Nikola Wins Research Grant From DOE
Scandal-plagued electric powered truck maker Nikola introduced Thursday that it won a $two million grant from the U.S. Vitality Office to build hydrogen refueling technologies.
The grant was formally awarded July seven — 3 months right before Nikola founder Trevor Milton was indicted on 3 counts of legal fraud for lying about “nearly all areas of the business” to raise the startup’s stock product sales.
“Even right before the indictment, the looming lawful challenges were being effectively acknowledged as the organization disclosed it experienced acquired subpoenas from both of those the Justice Office and the Securities and Trade Fee,” CNN mentioned.
Nikola reported the grant was for advancing its research into autonomous refueling technologies for foreseeable future hydrogen fueling stations. Some of the electric powered trucks Nikola is acquiring would be powered by large responsibility hydrogen gas cells.
“This funding is crucial to advance critical hydrogen fueling technologies that can strengthen the over-all performance of gas-mobile commercial motor vehicles, whilst retaining the protection and reliability requirements needed,” Pablo Koziner, who qualified prospects Nikola’s hydrogen fueling organization, reported in a news release.
Milton was pressured to resign as Nikola’s government chairman in September 2020 just after quick-seller Hindenburg Exploration alleged the organization was “an intricate fraud constructed on dozens of lies around the study course of [Milton’s] job.” Nikola admitted in a submitting earlier this 12 months that an interior investigation showed Milton experienced deceived traders.
In response to the grant award, Hindenburg mentioned that Milton’s indictment quoted him as saying that “Nikola was manufacturing hydrogen and was doing so at a lowered expense, when [he] understood that in point no hydrogen was staying manufactured at all by Nikola, at any expense.”
The quick-seller extra that it doubts “a $two million grant will aid transform that lie into a fact.”
In accordance to The Verge, the grant comes at a time when the Vitality Office “is finding completely ready to ramp up funding action to aid advance the United States’ progress of thoroughly clean energy technologies — a priority beneath President Biden.”
The office “makes funding awards based on a demanding, benefit-based evaluation course of action that incorporates a number of know-how experts reviewing purposes,” it reported Thursday.