GM drops plans to build Nikola Badger

Oakwood said:

Well it's official, GM is no longer planning on building the Nikola Badger. Instead they have reworked their deal with Nikola that focuses only on the fuel-cell partnership and gets rid of GM receiving an equity stake.

GM drops plans to build Nikola’s EV pickup

The new deal, a non-binding memorandum of understanding, eliminates plans for GM to take an equity stake in the startup as well as plans for building Nikola's Badger electric pickup truck.

www.autonews.com

DETROIT -- General Motors and Nikola Corp. on Monday announced a reworked, smaller agreement that keeps the fuel-cell partnership intact but eliminates an equity stake in the startup for the Detroit automaker as well as plans for building Nikola's electric pickup truck.

In September, the companies announced a deal under which GM would supply batteries, a chassis architecture, fuel cell systems and a factory to build the startup's proposed Badger electric pickup in return for an 11 percent stake and $700 million. However, the deal came into question after a short seller attacked Nikola as a fraud, something the company denied.

The new deal, a non-binding memorandum of understanding, is subject to negotiation and a definitive deal, Nikola and GM said in separate statements.

Under the new agreement, GM will not take an equity stake in Nikola as originally planned. GM will supply its fuel-cell system for Nikola's Class 7 and Class 8 commercial semi-trucks, Nikola said. The companies are also discussing Nikola's potential use of GM's Ultium electric battery system in its commercial trailers.

Nikola's shares fell 15 percent in pre-market trading as of 8:37 a.m. ET.

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I cannot see a Nikola path to being a real company without GM's help, so I went short on the stock, nice profit the last couple days.

I'm surprised GM is even doing this deal with Nikola. I can't imagine Nikola has anything with fuel cells for them to take.

JimsH3 said:

I'm surprised GM is even doing this deal with Nikola. I can't imagine Nikola has anything with fuel cells for them to take.

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Ya, Nikola does not seem to have anything of value. Sad, that Trevor was such a scammer, I was hoping for GM to be able to pick their pocket to help pay for the Ultium development.

Tom E-Tron said:

I cannot see a Nikola path to being a real company without GM's help, so I went short on the stock, nice profit the last couple days.

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I can't blame you for abandoning ship now. Jesus what a mess this became.

Tom E-Tron said:

Ya, Nikola does not seem to have anything of value. Sad, that Trevor was such a scammer, I was hoping for GM to be able to pick their pocket to help pay for the Ultium development.

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All they had was their name, which I'm sure GM was hoping would provide hype for their Class 7/8 semis. The more semis they sell, the more money GM gets for battery/hydrogen tech. But now, you have to wonder if even the semis see the light of day.

StillHummer said:

All they had was their name, which I'm sure GM was hoping would provide hype for their Class 7/8 semis. The more semis they sell, the more money GM gets for battery/hydrogen tech. But now, you have to wonder if even the semis see the light of day.

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Ya, the originally announced deal would have been great for GM, they got $2B in Nikola stock in kind, and $700M in cash to pay for production engineering on the badger, which would have been built with mostly GM EV truck platform parts, and another thing I noticed in the agreement is GM got Nikola's ZEV credits to boot GM was also going to get a negotiated margin on all the parts sold to Nikola... WOW, It was a sweet deal (for GM). Without GM I just cannot see how Nikola can make production of anything, they just do not have the $$ or Talent.

I think GM at this point is much more bullish on EV's after they saw the Hummer EV excitement, they do not need to sell off their batteries & parts at this point.

Inside EVs talks about GM dropping the Badger in their latest podcast. They start talking about at 1:02:22. They really dig into GM for not noticing anything wrong sooner.

Oakwood said:

Inside EVs talks about GM dropping the Badger in their latest podcast. They start talking about at 1:02:22. They really dig into GM for not noticing anything wrong sooner.

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I saw that, and agree with GM's due diligence not being deep enough, but the deal was a no lose for GM, not like they were paying Nikola anything or extending credit to Nikola, Nikola was putting all the $$ up front.

Tom E-Tron said:

I saw that, and agree with GM's due diligence not being deep enough, but the deal was a no lose for GM, not like they were paying Nikola anything or extending credit to Nikola, Nikola was putting all the $$ up front.

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That's true, if they gave Nikola cash this would've be an absolute disaster rather than a small PR issue.