Mon 06/05/2024 — Which is not the one we would like.
The difficulties are increasing for the young manufacturer Fisker. The Ocean SUV has entered production, and there are many projects, with the Alaska pick-up, the small Pear and the superb Ronin, but on a daily basis, everything is going wrong. It is the tragedy of the automobile industry that you have to invest colossal sums to launch mass production of a new model, and then you have to wait until you have sold hundreds of thousands of them, before being able to return to its investment. In the meantime, we need to find understanding financiers, and this is not easy. We heard 2 months ago of a possible merger with Nissan, but this will not happen. But there is no longer any doubt that Fisker will not survive alone. There are unpaid invoices from several suppliers, there are quality problems because there was not enough budget to do good validations… There is an immediate need for cash to resolve these problems , and it will not be a bank that will give it.
Henrik Fisker confided that he is in confidential negotiations with 4 manufacturers, which allows him not to name them, or even to inflate their number. We can imagine at least one Chinese, but there is also inevitably a Western group. We are thinking of Stellantis. This is pure speculation on our part, but there is an excellent reason why Stellantis would take control of Fisker.
Because Stellantis has a problem. Serious. Serious even, and which could soon make the news in France and Italy. The group manufactures far fewer cars than it has the means to produce. It’s difficult to estimate, but Stellantis could probably make a quarter of a million more cars this year without hiring a single new employee. The classic method for solving an overcapacity problem is to cut jobs. And that would mean thousands of jobs. Which, in addition to being a tragedy, is expensive. As a concrete example, this editor does not know which model will be manufactured at the Poissy factory when the models manufactured there today are discontinued (DS3 and Opel Mokka). The people who work at the factory don’t know it either. Could we manufacture Fiskers in Poissy?
Laurent J. Masson
Should Stellantis take over Fisker Automotive?
Section(s) and keyword(s): Fisker; industry-production
