All-electric vehicle manufacturer Nikola Corporation has announced that it will appoint Mary Chan is Chief Operating Officer. Chan previously served as President of the Global Connected Consumer group at General Motors between 2012 and 2015, and also brings experience serving in several roles at Dell between 2009 and 2012. Chan will assume her new role as COO at Nikola effective October 9th, 2023.
As COO, Chan will lead Nikola’s engineering, program, product, supply chain, and manufacturing teams. Chan joins Nikola after serving as Managing Partner VectoIQ for nearly eight years. VectoIQ is the company that helped to take Nikola public.
Chan is the second GM veteran to join Nikola in roughly a month following the arrival of Steve Girsky as CEO early in August.
“I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Mary for over a decade, and I cannot think of a more qualified individual to assume the role of COO at Nikola,” Girsky said in conjunction with the announcement of Chan’s appointment as Nikola COO. “Mary brings a solid understanding of business, combined with extensive experience in technology and transportation, spanning both engineering and management.”
Nikola was founded in 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah, by Trevor Milton. The company went public in 2020. On September 8th, 2020, Nikola announced a partnership with GM that included The General taking an 11 percent stake in Nikola, with GM providing access to its manufacturing base.
Just two days later, short seller firm Hindenburg Research released a report accusing Nikola and its founder of fraud. The SEC and Department of Justice subsequently launched investigations, and later in September, Milton announced his resignation. GM rescinded its deal in November. Milton was found guilty of fraud in 2022.
Nikola is now in the midst of a recall for its all-electric big rigs following a series of fires. The fires are linked to a component in the battery packs, and sales have been temporarily halted.
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Not sure its a wise move to jump to a 'sinking' ship, even if it is rolling downhill without a propulsion system. The 93 delivered Nikola Tre class 8 trucks actually delivered are already being recalled after 4 recent battery fires (4.3%) with little media coverage compared to the 19 Chevy Bolt fires that occurred in the 142,017 Bolts produced from 2016-2022 (0.013%). Keep in mind there were 1529.9 fires per 100k (1.5%) for gas vehicles and 25.1 fires per 100k electric vehicles in 2022 (0.025%). So, the Nikola truck is 172x more likely to catch fire than your average BEV. They have 2 quarters of cash on hand at current burn rate and their Nikola Tre isn't lighting up the stats in the current NACFE 'Run on Less' competition. There's a reason this is a highly shorted stock.
Lots of people think that making EVs (including big rigs) its a piece of cake. Oh yeahhhh.....
She will kick ass in this marginal company!