Fisker reportedly misplaced millions of dollars in customer payments for the Ocean EV, a mistake that caused an internal audit that took several months to complete after it was initiated in December.
Recent developments in the story of Fisker show the company is clinging onto its operational status and has put together both a legal and financial team to handle a potential bankruptcy.
However, a new report from TechCrunch states that Fisker lost track of deposits that customers had put down on its EV. Some were located, but others were lost and Fisker was forced to ask the customers to either submit new checks for their vehicles or update payment methods so they could reobtain deposits.
Several employees talked about Fisker’s difficulty in keeping track of down payments, some of which covered the full cost of the vehicle, the report said:
“Checks were not cashed in a timely manner or just lost altogether. We were often scrambling to find checks, credit card receipts, and any wired funds a few months after a vehicle was sold.”
Fisker then initiated an internal audit, but PwC, an outside auditor, also asked the company for more documentation regarding its vehicle sales so it could put together its annual financial report. The company was reportedly unable to provide “satisfactory documentation.”
As a result of the misplacement of company funds and documents, Fisker was not able to accurately track how much money it had or how much revenue it had generated. The company delayed the submission of its annual financial report for 2023, as it stated earlier this year. It still has not filed this report.
Fisker is doing basically anything it can to keep its doors open. After stopping production of the Ocean EV earlier this month to attempt to stop the bleeding, it decided to cut prices of the vehicle by between $14,000 and $24,000 yesterday, bringing substantial discounts.
Not everyone is convinced that the move will work, especially Tesla, which has decided to halt the acceptance of Ocean EVs on trade-ins.
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