Nikola

Nikola represents the costliest lesson in corporate biology: fraudulent signaling eventually faces detection, and punishment destroys not just the cheater but the entire organism. Founder Trevor Milton filmed a "functioning" hydrogen truck rolling downhill with brakes released, claimed revolutionary battery technology that didn't exist, made false statements about "nearly all aspects of the business." October 2022: federal conviction for securities fraud and wire fraud. December 2025: company reduced to single employee after February 2025 bankruptcy filing. November 2025: zero sales, zero revenue, $1.6 million monthly losses, $556 million total losses since bankruptcy. The biology: when costly signaling turns out to be cheap fakery, fitness collapses to zero.

The production numbers reveal metabolic impossibility. Nikola sold 112 hydrogen trucks in H1 2024, 88 in Q3 2024—but each truck cost $1 million to build and sold for $380,000. That's not a path to profitability; that's thermodynamic violation. The company recalled 209 units in late 2023 after battery fires, managed to return 78 to service by Q3 2024. It entered Chapter 11 with $47 million cash against $1-10 billion in debt. This wasn't a business model problem—it was foundational fraud creating unrealistic expectations that reality could never match.

The asset liquidation tells the real story. Lucid Motors bought facilities (884,000 sq ft in Arizona) and hired 300 employees—the physical infrastructure had value. Hyroad Energy acquired 113 Nikola Tre fuel cell trucks, spare parts, software, IP—the hydrogen technology might work in honest hands. The SEC settlement took $82 million. Trevor Milton got 4 years in prison, then Presidential pardon in March 2025. The fraud destroyed $1 billion in shareholder value, hundreds of jobs, and set hydrogen vehicle credibility back years. When organisms fake fitness signals to attract resources, evolutionary pressure eventually eliminates them—but the damage to the ecosystem persists long after the cheater dies.