Tesla faces new lawsuit from smaller rival Nikola Motor

Tesla (TSLA) is facing a fresh lawsuit from its competitor Nikola Motor, who claims that Elon Musk’s company duplicated its designs for a new electric truck ‘Semi’ that it launched last year. The startup filed the lawsuit in Arizona and claims $2 billion in damages in return.

This is not the first time that Nikola, run by CEO Trevor Milton, has attacked Tesla. Just last month the hydrogen-electric truck company took a dig at Tesla over their reservation process, as the Utah-based automaker refunded the deposits received for the reservations of its truck.

In fact, when Elon Musk tweeted about the launch of Semi last year, Nikola Motor tweeted Tesla as a copy-cat, and then later removed the tweet. But now Nikola has sued Tesla for patent infringement.

Nikola that was founded in 2014 had launched its second product ‘hydrogen-electric truck’ in 2016. And the company claims that its bigger rival has managed to replicate several designs from its 2016 product in Semi that Tesla launched in November last year. These designs include the mid-entry door, wraparound windscreens, and fenders used on the front.

The lawsuit claims that the Elon musk failed to comply with the cease-and-desist letter sent by Nikola in which it had clearly highlighted the similarities in the two vehicles. The latter even asked Musk to refrain from launching Semi until the infringement issues were solved. But Musk launched the vehicle in last November.