Beleaguered electric trucking company Nikola has sold the Badger electric pickup truck assets it was once supposed to build with General Motors. The buyer? A new company called Embr Motors created by vehicle builder and television personality Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, one half of the former TV duo the Diesel Brothers, Tech Crunch reports.
Embr now owns the intellectual property associated with the Badger pickup truck, as well as the assets related to Nikola’s abandoned off-road and personal water craft vehicles. It also owns the only two prototype versions of the Badger ever built.
News of the deal to sell the Badger program comes just a few weeks after Nikola’s disgraced founder, Trevor Milton, announced plans to try to install Sparks and a slate of other directors on the company’s board. That effort failed.
Milton was sentenced to four years in prison in December after being convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud in 2022, in part because he misled investors about the progress of the Badger.
Nikola in December 2021 agreed to pay $125 million to settle a lawsuit by the SEC.
The truck-maker went public via a SPAC reverse merger in June 2020 with VectorIQ Acquisition. Shares in the company took off that summer, riding investor enthusiasm for all things EV. Investors pushed the value at one point to above $34 billion—a market cap greater than Ford and Stellantis—even though Nikola had never made an automobile for sale.
A few months later, activist short seller Hindenburg Research dropped a bombshell on the markets, revealing the company’s prototype hydrogen-powered Nikola One fuel-cell semi had been rigged for a presentation, making it look like it was driving, but it was really just rolling downhill with the help of gravity. Following the revelation, Nikola shares bombed. Read more.
