.

In a video interview on Dec. 1, Trevor Milton revealed that it took several years to complete as a truck that actually works, not a model that Nikola One must push to move.

On June 18, 2020, when Bloomberg revealed that the car announced by Nicola in 2016 was incomplete, Trevor Milton said that everyone at the event knew that there was no finished car at the time. The part claimed to have been on site.

However, none of the footage on the scene showed the truck's gears or parts, Hindenberg said.

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Even in August, four months before the public event, the Nikola One production line was not established, and the people who participated in the automobile production at the time testified that the employees were running around the parts warehouse to procure basic parts such as the shaft, fuel system, and body of the car. .

When things turned around like this, in August 2016, Nicolas gave up compressed gas (CNG) engine technology without any explanation.

On August 1st, Nicolas announced a sudden transition from CNG turbines to hydrogen electric vehicles.

Nikola announced that it has completed the holy grail in the trucking sector, and announced that it has developed a truck'Nicola One' that can drive 1,000 miles of a truck weighing 8,000 pounds without emitting harmful gases on a 15-minute charge. .

However, at the time, Nikola had neither its own facility to make hydrogen cars nor a joint venture partner, Hindenberg said.

Nikola announced that it will also accept orders for CNG trucks on May 9, three months before the announcement of the development of hydrogen electric vehicles, and two weeks before the announcement of hydrogen electric vehicles, it said that it was focusing on CNG trucks rather than hydrogen.

It is unclear why Nicolas gave up its natural gas engine, which is said to have 10-15 years of technology accumulated.

However, at the time of the announcement of the conversion to a hydrogen electric vehicle, Nikola was making a compressed gas truck, and Hindenberg revealed that the truck that was disclosed as a hydrogen electric vehicle at the event was a truck with a natural gas engine.

It is said that it was revealed as a hydrogen electric vehicle with the words "H2" and "Zero Emission Hydrogen Electric" engraved on the truck with a gas engine.

A gas turbine that arrived from Brayton one month before the public event was equipped, and the Nikola One had only a gas turbine engine, testified by officials who prepared the event.

In order to look like an electric car, it was equipped with an electric drive module (e-axle), the core device of an electric car, but it was a shell without a motor.

The body arrived at the end of November, and N2A Motors modified the car to meet the needs of the site, put it on stage a week before the event, and added the word "US Xpress", Hindenberg said.

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Eventually, the vehicle that was released as a hydrogen electric vehicle'Nicola One' was an empty shell that could not function at all, but Trevor Milton introduced that this car moves by itself.

What Trevor cares most to make the truck appear to work was the infotainment screen in the driver's seat.

As you can see from the bottom of the truck in the picture below, the display was supposed to be powered by electricity supplied by connecting the outside and wires, but even that, the internet didn't work properly.

Hindenberg argues that Trevor Milton's words repeatedly appearing in the video were not'exaggerations' but'shameless lies'.

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In January 2017, immediately after the announcement of'Nicola One', Nicolas signed a joint venture with German auto parts maker Bosch and other hydrogen-related parts manufacturers such as fuel cells.

CNH International also decided to cooperate in investment and automobile manufacturing.

What is surprising is that after the public event, after successfully attracting investment and forming a joint venture, Nikola almost left the production of the hydrogen electric vehicle'Nicola One'.

conferences about Nikola One spread after the

public event, Nikola posted a video called'Moving Nikola One' on social media such as YouTube and Facebook in January 2018.

The video made a big sensation, recording 230,000 views on Facebook alone.

However, a former employee who spoke to Nikola's chief engineer Kevin Link testified that the video was "made by pre-screening as dragging a truck up a hill and rolling it down."

The video was filmed on the Mormon Trail, south of Grantsville, Utah. It is a straight two-mile-long road with an incline of about three degrees, and it goes down at a speed of up to 56 miles even if you push a car. Revealed.

▶ Going

to

see the

video It was a video of rolling down the hill, but the media focused on this video, saying it was Nikola's'road test'.

Video release Next week, Nicolas held a ceremony for the launch of the Nikola One production facility plant in Arizona.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey made a major declaration, saying, "Future hydrogen electric vehicle production headquarters are coming to Arizona."

…

At the Nikola World event in 2019, Trevor unveiled a new off-road

'.

Trevor said the NZT is an all-new luxury car with air conditioning, not an open car, but a roofed car.

However, the NZT that was unveiled in the test drive was not a parked car announced by Trevor, but an uncovered car.

Insiders said that it was technically impossible to manufacture an open car.

Eventually, the NZT design had to be refurbished, and the design change was handled by a company called Stellar Strategy.

It was different from Nikola's claim that everything is self-produced.

▶ To see the video

In April 2019, Trevor announced that it could install a 3.5 megawatt solar power plant at a plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and generate 18 megawatts of energy a day, so that it could run with its own electricity alone. As a result of checking through Google Earth in August and January 2020, there was no solar facility on the roof of Nikola headquarters.

On November 19, 2019, Nicolas announced that it will unveil battery technology that will change the market.

The new concept battery announced by Trevor Milton from October 2019 will be announced at Nicola World in 2020.

Trevor Milton declared, "With a battery that has twice the capacity of existing batteries, it will double the mileage of electric vehicles and hydrogen electric vehicles."

Trevor said he saw the battery with the new technology with his own eyes and said it was worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

It turned out that they signed a letter of intent to acquire a battery company worth $56.5 million.

But ZapGo, the name of the battery company Nikola was trying to acquire, appeared in the litigation papers.

In March 2020, Nicolas sued for fraud, claiming that battery company ZapGo was not informed in advance of being charged with tax evasion.

Jeango's president Charles Resnick reported in the media that Nicolas was accused of embezzling NASA funds and using them for sex trafficking on April 18, 2019, six months before Nikola announced his intention to take over. Pleaded guilty to.

In December 2019, Nicolas learned of Zango's tax evasion and false claims, and at that time, it was revealed that he had already paid 2.2 million dollars after exchanging a letter of intent.

However, on February 10, 2020, two months after Trevor Milton confirmed Zango's problem, he also showed off the new battery technology they had acquired through Twitter.

Nicola withdrew the battery acquisition contract with Zango on February 26, 2020, but did not publicly address the issue.

Nikola has not corrected the fact of securing battery technology, which was announced through a press release on November 19, 2019, and investors are bound to believe that the new battery technology still exists.

In 2017, Nicolas signed a contract to supply a hydrogen battery stack with Powercell AB of Sweden, which was spun off by Volvo, a global automobile company.

PowerCell and German auto parts company Bosch conducted tests on hydrogen fuel cells for Nikola.

However, in April 2019, PowerCell canceled the contract with Nikola.

A PowerCell spokesman who had been testing for two years said, "We couldn't accept the terms of the contract Nikola had proposed. Nikola said they would use their hydrogen fuel cells and batteries, but we heard about Nikola's fuel cells and batteries. I've never seen it. It's a hot air.”

In August 2020, when a Tesla car enthusiast visited Nikola Motors and asked about the failed battery development, Trevor Milton replied that he was working on battery development with a university.

However, the possibility of success was evaluated low.

And two weeks later, it suddenly announced that it was using GM's battery, Hindenberg said.

On June 4, 2020, Nikola was listed on Nasdaq through a merger with VectoIQ, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).

Nikola's stock price soared, and Trevor Milton, who suddenly became a billionaire, drew attention from the media, compared to Tesla founder Elon Musk.

But with him, the question also amplified.

Trevor put technology development behind the scenes and focused on fighting critical short sellers, the press, and other unfriendly people.

They criticized the short seller and threatened to kill a lawsuit against the critical media.

In order to commercialize hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen charging stations are required, and expensive hydrogen extraction and storage and transportation facilities must be lowered.

As if aware of this, Nikola announced that it would install 700 hydrogen charging stations across the United States, and in a press release last June that it will purchase parts from Norway's Nel ASA for the construction of charging stations.

Nikola announced at the Nikola World event in December 2019 that it is producing 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen per day.

Trevor, who has revealed that he has secured the technology to dramatically lower the hydrogen production cost, told Fox Business News, "The hydrogen production cost of $16 per kilogram has been lowered to $4 for the first time in history, bringing it to the same level as the diesel fuel cost. "We are an energy technology company that makes great cars."

In another interview on July 17, he claimed that "the hydrogen production cost was reduced by 81.25% to 3 dollars per kilogram."

However, in an interview with LinkedIn on July 17th, when inquiries about whether or not hydrogen was produced continued, Trevermilton admitted that it was not producing hydrogen.

"We are currently building a hydrogen production facility, and it will be completed by the end of the year 2020 Nikola World event," Trevor said.

As hydrogen is dangerous, construction of a hydrogen production facility requires considerable skill, but Nikola's director of building a hydrogen production infrastructure was Trevor's younger brother Travis Milton.

Travis has been working for Nicolas for over five years since January 2015.

According to LinkedIn, Travis ran a construction business in Maui, Hawaii, and was the president of a construction company he founded.

His younger brother Travis, who was in the construction industry, was in charge of producing hydrogen and charging facilities that required advanced technology, and it was found that he received huge rewards.

Trevor has given Travis, his family and other key people a total of $110 million worth of shares as of September 10, Hindenberg said.

Trevor Milton said Nikola's engineers are the best team in the world, but Nikola's top executive in charge of building a hydrogen charging facility network was Dale Prows, who served as president of the golf course in Idaho.

Kevin Lynk, who announced that Trevor designed and developed the power train for the electric car Nikola One, spent 7 months designing oilfield equipment in CAD, developing software for 3 and a half years, and 9 months before that. It turns out that the (pinball) machine has been repaired.

Most of Nikola's power trains were developed by German Bosch, Hindenberg said.

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Trevor Milton announced that it is producing its own inverter, one of the most important parts of electric vehicles.

However, on July 14, when Trevor explained the power train of the Nikola Two, the inverter, which he said was flooded with requests for use by other companies, was not Nikola's own product, Hindenberg said.

In the video with the brand covered with tape, the inverter is a product of Cascadia Motion, a small company in Portland, which is commercially available.

In February, Trevor announced that five Nikola Tre trucks were coming soon, but on September 9, a spokesman for the Bosch company said the product was not ready, and Hindenberg said that the acceleration capability of the Nikola Two was also exaggerated.

When Nikola's Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Spira filed a lawsuit after resigning in 2018, Nicolas said that it had returned all the advance deposits amounting to $15 million, and that it reached 14,000 units. There are also suspicions that the pre-order of Nikola trucks has also been exaggerated.

Nikola says he has a gas line, but Hindenberg argues that the evidence cannot be found anywhere.

In his September 10 report, Hindenberg suggested that Nikola's claims were mostly false, and presented 53 questions shareholders should know.

In a report on September 15, a week later, Hindenberg said in a report on September 15, "Contrary to Nikola's promise to answer all questions faithfully, only 10 out of 53 questions were answered, and most of the responses acknowledged our arguments or further questions. It was the content that brought out ".

are questions about the design of the flagship truck'Nicola One', which Trevor Milton claimed to have been designed by Trevor Milton, which

.

In a design copyright lawsuit against Nikola One, Tesla claimed that the truck design was not made by founder Trevor Milton, but that Trevor purchased it from a Croatian designer, foreign media reported on the 27th.

Trevor Milton, who resigned as Nikola's chairman on September 21st, recently reported that he raped two teenage women in 1999 and 2004.

The retired Trevor's successor is Steve Girsky, GM's vice-chairman, who is negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with GM.

With the US SEC and the Ministry of Justice undertaking an investigation, Nicolas is reported to have extended the negotiation period with GM until December 1.

It is worth noting whether the myth of Nikola, a future hydrogen electric vehicle that will surpass Tesla, will continue, or whether it will be revealed as a scam of the era led by 39-year-old Trevor Milton.

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