2023 Fisker Ocean on 2040-cars

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Fisker Pear shows up in L.A. in video and pics

With the Fisker Ocean running down production lines at Magna's plant in Graz, Austria, Henrik Fisker has decided to let the Pear out the play. The Fisker Pear will be the second car introduced to the lineup, expected to happen sometime around late 2024. The CEO said he was going to take it out for a drive in L.A., and someone caught the hatchback crossing the new 6th Street Viaduct Bridge last Friday morning. This week, a prototype dressed in the same camouflage and bright green 22-inch Slipstream wheels was caught parked in an L.A. alley, giving us an even better look.  This one's dubbed a battery-electric city car for a global audience, its name an acronym for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution. Said to challenge cars like the Volkswagen ID.3 in international markets, the Pear is actually sized like a subcompact crossover. Length is given as 4.55 meters or 179.1 inches. That's 12 inches longer than the ID.3, 9.5 inches longer than the Chevrolet Bolt EUV, half an inch longer than the 2024 Chevy Trax. A series of patent application drawings at Fiskerati give glimpses into novel features, one of them being a drawer that emerges from the front fascia, the other being a hatch that partially disappears into the bumper. The steel chassis debuting with the Pear will eventually support two more vehicles. That platform can hold one of two batteries on offer, one for local city duty, and a Hyper Range pack with an estimated 310 miles of range. Fisker has announced a price of $29,900 for the base version with the smaller battery, but we imagine it's going to be hard to hold the line on that until the Pear goes on sale. The key to making it work is keeping the parts count low, and maximizing manufacturing efficiency. The automaker hired a production exec from BMW's South Carolina facility to oversee plans at the Foxconn facility where the Pear will be built, the target being 250,000 per year by 2025. Fisker wants the Pear to get Fisker Automotive to 1 million sales by 2027. Last we heard, Fisker said it had 5,000 reservations for the little guy. Now that it's out and about, we should see and learn more soon.

The Fisker Ocean's solar roof opens up in 'California Mode'

Henrik Fisker has pegged CES for the official unveiling of his upcoming Ocean SUV. The production prototype will make its public debut on January 7, 2020, with an intended launch in 2020. Leading up to the event, Fisker has been slowly dropping bits of information, and we've already seen nearly the entire vehicle. The most recent announcement showed off a new patented feature called California Mode, which at the press of a button can lower all the Ocean's windows and slide open its solar roof panels as well. In total, pressing the California Mode button moves nine different panels. The three windows on each side of the SUV go down, the rear hatch's glass drops into the body, and the two panels that make up the solar roof shift to open, as well. Fisker didn't release a video of the action, but it appears the front-most part of the solar panel overlaps the rear portion and both slide back. The photos take the opportunity to show that with the rear glass down, a surfboard could fit inside the car with only a small bit sticking out. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Fisker bills the Ocean as a pinnacle of sustainable automotive engineering. It runs purely on electricity and will have an estimated range of 250 to 300 miles. Parts of the SUV will use recycled materials and plastics, as well, to create a vegan interior. Fisker says the solar tech could potentially add up to 1,000 miles of range per year, although that really isn't much. The California-based company is also aiming to make the vehicle affordable and accessible. Fisker says the car will be available on a subscription basis with a starting price of $379 per month and no long-term contract. Reservations are open now for $250. We'll have more information and photos after the debut next month. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Why the $142M Fisker sale won't help DOE loan get its $168M back

At the beginning of 2014, it looked like Hybrid Tech Holdings LLC was going to buy the remains of Fisker Automotive for $25 million. Just before that sale was to take place, however, Wanxiang stepped in and an auction was therefore scheduled for the middle of February. After 19 rounds of apparently frantic bidding, Wanxiang drove away the winner with a $149.2-million bid. Despite the massive dollar run-up, the Department of Energy will not be recouping any extra money from its failed loan to Fisker in the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. Way back in 2010, the DOE made Fisker a loan commitment of $528 million but only ever gave the automaker $192 million before problems were identified and the ATVMP spigot was turned off. The DOE later said it "recouped more than $28 million from the company's accounts," which left $168 million unaccounted for. The DOE thus announced it would hold an auction for the remainder of Fisker's loan obligation, which was decidedly not all of the Fisker remains. That loan sale auction took place in December and was won by Hybrid Tech Holdings for $25 million, which means that the final cost to the DOE was $143 million. The important thing to realize is that the $25 million in cash that made up Hybrid's original bid for the rest of the Fisker assets in the February auction in a Delaware bankruptcy court were the apples to the oranges of the $25 million used to buy the loan obligation in December. Since the DOE did not control - and never wanted to control - the Fisker assets, the DOE didn't get to recoup any more of the $143 million that Fisker owed on the loan despite the higher-than-expected ending price. Clear as mud, right?