Electric vehicle manufacturer Fisker seems to have reached the end of its resources. Since the end of 2023, the company has been looking for a partner willing to help maintain its operations. At one point, we heard that the company was talking to Nissan, but nothing came of it.
The clock is ticking. Magna International, which manufactures the Ocean SUV for the brandsaid today that it does not plan to build any more units this year. As reported by InsideEVs, CEO Swami Kotagiri said Magna had had to readjust its targets for 2024 after “assuming no additional Fisker Ocean production and lower sales on program delays and mix.”
Yahoo Finance quoted the executive as saying that “production of the vehicle is currently idled. Our current outlook issued today assumes no further production. Consistent with disclosure, we provided in our annual information form, this assumption reduces our 2024 sales by about $400 million.”
And what about production figures so far? The company said at the end of 2023 that it had assembled more than 1,000 Ocean SUVs. Just under half have been delivered. On March 15, it was announced that a further 1,000 units had been manufactured. The company has some 4,700 units in stock, most of which were assembled in 2023.
That's why we saw Fisker go in with radical price cuts of $24,000 in the U.S. earlier this year. But reports of the company’s difficulties have clearly affected consumer confidence, because even after the reductions, only 200 models were delivered. What's more, a discount of this kind is detrimental to the brand's image. People who paid full price for the model see its resale value drop drastically when a new, much lower price is announced.
The New York Stock Exchange even withdrew Fisker shares from the market after they reached an “abnormally low” price.
At the end of April, CEO Henrik Fisker declared that four companies were still interested in rescuing the automaker. He didn't say which ones, but we do know that Nissan wasn't one of them.
