Less than two months after leaving Vietnamese EV maker VinFast, Michael Lohscheller accepted the job as president of another electric vehicle maker, Nikola Motors.
Lohscheller split from VinFast just before New Year’s for “personal reasons” and reported returned home to Europe. His new position is his third since last July when he was Opel’s CEO. He worked there under General Motors and PSA Group, now part of Stellantis, ownership terms.
As the CEO of VinFast, he was shepherding the new EV maker toward growth in Southeast Asia and a foothold in the U.S. Now, he’s helping a company that’s on the rebound, recovering from a major scandal involving its founder and former chairman, Trevor Milton. Despite the clear differences in culture, it appears he’s focused on the task at hand.
“It goes without saying that hydrogen fuel cell and battery-electric zero-emission vehicles are the future of mobility, and I am extremely proud to be joining a company that is paving the way for this global transformation,” Lohscheller said in a release. “My career has prepared me well to achieve the ambitious milestones needed to make this happen.”
Frying pan into fire?
Lohscheller spent much of his career in a variety of roles at Volkswagen before being named VW of America’s executive vice president. He then moved to Opel and after helping the German brand climb out of a decade-deep hole of red ink, he then moved to EV startup VinFast.
He played a critical role in getting the company focused on expanding into the U.S. In an exclusive interview with TheDetroitBureau.com last November, he confirmed the company’s plans to set up a U.S. assembly plant by 2024, with a goal of localizing at least some of the products it believes it can sell in the American market. Initial models, however, will be imported from Vietnam.
VinFast was formed a little more than four years ago, but not as an EV maker. It made the shift to produce EVs only last year after reading the tea leaves about the industry’s future. As part of the company’s slow-but-steady growth plan, Lohscheller said the VinFast VFe-35 and VFe-36 models will go on sale this spring with deliveries set to begin late in the year.
While working for a startup comes with a lot of risk, helping a disgraced business climb back from rock bottom is even more daunting. Nikola is still negotiating the fallout from Milton and the scandal surrounding the company, paying a $125 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year.
Nikola on the rebound
The fine was part of a settlement over civil charges levied against the company by the SEC claiming it defrauded investors by making false claims about its vehicles.
The agency contends the company misled investors about the capabilities of its hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles, suggesting they were further along in development than they were. The focal point being a video of its Nikola One appearing to be driving under its own power, when it was actually rolling down a slight decline.
The video became the centerpiece of a report by short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research claiming Nikola was based on “intricate fraud built on dozen of lies” perpetrated by Milton. That quickly triggered an SEC probe and led to the decision by Milton to resign last September.
Since then, Nikola’s been working quickly and diligently to distance the company from the issue, focusing on the developments — provable developments — of its hydrogen fuel cell-powered big rigs.
This is already happening as it delivered the first Nikola Tre battery-electric pilot trucks to Total Transportation Services Inc. (TTSI), a Southern California’s port trucking company, to expedite zero-emission transportation solutions at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The company is engaged in a four-truck pilot program with the trucking company, involving two battery electric trucks with a range of 350 miles and two fuel cell-electric trucks with a range of 500 miles. If the vehicle trials go well and TTSI obtains government funding, the company will provide 30 BEVs in 2022, and 70 FCEVs are anticipated to start in 2023.