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Report: Fisker Automotive Sold To Hong Kong Billionaire Richard Li
cartechboy writes "It looks like an investor group led by Hong Kong tycoon (and early Fisker investor) Richard Li is the likely winner of a government loan owed by Fisker Automotive, the dormant maker of plug-in hybrid sports cars. Buying the loan would allow Li to try and restructure the company even as it's still at risk for bankruptcy. The originally company won a $529 million government loan in 2009, took venture capital investment, and created a lot of buzz around its flagship car, the $100,000 Karma plug-in hybrid. But the company had delays launching the car, struggled financially and has not built any cars since July of 2012. Is Li the new savior?"
One of the big problems Karma had was getting reliable suppliers for their parts, they didn't have the presence to get what they wanted
Buying the loan would allow Li to try and restructure the company
It's "try to restructure". I realize that you hear this a lot in spoken word, but it doesn't belong in writing. Ultimately it makes no sense: what exactly is he trying if he tries AND does something else?
Look where the billionaires are piling up and those who work for them trying to emulate their status.
Look where Burberry mushroomed their sales.
Li has it right.
"Is Li the new savior?" No, of course not. On a national scale, the question for the United States should be "Is $(anyone but the U.S.) the new savior of U.S. industry and innovation?" The U.S. has poured so much money overseas - both for selfless and ostensibly selfish ends - that the country now expects their international beneficiaries to help them out now, in their time of need. Learn the lesson, move on, and let's rebuild this country to something better than previous generations had. Stop waiting for help and let's start fixing the problems ourselves.
He's not the Messiah! He's a very naughty billionaire!
I live in the US state where our politicians got suckered by Fisker.
Pretty much every regular taxpayer in the state knew it was a total boondoggle from the start, but somehow our duly elected officials still fell for it.
The Fisker business plan was a bad joke, and the punchline of that joke is that US states compete to give away money and tax exemptions to big business, so that it's a race to the bottom for US citizens. Companies will just relocate to wherever they can pay the least taxes (which means zero) and get the fattest "loan" that they can avoid repaying.
It's the willingness of US states to destroy their own tax bases that makes it work. They figure they can bleed the 99% forever I guess, but once they make everybody homeless and jobless the states are going to need another plan.
If you have to fire half the company, isn't that better than all of them losing their jobs? Making a profit while keeping some of those jobs going is a good thing.
Flaming Fiskars!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The owners took the money and cashed out leaving whats left of the company. Successful for them yes, but not for Fisker. Standard practice of today.
If you're wondering why Fisker failed watch this owner's review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnYuO0bGSTc
Compare that with the feedback from Tesla owners.
Richard Li Tzar Kai is a son Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, and the spoiled brat isn't too widely loved in the territory. Part of it has to do with the outrageous swindles he's pulled off, like using his guanxi/connections (incl. the "regulators" and the pro-business regime) to take the once-mighty Hongkong Telecom private on the cheap, only to later refloat it as an intarweb-ish company, "Pacific Century CyberWorks". The name fooled stupid dotcom-boom idiots, but the company has never really had any real technology business other than the old telcom side of it...
Assholes with too much inherited money and dad's old boy network to play on... I'm sure he's got some similarly qualified mainland chinese CCP "princelings" lined up as partners for a new fancy "cybercar" startup.
The new savior? So far he's only ever cared about his own ass.
A system that allows this concentration of resources is a failure. We need something new.
Yeah, let's make everyone equally poor except the Commissars in their Zil limos.
Oh, hang on, this is China, they already tried that.
Da, comrade.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Having not read the article, I am at a loss as to how this possibly falls under the realm of "YOUR RIGHTS ONLINE." Can somebody explain?
in b4 mods are trolling
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
I have some familiarity with Fisker since my father bought a Karma. When I went to test drive it the car was in some weird mode the dealer couldn't get it out of and the entire time it went "bong bong bong" while driving. While the car handled nicely it felt heavy (it weighs 5300lbs). Acceleration was OK, not great. The interior of the car was small. Despite being such a large car it is labeled as a subcompact. The battery pack running down the center of the car takes up a huge amount of space.
As for being eco-friendly the car gets 21MPG on premium gasoline and is rated at 50MPG equivalent on electricity, basically no better than a Prius on electricity and far worse on gasoline.
The touch screen on the car is an unusable piece of crap, unfortunately you are forced to use it for just about everything. Whoever designed it designed it to look cool but not to be useable in a car. The colorscheme is grey on grey and it is hard to see during the day. If the sun hits it you can't see it at all. Also if you wear polarized sunglasses you can't see the display.
The touch panel has "haptic feedback", unfortunately you can't feel it while driving. Also, it requires a fair amount of force to select something. The icons are small and you have to hit them just right, something difficult to do while driving.
I tried unsuccessfully to talk my father out of the car. The car was basically what you would expect from an early prototype, not a production level car.
They replaced the Chinese-made electric motors twice in my father's car. The steel used for the rotors was too soft and the splines broke with the original motors. Afterwards there were some slipping problems which they eventually fixed using Lock-Tite. The car has had problems with the CAN bus due to interference and my father has had to have his car towed on numerous occasions.
There have also been major problems with the generator connected to the engine. The part linking the two tends to break and it cannot handle any misfiring by the engine.
The fires were also another major setback, due to a defective fan module.
Then there was the battery fiasco. Fisker promised selling at least 15,000 Karmas and relied entirely on A123 for the battery pack. Between Fisker's failure to sell the volume they promised and the battery defect A123 ended up bankrupt.
Fisker Automotive made a number of huge mistakes. The company was run like a large Detroit auto company which they were not. They spent money like water, ordering huge numbers of components ahead of time to make something on the order of 15,000 cars. Much of the manufacturing and design was pushed out to suppliers. The drive train was made by Quantum. The touch screen and software was also farmed out. The engine was GM. Fisker was basically an integrator.
Fisker also spent money like water. They went through over 1 billion dollars without a working factory to show for it. The top brass were from Detroit and they were used to dealing with big budgets like Detroit.
I will say that the Fisker Karma is a beautiful car and the interior is quite nice despite being cramped.
I ended up buying a Tesla model S.
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It's not China, it's Hong Kong. Learn something about the subject before you run your mouth.