2024 financial difficulties

In March 2024, due to a net loss of over $463 million in 2023, Fisker announced that it was in financial trouble and did not have the necessary funds to remain in business through the coming year. Due to this, the company reduced its workforce by 15% and paused development of the Pear compact EV. Fisker subsequently entered talks with a major car manufacturer (suspected to be Nissan) regarding a $400 million cash injection (in order to generate cash or reduce costs) in exchange for access to the Fisker Alaska pick-up platform.^[39][40] Several weeks later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Fisker hired financial adviser FTI Consulting and the law firm Davis Polk to work on a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. As a result, Fisker's stock plummeted approximately 47% shortly after the announcement.^[41] The next day, Fisker dismissed talks of a bankruptcy filing, describing plans to engage with its advisors to plan out a deal with another major carmaker.^[42]

Nevertheless, Fisker soon announced that it would suspend vehicle production for six weeks in an effort to align inventory levels and progress strategic and financing initiatives. The company warned that bankruptcy was imminent and could occur within weeks.^[43] One week later, on March 25, 2024, Fisker announced that the potential deal with the major carmaker had collapsed, and that the company was unable to meet a closing condition for a $150 million lifeline through convertible bond sales. The company's stock trades were halted that morning; hours later, the New York Stock Exchange announced it would delist Fisker's shares.^[44] Fisker chose not to appeal the delisting, which happened on April 22.^[45]

On April 23, Fisker warned that they may have to file for bankruptcy protection within 30 days if it was unable to meet debt obligations and get adequate relief from its creditors. The company plans to further reduce its workforce and consolidate its operations.^[46] Further on May 8 Fisker's Austrian subunit filed for bankruptcy protection.^[47]

In an article published on May 31, eight Fisker employees spoke to TechCrunch describing the dire situation at the company over the past few years.^[48] The company lost track of payments made, taking months to complete an internal audit, with external auditor PwC receiving inadequate documentation from Fisker to compile their annual financial report.^[49] Fisker CFO and COO, Geeta Gupta-Fisker attempted to run customer service using a digital chatbot rather than a call center, leading to customers struggling to get help with their cars. Fisker then hired a company to provide customer service, which later sued Fisker for failure to pay, alleging debts over $660,000. Gupta-Fisker also allegedly refused to build a stockpile of parts for service, in order to cut costs. The company did not set up a supplier quality team to audit suppliers, leading to substandard quality of parts on vehicles. In order to service cars, Fisker started "pinching" parts from their supplier Magna Steyr's production line in Austria, stripping down returned cars and cars used for marketing, as well as CEO Henrik Fisker's own Ocean. The supplier's employees were also asked to bring parts from Austria to the US in their luggage to solve the crisis. On March 27, employees were told that the company would immediately lose access to its Manhattan Beach headquarters, leading to panic, before being told they had another month. A backlog of registration paperwork meant that customers were left without permanent license plates for months. Customers who bought a special edition version of the Ocean, called the Ocean One were entitled to $7,500 of benefits, amounting to $37.5 million in total for the 5,000 units sold, none of which was paid out. The company was also desperate to get rid of unsold Oceans, after losing access to their storage facilities. They promised $1,000 bonuses per vehicle to sales staff who sold vehicles directly, without a dealership, and also set up "dealership partners" to sell vehicles on consignment. Fisker's VP of communications Matthew DeBord denied most of these claims.^[48]

Released

Prototype

Unsuccessful nanotech partnership

In 2016, Fisker Inc. teamed up with Nanotech Energy to create a joint venture called Fisker Nanotech, with Jack Kavanaugh as chairman.^[15][63][64] They worked on developing a next-generation supercapacitor technology using graphene.^[16][63][65] The proposed hybrid battery using graphene supercapacitors had the potential for improved energy conducting and charging capabilities, and a better cycle life, so that the battery would not need to be swapped out as often as a pure lithium-ion battery.^[63] In July 2017, Fisker Inc. ended its joint venture with Nanotech Energy to produce batteries using graphene.^[66]

Abandoned solid-state battery research

On November 13, 2017, Fisker Inc. announced that it had filed patents on flexible solid-state battery designs, expecting the batteries to be produced on a mass scale around 2023.^[67] A faked solid-state battery with plastic case hiding a nonrechargeable "coin cell" battery, debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2018 among other venues.^[68] Fisker's development team included Fabio Albano, one of the founders of Sakti3, the solid-state battery startup sold to Dyson in 2015.^[69][70] Solid-state batteries have greater energy density and faster charging times than lithium-ion batteries.^[67] In October 2018, Fisker Inc. announced new funding through Caterpillar Venture Capital, a subsidiary of the Caterpillar Inc. heavy-machinery manufacturing company, with the money going toward development of Fisker Inc.'s solid-state battery technology.^[71][72] In 2021, less than 3 months after a larger follow-on investment by Caterpillar that was misappropriated, Fisker dropped its plans to use solid-state batteries; Henrik Fisker stated that the company could not make the technology work successfully,^[73] though it went on to win a prestigious R&D 100 award.^[74]