Fisker Group Inc., the EV startup founded by famed designer Henrik Fisker, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — the culmination of months of problems with its Ocean SUV that have included recalls and dozens of lawsuits.
The California-based company, which filed for bankruptcy in Delaware District Court, had been seeking a deal with another automaker in a last-ditch effort to save the business. According to the filing, the company has estimated assets of $500 million to $1 billion and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million.
Fisker listed between 200 and 999 creditors, including SAP, Adobe, Salesforce and Ansys, according to the court document filed late Monday. The filing comes just a year after Fisker delivered its all-electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV, to customers.
The much-hyped EV has been troubled from the start, with customers reporting a number of software and mechanical issues soon after delivery. Internally, the company struggled to sustain adequate customer service and maintenance efforts, and even had trouble keeping track of its money, according to TechCrunch’s previous report.
Fisker, which used contract manufacturer Magna, would end up delivering only a few thousand vehicles worldwide. The plan when it was launched in 2020 in a special-purpose acquisition merger was to leverage Magna’s vehicle-building skills to create a relationship similar to Apple and Foxconn. according to Henrik Fischer. The EV startup even engaged Foxconn over plans to build a cheaper compact EV, but that deal ultimately fell through.
Fisker has tried to conserve cash in recent months through several rounds of layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. It also changed its business model. Earlier this year, the company moved away from selling directly to customers — a system Tesla has popularized — and instead sought to work with established dealers. In the end, the efforts were not enough to save the company from bankruptcy.
This is the second vehicle company named after Henrik Fisker to go bankrupt. His first effort, Fisker Automotive, started in 2007 and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013. That company similarly put its vehicle—a hybrid electric sports car—into production on the road before encountering quality issues and other external factors that proved fatal. (Fisker Automotive’s assets were bought out of bankruptcy and by what would become current EV startup Karma.)
