Reuters reports that Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, pointing Henrik Fisker's second independent automotive act into what looks like the same dramatic close as his first act. The Chapter 11 filing, as opposed to Chapter 13, suggests company efforts to stay in business by shedding assets and working out deals with creditors.
A company spokesperson said,"Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to operate efficiently." While that is indisputably true, Fisker's much larger problem was launching a woefully unfinished Ocean SUV, full of novelties and beautiful outside, almost entirely undercooked inside.
It's not clear if Fisker has a way out of that valley, either; prospects from the outside look dim. Fixing the Ocean, addressing the NHTSA investigations, and restarting production would require enormous sums of money, and it's not clear Fisker has the expertise and will to do those things even if it got the money.
Oh, the puns we could make for this one, but to do so would be mean to a company and a product we wanted to see do well. A sorted-out Ocean would have sold, and a sorted-out Pear could have been special. What we will say is that Karma Automotive, fashioned from ashes of Fisker's first car company, has a chance to do the funniest thing in the world right now.