Nikola's presentation was something else:
> "We will have a chain on the seats to prevent people from coming in just for the safety. I don't want someone to end up doing something and driving this truck off the stage," Milton said. "This thing fully functions and works, which is really incredible."
He specifically boasted that it was a fully working machine. That's a lie.
But I do see your point about what they're doing (overhyping the future roadmap) being quite common. IMO the people comparing this to Theranos are wrong. Theranos sold a product to consumers that didn't have the capabilities it was advertised to have, whereas this is a transparently stupid company without a single product or customer except for the founder's self-dealing at his house. A lot of retail investors are gonna be hurt by this, but it's not clear to me that it's fraud
"Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked."
https://gizmodo.com/the-iphones-first-demo-was-buggy-as-hell...