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Fisker’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy has hit a major snag, as the company buying the startup’s remaining fleet of electric SUVs says it might not complete the purchase because of a surprising technical issue.
The buyer, a New York-area leasing company called American Lease, says in a new filing that Fisker now believes there is no way to transfer the information connected to each SUV to a new server not owned by the bankrupt EV startup. Since American Lease needs that information to operate the vehicles after Fisker is dissolved, the leasing company has filed an emergency objection to the startup’s liquidation plan. Fisker was expected to have that plan confirmed in bankruptcy court as early as this Wednesday.
American Lease has already handed over “tens of millions of dollars” after the purchase agreement of the 3,000-plus Ocean SUVs was approved in July. These funds have been crucial because Fisker was using them to pay for the bankruptcy process. Fisker needed that money to keep itself alive long enough to settle its debts and also prepare to liquidate what it says is around $1 billion in assets that were, until recently, under control of an Austrian subsidiary that was going through its own insolvency process.
The new twist comes amid a hectic week for Fisker’s bankruptcy. Ahead of the hearing scheduled for Wednesday, multiple parties submitted filings that have surfaced new information. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s objection revealed that the agency is investigating Fisker. The Department of Justice filed an objection on behalf of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that claimed Fisker’s attempt to make owners pay for certain recall repairs is illegal. And the landlord to Fisker’s former HQ said the startup abandoned the premises in “complete disarray.”
American Lease says in its filing that Fisker first brought up the possibility that it wouldn’t be able to transfer the information to a new server on Friday, October 4, at 8 p.m. eastern time. And it says that this week, Fisker informed American Lease that it won’t be possible at all.
“[American Lease] cannot overstate the significance of this unwelcome news, conveyed to it only after it has paid [Fisker] tens of millions of dollars under the Purchase Agreement,” the leasing company’s lawyers write in the filing. “It is unclear at the present time what, if anything, Debtor representatives have known about the impossibility or impracticability of implementing Porting of the Purchased Vehicles, and when they learned or otherwise knew of that critical information.”
American Lease is asking to delay Wednesday’s hearing and be allowed to perform “expedited and targeted discovery” of Fisker and its representatives to find out more about when Fisker learned of this problem. A spokesperson for Fisker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
