2023 Fisker Ocean One on 2040-cars

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VLF finally delivers first V8-powered, Karma-based Destino

The Destino idea has been bouncing around in Bob Lutz's head for a while, but in January things got serious when Lutz, Karma designer Henrik Fisker, and entrepreneur Gilbert Villarreal got together to form VLF. A few months later, Lutz says the first Destino is on its way to a customer, The Detroit News reports. As a reminder, the Fisker Karma ended up in foreign-ownership purgatory after the Fisker Automotive outfit hit financial troubles in 2013. That was around the same time we first heard rumblings about the Destino. As the Destino has evolved (and the company that builds it has changed names and relaunched itself), some things remain the same. There's still a GM LS9 supercharged V8 in it, best known as the engine at the heart of the C6 ZR1, driving the rear wheels. The Destino starts at $229,000, and it's on sale, well, now. Related Video: Featured Gallery VLF Destino View 12 Photos News Source: The Detroit News Fisker GM Automakers Luxury Performance Sedan corvette zr1 Henrik Fisker vlf automotive

Henrik Fisker: No 'final conclusion' yet in Foxconn deal

Two years ago, EV startup Fisker seemed to have hooked a giant when it announced a deal with Taiwanese iPhone maker Foxconn to build a sub-$30,000 crossover in the United States. It turns out that deal hasn't been finalized, according to comments Fisker founder and CEO Henrik Fisker made during an interview with TechCrunch. "In the Foxconn deal specifically, we don't yet have a final conclusion to this deal," Fisker told TechCrunch on the sidelines of an event in Huntington Beach, California, to showcase its future EV portfolio. While Henrik Fisker is still confident it will come together, his comments show just how precarious and complex automotive manufacturing deals can be. And considering Foxconn's history of backing out of other factory agreements, there's reason for some caution. The Foxconn-Fisker deal Foxconn and Fisker signed in February 2021 a memorandum of understanding agreement, with the goal of producing 250,000 vehicles annually. While it wasn't clear which vehicle Fisker might build with Foxconn, the automaker had said that it was working on the Personal Automotive Electric Revolution (PEAR) — an EV built for cities and urban environments that would cost less than $30,000. The Fisker-Foxconn deal came together relatively quickly following the announcement of the memorandum, and by May 2021, Foxconn and Fisker had a signed agreement, setting those expectations in writing. A few months later, Foxconn made a separate deal with EV maker Lordstown Motors that included buying its factory in Ohio and helping the struggling company manufacture its Endurance electric pickup truck. Fisker became a beneficiary of the deal when, in May 2022, the company announced it reached an agreement with Foxconn to build its PEAR EV at the Lordstown factory. But cracks soon formed in Foxconn's agreement with Lordstown Motors. Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy and has sued Foxconn for "fraudulent conduct," stating that the Taiwanese company had made a litany of "broken promises." Foxconn currently still owns the manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and Fisker says that plans to build the PEAR in the Lordstown plant are still on track. Foxconn is no stranger to scuttling done deals. The company withdrew from a $19.5 billion agreement with Indian company Vedanta last month. It also famously received a $3 billion incentives package to build a factory in Wisconsin that was supposed to create 13,000 jobs.

Fisker Ocean electric SUV rife with serious problems, internal documents show

On a typically sunny day in Los Angeles last June, Henrik Fisker choked up as he handed over his company's first all-electric SUVs in the United States. "I'm really kind of emotional about it, because we've been waiting two-and-a-half years for this, and everyone here has done a tremendous job," the founder and CEO said. The day had started on a celebratory note. Fisker, donning a graphic tee depicting the electric Ocean SUV, hugged and posed for photos with the company's first customers -- at one point even signing one of the vehicles. What happened next was a harbinger for Fisker and what his eponymous company continues to grapple with: Shortly after Fisker board member Wendy Greuel took delivery, her Ocean SUV lost power on a public road, according to two employees familiar with the matter. The company has confirmed the incident occurred, and said the issue with her vehicle was fixed. Two months later, Geeta Gupta Fisker -- the company's chief financial officer, chief operating officer and Henrik's wife -- took an Ocean out for a drive, only to have it suffer a similar fate, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch. Fisker also confirmed her vehicle lost power, blaming it on a compatibility issue with a special engineering data logger that is not in customer cars. In the months since, Fisker Ocean SUV customers have reported more than 100 separate loss-of-power incidents, the internal documents show. The company told TechCrunch it believes these problems are rare, and that it has resolved "almost all the issues" with software updates. Problems with the Ocean SUV, however, are not limited to the vehicle suddenly losing power, a review of nearly 200 documents shows. Customers have also reported sudden loss of braking power, problematic key fobs causing them to get locked inside or outside of the vehicle, seat sensors that don't detect the driver's presence and the SUV's front hood suddenly flying up at high speeds. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the braking problems, which Fisker claims it resolved. The company told TechCrunch that fixes for the other problems have either been implemented, or are coming in a "Version 2.0" software update scheduled to be released next week. Fisker launched the Ocean later than expected due in part to challenges with the SUV's software; the company spent much of last year making up for lost ground.