The Second Chapter of Henrik Fisker Automotive, After Two Bankruptcies, and his First Autonomous Vehicle (Ocean SUV)

It is the second chapter for Fisker. Fisker automotive was his first startup and went out of business because of quality issues and mismanagement. Now, with two bankruptcies under his belt, it may be time to admit that the Tesla playbook isn’t exactly foolproof — especially when your name isn’t Elon Musk.

But Henrik could never hold people’s attention the way that Musk does. And, according to TechCrunch, he had a much different idea of what constituted a “cool” design. It was a minimalist design with a lot of software, like video games, and sophomoric sound effects. For Henrik Fisker, it was ticky-tacky stuff like wheel spacers, which just ended up mucking up the assembly process.

There have been half-baked ideas, including a partnership with Volkswagen, but neither came to fruition. And when Fisker finally got around to actually making cars, the first (and likely only) being the Ocean SUV, more issues seemed to surface every week. There have been a host of software and mechanical problems as well as internal issues around its nonexistent customer service division and inability to keep track of the money it made. YouTuber Marques Brownlee gave the Ocean one of his worst reviews ever.

Fisker failed to achieve a battery breakthrough, but he didn’t show it. His company made an electric Popemobile that he announced after admitting defeat. The CEO said his company would make a custom electric SUV to be used for official papal transport in late 2022, and that he had a private audience with Pope Francis.

“It’s the kind of technology where, when you feel like you’re 90 percent there, you’re almost there, until you realize the last 10 percent is much more difficult than the first 90,” Fisker told former Verge reporter Sean O’Kane (who broke most of the stories about the company here at The Verge and has continued that streak now at TechCrunch) in 2021.

It is not because of a lack of trying. In the early days of Fisker, Henrik proved to be very good at making wild-sounding promises that helped generate a lot of excitement and buzz about his company. In 2018, Henrik claimed to have solved one of the “holy grails” of EV production with the creation of a real solid-state battery. (These are batteries that don’t use liquid electrolytes to move energy around. Instead, the cells are made of solid and “dry” conductive material.)

The company said in a statement that it faced various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted its ability to operate. We decided to sell our assets under Chapter 11 after considering all options for the company.

Such negotiations, reportedly with Nissan, failed to conclude positively, an outcome signaled at the time by Fisker itself as it issued a statement saying “any transaction would be subject to satisfaction of important conditions, including completion of due diligence and negotiation and execution of appropriate definitive agreements.” The collapse of these talks reportedly resulted in a loss of $350 million in funding.

Fisker’s assets and debts are between $500 million and $1 billion and it has 20 of its largest funders listed in the Chapter 11 filing.

The Ocean’s myriad issues embarrassingly caught out Fisker staff, too, with board member Wendy Greuel losing power on a public road shortly after receiving the EV. Similarly, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch, Geeta Gupta Fisker—the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, and wife of cofounder Henrik Fisker—also experienced a power shutdown while driving an Ocean.

Fisker switched from a direct-to-consumer model to a traditional dealership model in January after only handing over about half of the 10,000 vehicles it produced last year. Then in March, the company drastically cut prices on its Ocean models in a desperate attempt to shift inventory.