Fisker Halts Work on New EV Models

Fisker is stopping work on new electric vehicles till it companions with one other automaker.

The corporate announced its plans alongside its 2023 and This autumn earnings this week. Whereas the corporate’s income elevated, its gross margin was adverse 35%, and the corporate’s inventory misplaced $1.23 per share.

In January, Fisker introduced plans to pivot to a Dealer Partner Model versus a direct-to-consumer providing. On the time, the corporate mentioned that it had been in discussions with quite a few potential sellers since late November 2023 and anticipated to have roughly 100 vendor areas all through Europe and North America. At the moment, Fisker says it has acquired 250 expressions of curiosity from sellers in North America and Europe and 13 sellers have signed vendor agreements with the corporate.

“2023 was a difficult 12 months for Fisker, together with delays with suppliers and different points that prevented us from delivering the Ocean SUV as shortly as we had anticipated,” Chairman and CEO Henrik Fisker mentioned in a press release. “We additionally encountered surprising headwinds in our efforts to determine a direct-to-consumer gross sales mannequin in each North America and Europe on the identical time. There have been a number of unanticipated challenges, together with rising rates of interest, discovering sufficient expert labor, and figuring out applicable actual property areas to make the DTC mannequin perform successfully.” 

Because it shifts to that dealer-focused mannequin, Fisker says it plans to put off 15% of its workforce, which represents roughly 200 workers.

The corporate says it’s at the moment in negotiations with a big automaker which may spend money on Fisker or develop a number of electrical automobile platforms with the corporate; nonetheless, “closing of any transaction could be topic to satisfaction of necessary circumstances, together with completion of due diligence and negotiation and execution of applicable definitive agreements.”

After a tumultuous decade pushing a doomed $100K+ plug-in hybrid, the Fisker model re-emerged at CES 2020 with the battery-powered Fisker Ocean SUV. Deliveries of the Ocean to US customers did not begin till greater than three years later. In 2023, Fisker produced 10,193 Fisher Oceans; of that, 4,929 had been delivered to prospects. The corporate says it expects to ship roughly 20,000 – 22,000 Oceans worldwide in 2024.