mobilityGraveyard archive2016–2024

Fisker

Fisker Inc. was legendary car designer Henrik Fisker's second attempt at an electric-vehicle company — and his second bankruptcy. Founded in 2016 with his wife Geeta Gupta-Fisker, three years after Fisker Automotive's Karma flamed out, the reboot promised an asset-light path: design the car, let Magna Steyr build it in Austria, sell direct. It rode the 2020 SPAC wave onto the NYSE at a $2.9 billion valuation, saw its market value approach $8 billion in the February 2021 Foxconn-deal rally, and delivered a real product — 10,193 Ocean SUVs built in 2023. But only 4,929 found buyers.

Years active

2016–2024

Peak valuation

$7.9B

Total raised

$2.2B

Peak headcount

~1300

The second act

Henrik Fisker had drawn the BMW Z8 and the Aston Martin DB9 before his first EV company, Fisker Automotive, collapsed in 2013 when its battery supplier went bankrupt. He kept the name, and in October 2016 he and Geeta Gupta-Fisker — who would serve as CFO and COO — founded Fisker Inc. in Los Angeles. The founding couple structure would define the company to the end: husband as CEO and chief designer, wife controlling the finances and operations, and, as reporting later showed, few internal checks on either. The pitch was that the first company had died making hardware, so the second would barely touch it — an 'asset-light' automaker that owned the design and the customer relationship while contract manufacturers carried the factories.

SPAC gold rush

Fisker caught the 2020 SPAC boom perfectly, merging with Apollo-sponsored Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp in a deal valuing it at $2.9 billion post-money that closed on October 29, 2020 and put more than $1 billion of cash on the balance sheet before a single car existed. When a partnership with iPhone-assembler Foxconn to build a sub-$30,000 EV called the Pear was announced in February 2021, the stock hit an all-time closing high of $28.50 — a market value approaching $8 billion. The company raised another $667.5 million in green convertible notes that August. On paper, Fisker was among the best-funded EV startups of the era; in practice it had booked most of its capital before facing any of the problems of actually building, delivering, and servicing cars.

What worked, what broke

What worked

Actually mass-produced a car — 10,193 Ocean SUVs built at Magna Steyr in 2023 — where most SPAC-era EV startups never got past prototypes.
Proved the asset-light manufacturing thesis operationally: Ocean production started on schedule in Graz, Austria, in November 2022, seventeen months after the Magna agreement was signed.
Raised over $2 billion across the SPAC-and-PIPE ($1B+), $667.5 million in 2021 green convertible notes, and more than $500 million in 2023 debt financing.
Reached a market value approaching $8 billion at the February 2021 stock peak, making it one of the most valuable EV startups of the SPAC era.
The Ocean itself won praise for design and value on paper — a 350-mile-range electric SUV with a solar roof, priced below comparable Teslas after 2024 price cuts.
Landed high-profile partnerships — Magna as contract manufacturer and a Foxconn deal for the sub-$30,000 Pear — that briefly made the multi-model roadmap look credible.

What broke

Outsourced the factory but not the hard parts: unfinished software, near-nonexistent service infrastructure, and a direct-sales operation that couldn't deliver the cars Magna kept building — only 4,929 of 10,193 Oceans produced in 2023 reached customers.
Product-quality crisis: four NHTSA investigations in five months (braking/power loss, rollaway, doors that wouldn't open, automatic emergency braking) and a 12,000-plus vehicle door-latch recall destroyed the Ocean's reputation.
Financial-controls breakdown — the company temporarily lost track of millions in customer payments, delivered some cars without collecting payment, and had disclosed material weaknesses in its accounting.
Founder-couple governance with no counterweight: Henrik Fisker as CEO/designer and Geeta Gupta-Fisker as CFO/COO concentrated decisions, and reporting attributed the collapse in part to the founders' whims.
Spent on future models (Pear, Alaska, Ronin) and showmanship while the sole shipping product was losing money on every unit and inventory piled up.
The rescue never came: Nissan talks collapsed in March 2024, taking $350 million in conditional financing with them, and the delisted, cash-starved company had no independent path to survival.

Fisker

The second act

SPAC gold rush

A real car, briefly

Four investigations and lost payments

No rescue, no reserve

What worked, what broke

Sources