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Karma Automotive
is laying off 60 workers at its Irvine, Calif., headquarters, just three months after cutting 200 workers, according to documents filed with the California Employment Development Department.
The Chinese-backed California-based startup filed the notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires employers to alert the state of mass layoffs. The WARN report was updated Wednesday.
It’s not clear if workers at the company’s Moreno Valley, Calif. assembly plant will also be affected by layoffs. Karma has not yet responded to a request for comment about the layoffs. TechCrunch will update this article if Karma responds. The
Orange County Register
was first to report the layoffs.
The layoff notice comes just a month after
several executive hires
at the company, including a chief revenue officer, a new vice president of strategy and vehicle line engineering and a head of supply chain.
Karma Automotive launched out of the the remnants of
Fisker Automotive,
the startup led by Henrik Fisker
that ended in bankruptcy in 2013. China’s Wanxiang Group purchased what was left of Fisker in 2014 and Karma Automotive was born.
It hasn’t been the easiest of roads for the company. Karma’s first effort, known as the Revero,
wasn’t received warmly
. The Revero GT, which has been described as the first fully conceived product under the Karma name, followed with better reviews.
Karma unveiled in November the Revero GTS and a new
electric concept car called the SC2
, just weeks after it laid off about 200 workers following a restructuring.
The SC2 is a big part of Karma’s restructuring and plan to reinvent itself as a technology and design incubator that supplies other automakers. The company’s new business strategy is to open its engineering, design, customization and manufacturing resources to other companies. The GTS and SC2 were meant to show automakers what it is capable of.
