Henrik Fisker

Henrik Fisker (born 10 August 1963)[1] is a Danish automotive designer and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California, US.

[3][4] As a young boy he became interested in cars after seeing a Maserati Bora on the highway, and soon started sketching designs in notebooks.

[3][5][6] In 1989, Fisker began working at BMW Technik, the company's advanced design studio in Munich.

The car combined design elements from the company's past with a modern look, paying homage to the BMW 507 (produced from 1956 to 1959).

[citation needed] Fisker also worked on the design of BMW's first SUV, a mid-size luxury crossover introduced in 1999, the X5.

[9][10] From 1999 to 2001, Fisker was the president and chief executive officer of Designworks, a BMW industrial design studio headquartered in Newbury Park, California.

[11] Fisker left BMW for the Ford Motor Company in 2001, where he served as design director at Aston Martin.

[2] In 2008, Fisker raised over $90 million from investors including venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

[25] In September 2009, Fisker Automotive was awarded a $528 million loan guarantee by the United States Department of Energy (DOE).

[27] The loan facility was frozen at $192 million in February 2012, after the DOE claimed that Fisker missed its milestones.

[40] Based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, VLF is the successor to VL Automotive, which was launched in 2013 and led by Villarreal and Lutz.

[49] On 8 July 2020, Fisker announced the completion of a US$50 million Series C financing round funded by Moore Strategic Ventures, the private investment arm of Louis Bacon.

[50] On 13 July 2020, Fisker announced that Fisker Inc. would offer an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp., which is backed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

The company is publicly listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker (NYSE:FSR).

An arbitrator ruled in their favour in November 2008, finding "overwhelming" evidence showing that Fisker did not do anything wrong.

[60][61] On 4 January 2016, Fisker filed a suit against Aston Martin and three of its executives for US$100 million in damages for civil extortion, claiming that his former employer was trying to prevent him from unveiling his new luxury sports car hybrid, the VLF Force 1 V10, at the 2016 North American International Auto Show.

Aston Martin subsequently stopped threatening to interfere with the development of the Force 1, and the matter was resolved in April 2016.

A 2012 Fisker Karma