Scandal-plagued electrical truck maker Nikola introduced Thursday that it received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Power Division to build hydrogen refueling systems.
The grant was formally awarded July 7 — a few months right before Nikola founder Trevor Milton was indicted on a few counts of prison fraud for lying about “nearly all aspects of the business” to increase the startup’s stock profits.
“Even right before the indictment, the looming lawful issues had been well recognized as the enterprise disclosed it experienced been given subpoenas from the two the Justice Division and the Securities and Exchange Commission,” CNN observed.
Nikola claimed the grant was for advancing its exploration into autonomous refueling systems for long run hydrogen fueling stations. Some of the electrical vans Nikola is creating would be powered by significant responsibility hydrogen gasoline cells.
“This funding is vital to progress vital hydrogen fueling systems that can strengthen the all round effectiveness of gasoline-mobile industrial autos, although maintaining the basic safety and trustworthiness expectations required,” Pablo Koziner, who potential customers Nikola’s hydrogen fueling business enterprise, claimed in a news release.
Milton was forced to resign as Nikola’s executive chairman in September 2020 soon after brief-vendor Hindenburg Investigate alleged the enterprise was “an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies over the study course of [Milton’s] vocation.” Nikola admitted in a filing before this calendar year that an internal investigation confirmed Milton experienced deceived investors.
In response to the grant award, Hindenburg observed that Milton’s indictment quoted him as declaring that “Nikola was manufacturing hydrogen and was accomplishing so at a minimized expense, when [he] realized that in point no hydrogen was getting created at all by Nikola, at any expense.”
The brief-vendor added that it doubts “a $2 million grant will assistance completely transform that lie into a fact.”
In accordance to The Verge, the grant comes at a time when the Power Division “is finding all set to ramp up funding activity to assistance progress the United States’ development of clean up electrical power systems — a precedence under President Biden.”
The department “makes funding awards based on a rigorous, advantage-based overview system that features a number of technological innovation specialists reviewing apps,” it claimed Thursday.
