Fisker customers cancel vehicle reservations
Despite having dropped the price of the Fisker Ocean, the US carmaker could have trouble finding customers to take the electric SUV off its hands. Business Insider got hold of internal data that showed that “more than 40,000 out of well over 70,000 reservations for the Fisker Ocean have been cancelled to date.”
That not only means that Fisker is apparently having trouble selling its EV, but it could also burn another hole in the company’s already empty pockets. Each reservation holder had put down 250 dollars – which they will get back once the reservation is cancelled (aside from a 25-dollar processing fee). That is according to Fisker’s “Reservation Terms” published on its website.
That means that Fisker could have to pay up to 9 million dollars in refunds. That number is not definite, as the payment for a second reservation was only 100 dollars, and it is not clear how many of these 40,000 cancelled orders are, in fact, the latter.
As mentioned above, Fisker recently cut prices for its electric SUV significantly, in some cases by as much as 24,000 dollars, albeit only for the 2023 model year and in an attempt to empty its warehouses. But there is no denying that the carmaker is deep in the red. Talks with a “major car manufacturer” have failed, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Fisker shares because its value is “unusually low,” and Fisker had to pause production of the Ocean SUV for six weeks. In January, not a single unit of the Ocean had been built.
Fisker Inc. was founded in 2016 and went public via a SPAC merger – with a valuation of 2.9 billion dollars. Fisker Inc. is the second automotive company founded by Henrik Fisker. The first company, Fisker Automotive, had developed a range extender saloon. However, the company did not survive the 2008 financial crisis and was declared insolvent in 2013 despite millions in loans from the US government and a sale to investors.
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