In addition to Tesla’s share price, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has made another sacrifice: Henrik Fisker’s account on the popular social media platform.
The @henrikfisker account, used by Danish car designer and CEO of Fisker Inc, disappeared shortly after Twitter announced it was accepting a $ 44 billion buyout from Elon Musk.
In a tweet on Monday, Henrik Fisker said his 86,000 followers should search for him on Instagram for future updates, without giving further details. Shortly afterwards, his Twitter account returned an error message that read “This account no longer exists” – it still exists at the time of writing.
Fisker did not say explicitly whether he had deactivated or deleted his Twitter account, but in an Instagram post on April 26, he provided more details about the move.
“I believe 100% in freedom of speech. But I don’t want my freedom of speech to be actively managed or controlled by a competitor. And I don’t want a competitor to determine how my followers experience Fisker as we grow our company.”
However, Fisker Inc’s Twitter account, @fiskerinc, is still available on the platform; has about 43,500 followers.
Looking at comments on Fisker’s Instagram post (and some of the earlier posts), it seems that most of his followers disagree. Several of them, who claimed to be Fisker’s investors, described the move as childish and said they could not understand how Fisker could leave a platform that gave him and the company significant exposure.
Elon Musk and Henrik Fisker have had a difficult relationship for more than a decade. The designer was contracted by Tesla in 2007 to help with the early design of the Model S. He left the launch of the EV shortly thereafter to develop the Fisker Karma hybrid sports sedan. This sparked a lawsuit by Tesla for allegedly stealing confidential information. Henrik Fisker eventually won the case in arbitration.
Fisker Automotive, the company he founded in 2007, filed for bankruptcy in 2013; its assets – excluding the Fisker logo and trademarks – were purchased by China’s Wanxiang Group in 2014. The new owner renamed Karma Automotive and continued to use the assets acquired by Fisker. With minor changes, Henrik Fisker’s design is still on the market today as the Karma GS-6.
In 2016, Henrik Fisker launched another electric vehicle company called Fisker Inc, which plans to begin production of its first model, the Ocean SUV, in November 2022.
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