It hasn’t been long since Tesla disbanded its electric vehicle (EV) charging department following an announcement about reducing the global workforce by 10 per cent. Now, Fisker, an electric-vehicle startup has also started laying off members of its workforce.
It has already cut many roles over the past few months. The cuts did not really come as a shock because in February 2024, Henrik Fisker, chairman and CEO, Fisker, had revealed plans to cut 15 per cent of the workforce.
The company intends to retain only a handful of staff members who are critical for its mission, as per media reports. However, exactly how many employees will be laid off is not officially known. Some were laid off last month. On 20 April 2024, Fisker had notified employees as per the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, about the possibility of them being laid off in two months time, if the company failed to find an investor or a buyer. The company has been discussing with some automakers for a deal. Nothing has fructified as yet.
In March 2024, Fisker had managed to sell more than 6,000 electric SUVs. A year ago, it had revealed that it had about 65,000 reservations even before its launch in June. However, then things changed and post receiving negative feedback many orders were cancelled.
In early 2022, Fisker had personally visited India to set up an office in Hyderabad. He had also announced that a few units the Fisker Ocean EV would be reaching India in 2023. Following this, only 100 units of the electric SUV, the Ocean Extreme Vigyan Edition were on offer as part of the initial homologation in September 2023.