After the financial collapse of Fisker Automotive, taxpayers and government officials were decidedly upset.
Even when Fisker Automotive’s financial assets were put up for auction, including $192 million in loans, people weren’t happy, mostly because an American company couldn’t manage to sway the courts and the loan handlers. Chinese auto parts giant Wanxiang won the bidding, basically on the promise that Fisker Automotive would begin production “as soon as possible,” whatever that means.
Some Fisker Automotive production facilities are still in place, such as for the Fisker Karma. Additionally, designs and production models are in place for the Atlantic and Surf, which were only ever seen as concept cars. Possibly, by August, 2015, the Fisker Karma will restart production in collaboration with partner VL Automotive. The next phase in the plan is to start production of the Fisker Surf by March, 2016, but not with VL Automotive, which makes us wonder where. A third part of the plan involves bringing the Fisker Atlantic into being, which could come by the end of 2017.
Fisker Automotive says there’s a 50:50 chance of the Atlantic being built at a facility in Newport, Delaware, which could be a good starting point. The “50:50” part, however, doesn’t convince me, and it probably doesn’t convince Delaware, either, who gave Fisker Automotive some $20 million in incentives to build there. That was before the bankruptcy, however, so whether Delaware, or anyone else, for that matter, gets their money back or not, or when, all seems very sketchy at the moment.
Photo credit: DryHeatPanzer / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
