The Austrian subsidiary of the US electric car manufacturer Fisker has filed for bankruptcy after the production of its Ocean model was stopped. The Californian parent company announced this step by Fisker GmbH at the Graz production site on Tuesday. Other units were not affected by the bankruptcy, it said.
The Ocean SUV model was manufactured in Graz by the contract manufacturer Magna
built. Fisker announced it would stop production in March. Magna does not expect manufacturing to resume, as revealed in the company’s quarterly report last week. Around 500 jobs will therefore be cut in Graz.
The company Fisker, founded by car designer Henrik Fisker, is struggling with survival concerns after the failure of its direct sales strategy. This is due to increased interest rates and problems with suppliers Startup additionally burdened. The Ocean is the only car that the start-up brought onto the market almost a year ago – and most recently failed a large-scale test by the largest US consumer organization, “Consumer Reports”.
According to the organization’s judgment, Fisker with the Ocean brought an unfinished car onto the market
. In the report, the testers speak of a “bizarre experience”; they have compiled a long list of defects and at the same time produced an almost hour-long podcast about it. There is talk of disturbing brake error warnings, of driving assistants that could not be switched off and led to the test car suddenly breaking out, and of weak customer service. Another feature, adaptive cruise control, was not available at all, even though it was listed on the window sticker.
Security assistants failed in the test
“So far our experience with the Ocean is like ordering pizza at a new, busy restaurant only to get a pie with undercooked dough and no sauce because the tomatoes are still growing,” quoted “Car scoops
“ from the paid report. One tester specifically notes, “This is the most incomplete car I’ve driven in my career, and that includes pre-production models.”
According to Fisker, the company has sold about 6,000 Oceans so far. After this disturbing report from the most influential US consumer organization, one can probably assume that the Ocaen will not win many friends.
The US-based car start-up is stuck been in financial difficulties for a long time and according to information from the “Wall Street Journal
“We started preparing for possible insolvency in March. But so far this has not happened. According to the WSJ, Fisker is said to have had sales of $273 million last year – with debt of more than $1 billion.
Fisker is among the electric car startups that went public at the start of the decade, many through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which helped accelerate their rollouts. Their rise was due to the hope and enthusiasm of investors that the young electric car companies could one day follow Tesla and gain a foothold in the highly competitive automotive industry.