Electric car manufacturer Fisker files for insolvency

Fisker is seeking protection from its creditors in insolvency proceedings. The move has been on the cards for weeks. The electric car manufacturer already warned at the end of February that the company's existence was at risk without new money.

Since then, talks with a "major car manufacturer" about an investment have remained fruitless. Financing that had been raised meanwhile and a sale of vehicles already built with discounts were not enough without a deal with the manufacturer. On Monday, Fisker filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in the state of Delaware.

Fisker's production company in Austria had already filed for bankruptcy in May. It managed the production of the only Fisker vehicle model, the Fisker Ocean, at Magna Steyr in Graz.

Almost 5000 cars sold

The Ocean SUV model was launched on the market later than planned, partly due to problems with suppliers. Some of the first customers and specialist journalists also criticized software errors and technical problems. Last year, Fisker built almost 10,200 Ocean cars and delivered 4929 of them to customers.

The manufacturer declared the original direct sales in the USA and Europe to have largely failed, and has been trying to get out of trouble with a dealer model since January. This year, Fisker wanted to hand over 20,000 to 22,000 cars to customers and dealers. However, production was already suspended in mid-March to save money.

Ramp-up too slow

Fisker started out as a challenger to Tesla. However, sales of electric cars have not grown nearly as quickly as expected just a few years ago. Other Tesla competitors such as Rivian and Lucid are also notoriously in the red - but have deeper pockets thanks in part to wealthy investors, while Fisker is running out of money.

For company boss Henrik Fisker, this is the second insolvency of a car company he founded since 2013. He had formerly worked as a car designer at BMW and Aston Martin, among others.

(fpi)