The Tesla-Challenger Fisker is seeking protection from its creditors in insolvency proceedings. The move had been announced for weeks. Fisker warned at the end of February that without fresh money the company’s existence would be at risk. Since then, talks with a “large car manufacturer” about an investment have not produced any results. In the meantime, increased financing and the sale of vehicles that had already been built with discounts were not enough without a deal with the manufacturer. On Monday, Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the state of Delaware. A Fisker subsidiary in Austria had already filed for bankruptcy in May.
Fisker’s SUV model Ocean came onto the market later than planned, among other things due to problems with suppliers. Some of the first customers and specialist journalists also criticized software errors and technical problems. Among other things, the Ocean model failed in a major test by the largest US consumer organization “Consumer Reports”. According to the organization’s verdict, Fisker had nothing to do with the Ocean brought an unfinished car onto the market
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Last year, Fisker built almost 10,200 Ocean vehicles and delivered 4,929 of them to customers.
Changing the sales model was unsuccessful
Fisker declared the original direct sales in the USA and Europe to be largely a failure and had been trying since January to get out of trouble with a dealer model. This year, Fisker planned to hand over 20,000 to 22,000 cars to customers and dealers. But production was suspended in mid-March to save money.
Fisker emerged as a challenger to the electric car frontrunner Tesla at. But sales of electric cars have not grown nearly as quickly as expected a few years ago. Other Tesla competitors such as Rivian and Lucid are also notoriously in the red – but have deeper pockets thanks, among other things, to wealthy investors, while Fisker is running out of money.
For company boss Henrik Fisker, this is the second bankruptcy of a car company he founded after 2013. He previously worked as a car designer at, among other things BMW and Aston Martin worked.