A famed car designer’s doomed attempt to challenge Tesla

livemint.com:

Chuck Heinle, a small-business owner in Maryland, was thrilled when electric-vehicle startup Fisker reached out to rent one of his warehouses outside Baltimore. He ended up signing a lengthy lease with the company early last year to use the space as a vehicle-delivery center. “As soon as they contacted me to lease the building, I invested quite a bit of money" in Fisker stock, Heinle said.

“I believed in them. I was thinking they were the next Tesla." Instead, Heinle became a casualty of Fisker’s implosion—his warehouse empty, his rent unpaid and his shares sold for pennies on the dollar. The California-based startup is winding down its operations, having burned through nearly all its cash and defaulting on a debt agreement that leaves it on the hook to repay around $180 million.

Fisker faces an ever tighter timeline to negotiate a rescue package, with a key agreement protecting it from creditors due to expire on May 17. The company told employees that June 28 would be their last day at work if a deal isn’t found. On Monday, it announced it had raised a few more million dollars, in a convertible debt deal that matures on June 24.

Fisker’s collapse would add to the pileup of troubled and failed automotive startups that rode the wave of investor zeal for EVs during the pandemic. These young companies raised billions of dollars with bold promises to upend the more than century-old car business. Investors also were game to bet on finding the next Tesla, the EV maker with an eye-popping share price.