Obrist, the Austrian design company famous for ripping battery cells out of a Tesla Model 3 and bolting a gas engine right into the frunk, is insolvent. Three companies in the Obrist Group are insolvent with mixed financial obligations of regarding EUR 31 8 million, or approximately $ 37 million.
The business spent over a decade pitching its “HyperHybrid” variety extender as the smarter different to battery-electric vehicles. It never ever obtained a single production lorry from it.
2 closures, no rescue
The Feldkirch Regional Court in Vorarlberg opened insolvency process at the end of September for Obrist Powertrain GmbH and Obrist Technologies GmbH, both based in Lustenau. The companies submitted the requests themselves, according to Austrian lender protection group AKV.
Obrist Powertrain, the unit behind the HyperHybrid, owes about EUR 18 85 million to 34 creditors. It was to 9 staff members. Obrist Technologies, which held the group’s licenses for methanol production and CO 2 capture, owes about EUR 6 08 million to 10 lenders and had no staff left at all.
A third company, Obrist DE, the group’s German sales and advancement arm in Lindau, is additionally insolvent with regarding EUR 6 8 million in liabilities, according to ORF Vorarlberg
There’s no restructuring plan. Both Austrian firms informed the court that neither proceeding nor restructuring was feasible, and they consented to close down quickly.
The parent business, Obrist Engineering, isn’t component of the filings. It makes air-conditioning and thermal management components and has around 30 staff members.
Creator Frank Obrist criticized years of high growth expenses, stopped working talks with investors, and the crisis in Europe’s car market. AKV noted one more factor: European automakers changing to fully electrical lorries.
The “worst Tesla ever”
We first covered Obrist in very early 2020, when it revealed its Design 3 -based “Mark II.” The company shrank the battery pack to 17 3 kWh, stuck a 40 kW two-cylinder gas generator in the frunk, and claimed 1, 000 km (621 miles) of total variety. We called it the worst Tesla ever
At the time, Obrist asserted it had already certified the powertrain to an unnamed “worldwide partner” which production autos with the system would arrive by 2023 It likewise declared the system would certainly cost regarding EUR 4, 500 at volume and can reduce the price of a Model 3 by over half.
That companion was never called. No auto ever before delivered. We kept seeing these individuals at auto shows across Europe, but they never ever appeared to have greater than demonstrations.
In 2022, Obrist came back with a Version Y model working on artificial methanol it branded “aFuel.” The pitch progressed from cheap hybrids to “climate-positive” driving: the company asserted the car removed 24 grams of carbon monoxide 2 from the ambience per kilometer because part of the caught carbon utilized to make the fuel would be hidden underground.
And the claims kept expanding. In 2024, Obrist introduced a partnership with an Abu Dhabi-based fund and stated an investment “in the double-digit billion-euro range” was secured for methanol plants in Namibia, Egypt, Thailand, and the United States. It then pitched “gigaplants” costing $ 18 6 billion each, asserting the globe would need 2, 700 of them, approximately $ 50 trillion, to replace fossil fuels.
Lobbying for the engine
Obrist also invested years lobbying Brussels to reconsider the EU’s 2035 restriction on brand-new burning vehicles. In late 2024, it suggested that a HyperHybrid would produce 85 % much less CO 2 than a similar battery-electric automobile and called the innovation a prospective “lifeline for the European automotive industry.”
The EU has already set on combustion more than as soon as, from the e-fuels exception Germany secured in 2023 to the Compensation’s proposal late in 2014 to soften the 2035 target. Policy relocated Obrist’s instructions. It didn’t help.
Electrek’s Take
Variety extenders aren’t a stupid concept. EREVs are selling in big numbers in China, and several automakers are bringing them to The United States and Canada. If you want to argue that a tiny battery plus a generator makes sense for some customers, there’s a genuine situation.
But Obrist was never ever that firm. It was a licensing store with no client, constructed around a pitch that battery-electric vehicles were a blunder, and it maintained escalating the claims each time the previous ones stopped working to emerge. Production by 2023 developed into climate-positive methanol, which developed into a $ 50 trillion strategy to change fossil fuels. At some point, that quits being design and starts being a news release device.
And the important things Obrist was wagering versus simply kept improving. Battery rates dropped, EV variety went up, and the “variety anxiousness” trouble it was made to fix obtained smaller sized each year. Currently its very own bankruptcy declaring points out automakers going completely electric as one of the factors it failed.
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