Fisker, a company that makes electric cars, is facing some big money problems, and because of this, many people who reserved one of their cars have decided to cancel. It’s reported that more than 40,000 customers have canceled their reservations for the Fisker Ocean, a type of electric SUV.
According to Business Insider, Fisker was losing between 70 and 80 reservations every day for a week. This means that a lot of people have decided not to buy the car after all. Since late 2019, Fisker had collected over 70,000 reservations for the Ocean, but now many of those are gone. Fisker hasn’t said anything about this yet.
This is bad news for Fisker in many ways. First, it means they won’t sell as many cars as they thought they would, so they’ll make less money. This comes at a time when Fisker really needs to sell more cars to survive. They even stopped making the Ocean for a while to save money, and they have a lot of cars sitting in storage that they haven’t sold.
Second, Fisker has to give back the money that people paid to reserve the Ocean. It costs $250 to reserve one car and $100 for each extra reservation. But Fisker gets to keep a $25 fee for every reservation. Business Insider says Fisker owes its customers about $9 million in refunds. A few thousand people also canceled orders for other Fisker cars, but they won’t get all their money back.
Some people might have canceled their reservations because they found out they could buy a new Ocean for much less money than before. Fisker lowered the prices of its 2023 models by up to $24,000 in March 2024 to sell more cars. Others might have lost trust in Fisker because the company is in financial trouble.
Fisker has also shown three other electric cars that people could reserve: a pickup truck called Alaska, a small city car called PEAR, and a convertible called the Ronin. People could reserve an Alaska or a PEAR for $250 or spend $2,000 to reserve a Ronin. Fisker said in February 2023 that it got about 5,600 reservations for the PEAR. It’s unclear if those reservations still count, but if Fisker has to give refunds for those too, it’ll make their money problems even worse.
Also read: Fisker’s Ocean SUV Price Cuts Amid Financial Turmoil: Are They Worth It