Fisker aspired to build “the world’s most emotional and sustainable electric vehicles”. Instead, the company’s capital structure proved unsustainable as it filed for bankruptcy overnight Monday — no doubt an emotional moment for its founder Henrik Fisker and his wife who is the company’s chief financial officer.
The company had taken advantage of the pandemic Spac boom — partnering with Apollo Global — to list its shares, even as it was still proving its ability to manufacture cars.
Its listing raised roughly a billion dollars and it since got another billion from selling convertible bonds. Yet all it had to show for the full year of 2023 was 10,000 built Ocean SUVs — only half of which were actually delivered to customers — for total revenue of less than $300mn. At its 2021 public debut, it had forecast 51,000 in total deliveries and $3bn in revenue.