- Fisker is being sued for almost $13 million by a German company that was hired to help engineer the Pear and the Alaska.
- The company, a subsidiary of Bertrandt AG, claims that Fisker stopped paying it in August 2023, and later put the projects on which it was working on hold.
- Fisker describes the lawsuit as being “without merit” and a “disappointing attempt” to extract payments and IP from it.
At this point, it’s become almost expected to hear about Fisker facing financial hurdles, a recent lawsuit from an engineering firm sheds light on the extent of the embattled automaker’s troubles. The lawsuit, related to work on the yet-to-be-released Pear and Alaska models, indicates that Fisker’s financial woes may stretch as far back as last summer
Fisker has been sued by the German engineering giant Bertrandt AG, which claims in a lawsuit that its subsidiary was hired to work on the upcoming Pear, an affordable electric crossover, in 2022. The contract was valued at over $35 million. However, in August 2023, the firm ceased receiving payments from the automaker.
Read: Fisker Warns Employees Of Mass Layoffs Within Two Months
Bertrandt claims that Fisker has failed to pay over $7 million in fees. Additionally, the engineering company asserts that Fisker’s alleged decision to halt development of the Pear and the Alaska (the firm also claims it was contracted to work on the pickup) constitutes a breach of contract. This breach has reportedly exposed Bertrandt to $5.8 million in “lost profits, delay costs, and incidental damages.”
In total, Bertrandt is seeking $12,919,443 from Fisker. The German company also states that on April 22, it requested the safe return of all its intellectual property and demanded that the automaker “certify in writing that Fisker had not retained any hard copies or electronic copies” of its IP. However, the EV startup failed to comply with this request.
“The lawsuit filed by Bertrandt is without merit,” Matthew DeBord, Fisker’s VP of communications, told TechCrunch. “It is a legally baseless and disappointing attempt by what has been a valued partner to extract from Fisker payments and intellectual property to which Bertrandt has no right to under the relevant agreements or otherwise.”
Bertrandt is just the latest Fisker collaborator to launch a lawsuit against the automaker. In early April, Corinthian Textiles sued the EV startup, claiming it was owed over $1 million in unpaid invoices and other fees from the automaker. Fisker is also being sued by employees over improper compensation.
The automaker is on the brink of bankruptcy, having hired a restructuring officer, and claims that without debt relief, it will not be able to continue operating much longer. While Fisker’s financial challenges became public knowledge a few months ago, these lawsuits suggest that the company’s financial difficulties may have begun earlier than previously understood.
