How Fisker’s struggles will affect electric cars, investing and government support

Some of the most important feedback I got after publishing my long investigative piece on Fisker Automotive (A look under the hood: why electric car startup Fisker crashed and burned) was that many people thought that Fisker’s struggles were such an anomaly that they wouldn’t likely affect the broader market for electric vehicles. That was also the majority opinion from the recent survey (subscription required) we conducted for GigaOM Pro, our premium research service, on the fate and implications of Fisker’s downfall.

According to our survey of 108 respondents, almost 60 percent think that Fisker’s problems will not have much of an affect on the greater electric car market. As evidence, you can look at how sales of electric cars have been slowly and steadily growing (see our 4 charts), and Tesla plans to announce a profitable quarter on Wednesday.

A little less than a third of our respondents, at 29 percent, thought Fisker’s problems would have a modest effect on electric car sales. And only 4.7 percent of our respondents thought that Fisker’s struggles would greatly affect the electric car market.

Fisker chart

To see the rest of the responses to our survey, including how Fisker will affect government spending on cleantech innovation, as well as cleantech venture capital investing, check out the full report on GigaOM Pro (subscription required). The report is a 22-page report, highlighting our survey, and my analysis of what went wrong with Fisker. Survey respondents can get copies of the report complimentary — thanks for participating!

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