It's a terrible happening and important to know really why the venture failed, rather than the old "blame the economy/market" excuse.
Lately I see a lot of green industry companies - top heavy with high-wage executives, going public with the associated high legal, accounting and of course marketing spending - then waiting for the investment bucks, grants to roll in, along with the unicorn. They're not (yet) profitable, high burn rate.
Meanwhile, the one lowly engineer is flogged to make world-class products ASAP. Or they'll just fake it like Nikola or Theranos.
It's all based on overhype, inflated unrealistic sales numbers, overpaid exec's, total focus on marketing, and the assumption that new tech is merely a crop coming in for harvest.
EV bus manufacturer ProTerra goes insolvent, municipalities have $100's million worth of buses that never made their claims for range or reliability in the first place- costing 2x that of a diesel bus, orphaned. The company closes down, all warranty obligations and performance grievances wiped and then it gets bought on the cheap by Phoenix Motor. It seems to be the MBA green business plan. Blame it on a sales downturn, the economy etc. etc. but no, it's really the original business plan was "to the moon" with no ground connection lol.
The green pullback is severe whiplash for these overdone companies I think.
Downturn - Tesla is getting trashed too,
laid off 10% or 6,000 staff in California and Texas. Let's just blame the economy, not the Cybertruck fiasco, not the CEO, not the silly expensive products etc.
"Andrew Baglino, the senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said on X that he had made the “difficult decision to move on from Tesla after 18 years”. This a bad omen.