on wheels the body hadn't even arrived yet there were no production facilities either and according to a source familiar with the project the workers were scrambling to the hardware store to pick up basic parts meanwhile the nikola motor company twitter account was hyping up the event they stressed that the truck would be fully functioning i missed all of this at the beginning of august while the truck was still a frame the company abruptly announced that it had pivoted from compressed natural gas to hydrogen fuel cell technology the hydrogen fuel cell announcement was even a shock to those within the company in mid-november as the show was drawing closer the team was hard at work slapping the truck together there were no electric motor cores or gears only axles in an empty shell the body finally did arrive in late november roughly a week before the show hNUMBER_TOKEN the chemical formula for hydrogen was decald proudly on the side of the truck even though there was no such technology inside so i can understand that building a prototype can be less than elegant but to call this fully functioning was at the very least a bit misleading a fact that would later come back to haunt nicola but more on this later in the episode when the big day came trevor seemingly couldn't hold back his emotion when talking perhaps it was an appeal to one's emotional side to shut down rational thinking and skepticism bloomberg would later state that the statements made by trevor had alarm some people familiar with the truck's capability they told bloomberg that the truck was inoperable and had missing key components to power itself the whole truck was powered by a mains power cord that was connected under the stage trevor would put an emphasis on the touchscreens within the cabin seemingly the only part of the truck that actually functioned the whole thing was essentially a big shiny decoration so how long have you been working on this because this is this is a fully functioning truck right here that we're sitting in so how long have you guys been working on this uh years in secrecy it's been very hard um some of the some of the people have found out about us over the last four or five months as we announced some of the the lead up to this big event but it took years and years to get here um this isn't just a pusher like a lot of vehicles that they unveil or just vehicles that don't actually function there's a fully functioning uh you know vehicle which is really incredible you can go through you can you know functional or not trevor had smoothly talked his way to entrepreneurial fame the internet was ablaze with buzz and from there they were off to the races following the event in january of NUMBER_TOKEN the company raised capital as part of its series a round nikola also signed with bosch as well as fuel cell and hydrogen partners the plan may have been to leverage existing suppliers to deliver on their promises
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