How is this possible?

While much of their technology was fake, Nikola was still a real company and had hundreds of employees, and were building a production factory in Arizona. After Milton stepped down from his position as Chairman, Nikola’s CEO Mark Russell still pressed ahead with the production of the company’s electric and hydrogen powered trucks. In fact, Nikola created real working prototype trucks in 2021, as opposed to their fake prototypes in 2016. In february of 2022, Nikola delivered two prototype hydrogen powered trucks to a beer company in california, which used them to ship products without any issues. Nikola has also delivered their first battery electric trucks to a trucking company in California in 2021, and are expected to deliver 300-500 electric trucks in 2022 and begin large scale deliveries of hydrogen trucks in 2023. 

However, things aren’t as good as they seem. For one, hydrogen and electric powered trucks are nowhere close to being commercially viable, which is why we don’t see these trucks all over our roads today. Furthermore, ownership of a hydrogen/electric powered truck is 39% higher than owning a combustion engine truck, and such costs would put any shipping company at a loss: hydrogen fuel is much more expensive than regular diesel, and the difference adds up over time. Unless there is a way so that owning a hydrogen truck is more cost effective, such as the price of hydrogen fuel going down or the price of the truck going down, Nikola is not likely going to succeed in being a successful, profitable company.