Nikola bankruptcy: Lucid secures production facility and company headquarters
Nikola has failed to establish itself as a manufacturer of electric trucks and has gone bankrupt. The bankruptcy assets will now probably go to a neighbor.
Lucid also wants to take over the company headquarters
(Image: Nikola)
Lucid Motors has surprisingly prevailed at the auction of the bankrupt estate of the insolvent electric truck developer Nikola. The US electric car manufacturer bid 30 million US dollars for the Nikola production facility in Coolidge, Arizona, the Nikola company headquarters in Phoenix and "certain machinery, equipment and inventory" and thus prevailed. The decision is to be finalized today, Friday. This is according to court documents that have now been made public. Lucid already has its own production facility in Casa Grande (also in Arizona), less than 50 kilometers away from the Nikola building and therefore just around the corner, so to speak.
Expansion thanks to insolvency assets
As Lucid Motors itself has announced, the e-car manufacturer also intends to make a takeover offer to more than 300 Nikola employees. According to TechCrunch, the sudden appearance of Lucid in Nikola's insolvency proceedings is a real surprise. While Nikola specializes in the development of trucks with electric and fuel cell drives, Lucid builds electric limousines for private individuals. According to Lucid, the takeover will provide it with modern buildings for storage and production as well as premises for testing and machinery.
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Nikola launched a decade ago with the plan to put fuel cell and battery-powered trucks on the road and went public in 2020. At times, the company was worth up to 29 billion US dollars. However, this was followed by a downturn as it became known that company founder Trevor Milton had made false statements in order to defraud investors and enrich himself. This involved misleading statements about his company's alleged achievements and the number of vehicle orders. At the end of 2023, he was sentenced to several years in prison for this. The Trump supporter was pardoned by the US President a few days ago. Nikola never established a sustainable business and filed for bankruptcy in February.
(mho)