Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Monday, ending months of speculation about the company’s future. now Eve The manufacturer is looking to sell its assets and restructure its debt after temporarily stopping production of its only car model Back in March.
For anyone familiar with the all-electric SUV, news of Fisker’s bankruptcy was probably expected. Wired Experience Fisker’s surroundings In July 2023, but due to the clearly incomplete nature of the concept car, it was left in the unprecedented position of being unable to register or evaluate the electric car. Our Ocean tester was plagued by sharp pedals, an ineffective California mode (in which an electric car rolls down all its windows except the windshield) that led to shifting mid-vehicle testing, and poor handling.
After manufacturing issues and cash flow problems, Fisker admitted during its quarterly earnings in February that it might not have enough money to survive another year, and decided to pause auto production, initially for six weeks. Reports began claiming that she was considering the possibility of bankruptcy Deposit. Fisker reported that it had sales of $273 million last year but had more than $1 billion in debt. It also issued a warning that there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue operating. Production never resumed.
The company, founded by car designer Henrik Fisker, was searching for a potential lifeboat. This led to negotiations with a “large automaker” to invest in, and jointly develop, one or more electric vehicle platforms and finance their manufacturing in North America.
Such negotiations It said With Nissan, it failed to reach a positive outcome, an outcome that Fisker itself indicated at the time when it issued a statement saying that “any deal will be subject to the satisfaction of important conditions, including the completion of due diligence and the negotiation and implementation of appropriate definitive agreements.” The collapse of these talks reportedly resulted in a loss of $350 million in funding.
In its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in Delaware, Fisker estimated assets at $500 million to $1 billion and liabilities at $100 million to $500 million, and its top 20 creditors included Adobe, Google and SAP.
Fisker’s rapid decline is a far cry from its recent success in 2020, when the company went public at a valuation of $2.9 billion, providing the electric car maker with more than $1 billion in cash.
Since then, electric vehicle sales have skyrocketed The United States has slowed down More broadly, but Fisker was particularly affected. The company lost a degree of quality control when it ceded manufacturing to Canadian supplier Magna, and construction and software issues with its Ocean SUV later surfaced. Since its launch, this model has had quality issues, with owners citing sudden power outages, faulty switches and sensors, and even allegations of the hoods opening.
The myriad ocean issues have caught the eye of Fisker employees as well, with board member Wendy Greuel losing power on a public road shortly after taking delivery of the electric vehicle. Likewise, according to the internal document cache viewed by TechCrunch, Geeta Gupta Fisker — the company’s CFO, COO and wife of co-founder Henrik Fisker — also experienced a power outage while driving in the ocean.
In fact, Fisker has had a checkered history outside the ocean. It was more than a decade ago when its eponymous owner, who previously worked for BMW, Ford and Aston Martin, introduced a car bearing his name. the Karmaa Range extender Sports GT, he was chasing it problemsincluding catastrophic Consumer Reports test And Fires. Fisker Automotive declared bankruptcy in 2013.
After initially opting to operate a direct-to-consumer sales model, Fisker returned to a traditional dealership sales model in January after delivering to customers less than half of the more than 10,000 vehicles it produced last year. Then in March, the company Radically reduce prices on its peripheral models in a desperate attempt to change inventory.
The bankruptcy filing filed yesterday comes just one year after Fisker launched its all-electric Ocean vehicle to customers.