[ad_1]
Troubled electric trucking company Nikola has sold the Badger electric pickup truck assets it once planned to build with General Motors. buyer? A new company called Ember Motors has been formed by automaker and television personality Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, one half of the former TV duo Diesel Brothers.
Embr now owns the intellectual property related to the Badger pickup truck, as well as assets related to Nikola’s abandoned off-road and personal water craft vehicles. It also has only two prototype versions of the Badger ever built.
News of the deal to sell the Badger program comes at an odd time. Just a few weeks ago Nikola’s disgraced founder, Trevor Milton, announced plans to try to install a list of Sparks and other directors on the board of the company, That attempt failed. Milton was Sentenced He was sentenced to four years in prison in December after pleading guilty to securities fraud and wire fraud in 2022, partly because he misled investors about Badger’s progress.
Since its founding in 2014, Nikola was always about building primarily hydrogen and electric big rigs. But it revealed the Badger pickup in February 2020, just months before it went public in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. In September 2020, General Motors announced It was investing $2 billion in the startup and would help bring Badger to market. Just days later, short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research published a devastating report alleging that Nikola had made numerous false claims. That report turned into a government investigation, and ultimately, Nikola had to settle with the SEC and Milton’s departure and eventual conviction. Nicola returned customers’ deposits for Badger and put the program on hold.
Sparks first revealed the purchase on YouTube earlier this week Video The headline was “Nicola Badger is real and I own her.” He said the transactions involved “tens of millions” of dollars. He also explains how he was given stock in Nikola as part of an arrangement to promote Badger (before the program began), and that he is a longtime friend of Milton.
Nikola confirmed some details of the purchase on Thursday morning, when it revealed its financial results for 2023.
The company’s chief legal officer Britton Worthen said on a conference call that Sparks and his partner, Cole Cannon, “expressed a desire” to bring the Badger to market and that “several EV-related partners” were invited to meetings during negotiations between the two parties. Brought in. A deal out. Nikola is essentially lending money to Ember to buy the assets and in exchange for a 30% stake in the company, which can “retain some value for its shareholders” in the case of the Badger or other vehicles.
Worthen said Nikola is taking back 500,000 of the shares that Milton gave to Sparks as part of the deal. Sparks and Canon also agreed that Milton would not be involved “in any way, directly or indirectly” in these projects.
“For more than three and a half years since Mr. Milton left the company, at Nikola we have worked to stay above the fray, not comment on his legal proceedings and focus on the work of bringing forward zero-emission Category Eight trucks. To the market,” Worthen said on the call. “The irony is that Mr Milton is now trying to take over Nikola, after everything that has happened over the last three and a half years has had no impact on us at the company. We will continue to oppose any attempts by him to gain control of Nikola and we believe that our directors and management are a far better fit for our shareholders than directors who have the power to run a clean energy clean technology company. Lack of relevant experience. ,
TechCrunch contacted Canon for comment on his and Sparks’ involvement in the project, but did not immediately hear back.
[ad_2]
Thanks For Reading