Monteverdi
Schwarzwald Sprinter
It's all bad news for Fisker Automotive of late. Henrik Fisker walked away from his namesake company, and earlier this week came news that Chinese suitors (and hoped-for saviors) are reluctant to pull the trigger on an acquisition. The writing is on the wall. We're probably witnessing Fisker's death spiral. Let's revisit why.
From 2007 to mid-2010, wealthy venture capitalists wanted to demonstrate that they could extend their business-building "magic" beyond the ephemeral world of software and web services. So they set about re-inventing real industries, showing a willingness to dump more cash into green technology. This all came before the actual on-sale dates of the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf and the other plug-in vehicles that followed.
At that point, many EV proponents projected that by now we'd be selling a quarter-million plug-in vehicles a year. Even General Motors CEO Dan Akerson wanted to ramp up Volt production capacity to 120,000 annually by 2013. But once these vehicles actually became available, economic reality brought the EV train to a screeching halt. The cars were too expensive and the economy was recovering too slowly to support a rapid expansion in sales.
From batteries to solar to wind to natural gas, big investors and big companies have pulled back from green tech over the last two and a half years. A123 Systems and Solyndra went broke. LG Chem has all but abandoned a lithium ion battery plant in Michigan. Automotive supplier giant Bosch pulled out of a battery joint venture with Samsung and essentially acknowledged that it'll be many years before batteries are a significant business. T. Boone Pickens dropped big plans for building wind power. Even Tesla Motors has struggled to get cars into production and make money, and that's with an excellent product, to boot.
Seeing all of this, venture capitalists now realize that they won't see the enormous returns they're accustomed to when they sell off a six-person start-up like Instagram for $1 billion or score a $100 billion IPO like Facebook. Worse still, they now understand that with these green tech businesses, they'll need to commit a lot more capital for a long time with no guarantee of success. At this point, almost no one with cash to invest is willing to put more money into businesses like Fisker, leaving only existing automakers to step up to the plate.
This brings us back to Fisker Automotive. Many of the original performance claims made for the Karma didn't hold up. Other than the designs, Fisker doesn't really have any compelling or unique intellectual property that would justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy it. They don't have the substantial assets or the kind of rich legacy that, for example, Volvo had.
In fact, what Fisker does have, the remaining federal loan money, is an albatross. The Wall Street Journal reports that the automaker wants to use that money to continue operating, and that's being singled out as a key reason that Chinese automakers taking a pass. Using the loan funds would mean that commitments to using the Delaware production facility, an unattractive proposition, are forced on any acquiring party. Fisker claims that discussions with other suitors remain ongoing, but really, what else are they going to say?
In short, there's no good reason for anyone to buy Fisker Automotive. And with no buyers or investors, there is simply no way forward.
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