Fisker Automotive Inc., the California-based maker of rechargeable cars, said it hired Evercore Partners Inc. to help find potential investors or partners as the automaker looks to raise more money.

“We’re looking for either a strategic partner or alliance,” Roger Ormisher, a Fisker spokesman, said Friday in a telephone interview. Evercore was hired in the first half of the year, he said. “It’s not true to say in any way that Fisker has any sort of wind-down, sale or bankruptcy plans.”

Fisker’s goal of becoming a profitable automaker from selling its $103,000 Karma sedan has been challenged by the bankruptcy filing in October of its sole battery supplier, A123 Systems Inc. That development halted Karma assembly, Chief Executive Officer Tony Posawatz said last month at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

The carmaker, based in Anaheim, California, has raised more than $1.2 billion in private money and will raise more, said Posawatz, who took over as CEO in August after retiring from General Motors Co. as vehicle line director for the plug-in Chevrolet Volt.

Fisker suspended work in February at its Wilmington, Delaware, factory, where it wants to produce its second car, the lower-priced Atlantic. The project stalled after a portion of $529 million in U.S. loans it received was cut off last year when it failed to meet sales and production goals for the Karma.

“The fundraising process never really ends,” Posawatz said, without elaborating.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the Evercore hiring.