Fisker Lays Off Most Workers, Plans To Shop Around Remaining Assets

After being saddled with a half-billion dollars in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy, electric car manufacturer Fisker just can't catch a break. It's not just the cars; it's the company itself. From a Reuters report: "In a statement, Fisker confirmed that it let go about 75 percent of its workforce. The automaker said it was 'a necessary strategic step in our efforts to maximize the value of Fisker's core assets.' A Fisker representative could not immediately answer questions on the company's financial position. In the past, the automaker has declined to comment on the possibility of bankruptcy. ... About 160 employees were terminated at a Friday morning meeting at Fisker's Anaheim, California, headquarters, according to a second source who attended the meeting. They were told that the company could not afford to give them severance payments."

Comments

Another one bites the dust

[khallow]

Another company borrowed huge sums of money from the Department of Energy only to declare bankruptcy a few years later. Sure, it's not a big piece of the pie as far as the US budget goes. But the US government isn't making a few bad decisions. But many thousands of them.

Re:Another one bites the dust

[AmiMoJo]

That's what it is supposed to do. Private investors don't want to take risks on new technology or research that may or nay not make money one day. Universities, partly government funded, do the research. The government then invests in companies that develop it into new products, and a lot of them fail. In this case though clearly the technology itself was worth investing in, as Tesla has demonstrated.

In the UK we invented graphene at a government funded university but failed to capitalize on it. Now most of the patentsbelong to China, Samsung and US ccompanies. At least the US has the worlds premier EV manufacturer, which was initially part government backed.

" maximize the value of Fisker's core assets"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Well, if they are laying off 75% of their workers, I guess they don't consider them part of the "core assets."

Whatever happened to companies that loudly proclaimed, "The most important assets we have . . . are our employees!" . . . ?

. . . and actually meant what they said . . .

As expected.

[roman_mir]

This was to be expected.

There are people on /. who wouldn't understand such a thing for example. There are people here who do not understand that a company must turn up profit and if it doesn't it has no reason to exist, it's employing land, capital and labour inefficiently.

There are also people here who think that having government dictate how an economy should run is the preferred way, not allowing the private ownership and operation of property (capitalism) and free market (equality before the law, rule of law that does not discriminate against people and thus create inequality of treatment and inefficiencies of economy) to do what it does best - savings, investment, production.

There are is the answer and that "borrowing" from yourself to "pay" your debts is actually a meaningful act.

So this is yet another failed example of government "investing". You can't invest somebody else's money if they are forced to give it to you under the threat of violence, so that money is not coming out of your pocket, you are forcing it out of other people's pockets to run your own technocrat goals, and mostly really those are corrupt goals.

Note that this was one of the ways that Al Gore's profited from his gov't ties.

Re:As expected.

[roman_mir]

Game changing technology? You mean like nuclear, which government controls very tightly as well?

No, the only way to fix a problem is not to attack the symptoms, it's to go for the root cause and the root cause is the government power that it is not allowed to have actually. The real problem is the implicit and explicit support for all that the government does by the mob. There will be no 'game changing technology' coming out of government.

A private sector can take some results of some research done by whoever (irrelevant if it was gov't or anybody) and turn it into a product. Of-course gov't is not authorised to be involved in any research either and it shouldn't be, it becomes a pressure point, a way to extract more money and create more political influence.

The reality is that the gov't enjoys the status quo because while the mob cheers for the populist message, the actual actions that are taking place are very specific to profits of very few certain, very well connected individuals, and until you change that nothing will change.

The real problem is that people find it profitable to enter the gov't, to buy its power for their profit. That's what the real problem with "socialising costs and privatising gains" are, but you see, the mob realises it when it looks at things like BP but it doesn't connect the dots when it looks at things like the postal office and other utility monopolies granted by gov't.

What I mean to say is that any government involvement means power involvement, it means power over individuals, power to steal freedoms and sell them to somebody who is right there and understands the value of power and is absolutely interested in buying it.

You can't stop it without closing the fountain of power. You can't stop any of it without putting the boot down on the throat of gov't, like the snake that it is and forcing it into a constitutional cage. Gov't is useful in a way a snake can be useful, in exactly that very way.

Gov't is useful by providing the antidote to the snake bites by other powers, other oppressive gov'ts. But that's the extent of it. Let the snake out of its cage and it will bite you.

Re:And nobody learned nuthin'

[TigerPlish]

What amazes me is that nobody is learning anything from these green technology failures.

Yeah USA's been down this road before. Didn't work then. Won't work now. For a while everyone was "by 2000 there will be no oil anywhere" and 20 years later (90's) people were driving land garbage scows and there was so much oil prices plummeted. Eco went away.

The current wave of Ecothink is similar to the last. Solar still won't work, not with photovoltaics in their current state. Corn is a joke. It's for eatin' and makin' hooch, not becoming fuel. It's upside-down, you spend more energy making than what you get out of it. Adding it to gasoline makes the cars unhappy and doesn't do a damn thing to improve MPG. Wishful thinking can't beat physics. People still fall for Eco and embrace it with religious fervor.

As for electric cars I'm all for it, just please no rows and rows and rows of ballast.. I mean batteries.. weighing down my car and needlessly using dangerous, expensive, hard-to-get materials.

Re:How many times do we have to go through this?

[fche]

"Fisker was "saddled" with over half a billion in loan guarantees "

"saddled" is an interesting choice of words for another reason: it's as if though getting those loan guarantees were a bad thing for Fisker. It would be more accurate to say that taxpayers were saddled with it.

Re:And no one will learn yet again.

[Runaway1956]

I don't really like trains very much - but you're right. People rarely die on trains. One person's mishap on or near a train seldom brings fellow travelers to a screeching halt, to wait for cops, ambulances, and wreckers to arrive. I really think trains kinda suck - but they suck a lot less than our current system.

Biggest problem with trains, as I see it, is that they never go where a guy needs to go. The city and state decide where the train is going, they build it, then it's up to everyone else to live along the tracks, or do without public transportation.

Something needs to be done - but at this late date, I don't expect ANYTHING intelligent to be done.

The problem dictating the solution

[HangingChad]

In late March, Fisker put its entire U.S. workforce on furlough...Fisker asked 53 senior managers and executives to stay on board,

Layoff all the workers, keep the execs. That's what happens when the problem is dictating the solution.

Re:And no one will learn yet again.

[clarkkent09]

We Americans are staggeringly bad at deciding that something is just what a civilized society should do - public transportation, funding the arts or libraries, public transportation, etc.
 
And liberals are staggeringly bad at understanding that your opinion on what a "civilized society" should do may be radically different from my opinion. If don't think that forcing people uninterested in art, not to mention new and struggling artists to pay money to those supposedly superior artists chosen by a government committee as worthy of a grant, is in any way "civilized". I actually think its disgusting.