Darlings, I’ve encountered some remarkably expensive follies in my years around Palm Beach. Swimming pools with imported Italian marble. Guesthouses larger than municipal libraries. A gentleman who once spent $80,000 relocating a palm tree because it offended his view.
But California has managed to surpass them all.
The Golden State helped spend more than $50 million in taxpayer money purchasing electric and hydrogen-powered trucks from Nikola, a company whose founder had already been indicted for fraud.
And the most delicious detail?
One of Nikola’s celebrated early trucks wasn’t actually driving under its own power in a promotional video.
It was rolling downhill.
Gravity, apparently, was the only technology that worked reliably.
According to an extraordinary Los Angeles Times investigation, California’s Air Resources Board approved Nikola vehicles for its clean-truck subsidy program in 2022.
This was after founder Trevor Milton had been criminally indicted and after Nikola agreed to a $125 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading investors.
Not exactly the sort of background check that inspires confidence.
But California officials pressed ahead, ultimately subsidizing purchases of more than 166 Nikola trucks.
The trouble began long before that.
In 2016, Milton unveiled a supposedly groundbreaking hydrogen-powered semi-truck. Unfortunately, the prototype lacked essential equipment needed to operate.
When Nikola later released a video showing the truck traveling along a Utah highway, viewers weren’t told it had been towed to the top of a hill and allowed to roll down.
I’ve heard of putting lipstick on a pig, but putting a truck on a hill is a spectacular innovation.
Milton was eventually convicted of securities and wire fraud and sentenced to four years in prison. President Trump pardoned him in March 2025.
Meanwhile, the company itself filed for bankruptcy in February 2025.
California taxpayers had already helped finance the vehicles. Buyers were left dealing with recalls, maintenance problems, scarce replacement parts and warranties the bankrupt company could no longer honor.
One California trucking executive, Jennie Abarca, actually liked her Nikola electric truck. She just wished the company had been better managed.
“The sad thing is it’s actually an amazing vehicle,” she told the Times.
That may be the most painful part of this entire affair.
People who genuinely wanted cleaner trucks bought them, believing the manufacturer and state regulators had done their homework.
Instead, customers were left holding the keys while the company disappeared.
California’s regulators insist the program was justified because Nikola’s founder had already departed when the trucks became eligible. They also point out that Nikola represented only a small portion of the nearly 12,000 clean trucks and buses the program helped deploy.
Perhaps.
But the broader Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered another uncomfortable detail: Nearly one-quarter of the manufacturers participating in California’s clean-truck program have stopped production or abandoned the zero-emission market.
And taxpayers helped subsidize their vehicles, too.
Now, I’m not opposed to cleaner air. I enjoy breathing it. I particularly enjoy breathing it while looking at the Atlantic from a comfortable terrace.
But environmental responsibility should include financial responsibility.
If a private investor puts millions into a questionable company, that’s an expensive personal lesson.
When government officials do it with taxpayer dollars, they tend to call it a program.
And when the program fails, nobody seems particularly eager to locate the person who approved the checks.
I keep a little shovel handy because one never knows what might need digging up.
California apparently could use a much larger one.
— The Duchess of Dirt
Because some things smell worse than manure, even in the most expensive gardens.
