Okay, we’ve held off on publishing this news for the majority of the day, as we awaited some form of confirmation from our contact at Fisker->ke1074, but that confirmation didn’t come before a source reported it to Bloomberg.

Well, if you haven’t heard already, Fisker has laid off nearly 75 percent of its workforce, including its PR and communications team. This leaves only a skeleton crew of roughly 50 employees left over, most of whom are likely assemblers and upper-level executives.

This report comes on the heels of rumors that Fisker had secured attorneys to start the bankruptcy process. We cannot say that this shocks us at all, given the downward spiral that the EV builder has been in for the last year, or so. However, the fact that it all happened so quickly really makes us wonder if the company was in a lot worse shape than we were informed of when we gave Fisker the opportunity to clear the air and reintroduce themselves to prospective buyers.

We’ll keep an eye out for more details.

Fisker History

In 2007, Fisker was founded by Henrick Fisker and Bernhard Koehler with aspirations to rid consumers of the need to burn recycled dinosaur blood. In 2008, Fisker rolled out its first prototype of the Karma at the North American International Auto Show.

After a two-year-long delay, Fisker finally launched the Karma to the public in 2011. Quickly following the launch, the issues started arising, as customers were complaining that the infotainment screen washed out with sunlight and that the “Stealth” mode allowed the engine to still kick on at random, thus negating any stealth.

After that came the big boy, as three Karmas went up in flames due to a faulty cooling fan. The blame was eventually (and rightfully) passed onto the fan manufacturer and the issue was resolved via a nationwide recall. Following that debacle, 338 Karmas were damaged during hurricane Sandy and 16 were completely destroyed because of a fire.

To make matters worse, Fisker’s DOE loan was frozen in the midst of all of these issues and its primary battery source A123 filed for bankruptcy. This lack of a battery resulted in Karma production grinding to a halt in 2012 and never restarting.