Here's my take on the main contributing factors to Fisker's undoing:
1) Neither Henrik nor Barny had ever run a division of a car company, let along a standalone car company, and had no experience in capital-intensive startups.
2) There was no quality system in place, and as a result they delivered the first cars before they were reliable and ready for customers.
3) No one at Fisker had any startup company experience, and didn't understand the need to handhold the first customers and make them successful with the product as it was going through its inevitable teething problems.
4) The founders believed their own hype, with hugely optimistic forecasts for how many cars would be sold, resulting in way too much capital committed to parts and inventory.
5) In order to avail themselves to less expensive capital, Fisker did the loan agreement with the DOE, prematurely committed to the Atlantic and the factory in Delaware, and got caught in the political maelstrom of the 2012 election.
6) They had a lot of bad luck, especially the 2 fires, the battery failure in the Consumer Reports test car and the cars lost to Hurricane Sandy.
Hard to survive with even a few of these factors in play, let alone all of them.
