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Fisker to unveil its all-electric EMotion at CES in January

Back from the brink, electric carmaker Fisker says it will debut its EMotion sedan at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The EMotion is notable for several reasons, including its promised 400-plus miles of range, the ability to charge to 125 miles of range in just 9 minutes and its lidar autonomous technology. The car will also feature four butterfly doors and will be built with carbon fiber rims and a mixture of carbon fiber and aluminum in the body to save on weight. It's also the second go at building an EV for Fisker, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2013 after the Fisker Karma luxury plug-in hybrid fell flat. Fisker was sold in 2014 to Chinese auto supplier Wanxiang Group for about $149 million. And the EMotion can be yours for a cool $129,000. In fact, the company started taking pre-orders in June with a $2,000 deposit, even though the car won't come out until 2019. The EMotion is seen as a rival to Tesla, but CEO Henrik Fisker tells The Street he sees room for competition in the EV segment. "I don't think anyone is out to kill anybody," Fisker said. "Tesla doesn't really have a competitor. It doesn't look like one is going to emerge. I think it's time to move to a next level of this technology and I believe that we have come up with some real breakthroughs." Fisker also told The Street the company is simultaneously developing an affordable version of the EMotion, aimed to be priced around $34,000, that's due out in 2020. That's just a hair under the $35,000 base price of the Tesla Model 3. The veteran car designer first revealed the EMotion via Twitter in June. He told Autoblog recently that he's looking to buy an existing factory to build the car but hadn't yet chosen one, saying "We don't have to make a decision until the end of the year." The EMotion will be powered by two electric motors giving it all-wheel drive, lithium-ion battery packs sourced from LG Chem with a cooling system designed by Fisker that increases energy density. Related Video: Featured Gallery Fisker EMotion View 14 Photos News Source: The Street Celebrities Green Plants/Manufacturing CES Fisker Tesla Green Automakers Technology Emerging Technologies Autonomous Vehicles Electric Sedan Henrik Fisker

Got a Fisker Karma? Hack it for more driving options

We've already touched upon the ability to hack into the software of the BMW i3 battery-electric vehicle in order to change some of the preset driving modes. One of the issues there, though, was the risk of voiding the car's warranty. If you were do something similar to a Fisker Karma extended-range plug-in, the warranty thing probably won't come into play since the company went broke and is now, slowly being reborn. The hacking-inclined can access four new driving modes for the Karma, according to the Fisker community site Fisker Buzz. There's "EV mode" that simply depletes the battery regardless of how much fuel is in the range extender. "Sport mode" runs the battery at full power up until 60 percent state of charge (SOC). "Stealth mode" will hold any SOC and ER will increase the SOC to 90 percent full. If you'd like to watch blurry cell phone videos rather than read, there's an incredibly short YouTube clip above that apparently shows the driver accessing those additional drive modes. Poster PowerSource says that the new modes are turned on with a simple plug-in module: The enhancement will not modify any of the existing OEM software in the vehicle. Our solution is plug and play hardware that adds functionality. To put the vehicle back to stock you simply unplug the module, to add the functionality you simply plug in the module. Fisker does not have the capability to overwrite our software since its on our physical module. Fisker is in the process of rising from its bankrupt-induced ashes. The company went belly up in 2013, the year after it stopped making the last of its approximately 2,600 high-end Karmas. Last year, China-based Wanxiang bought out the company's assets for a tidy $149.2 million. And this year, the company is operating offices in Orange, County, CA, and is in the process of building a factory in Moreno Valley, CA, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Its new model will look a lot like the Karma but will be called the Elux. We're not sure how many drive modes it will have. Related Gallery 2012 Fisker Karma: Second Drive View 30 Photos News Source: Fisker Buzz Green Fisker Electric hacking software karma

Judge rules Fisker assets will be auctioned in February

The Fisker Automotive saga will continue until at least next month, now that a bankruptcy court judge has ruled that the automaker's assets will go up for auction in February instead of being acquired flat out by a Hong Kong investor. Wanxiang Group, which owns A123 Systems, is competing with Hybrid Tech Holdings LLC for Fisker. The judge says Hybrid Tech, which holds debt on Fisker, can't use any more than $25 million of that debt as part of its bid for the California-based automaker, according to Bloomberg News. Hybrid Tech is run by Richard Li, son of Li Ka-Shing, Hong Kong's wealthiest man, and the company bought Fisker's loan from the US Department of Energy. Fisker's line of credit from the DOE was originally for $529 million, but 'only' $192 million was drawn down before the government shut that spigot off. Wanxiang Group bid $25.8 million (plus assumed debt) for Fisker in late December, then increased its offer to $35.7 million earlier this month. Wanxiang Group acquired most of the assets of lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems in 2012, and Fisker has maintained that Wanxiang hastened Fisker's demise by holding off battery deliveries. Fisker shut down production of its extended-range plug-in Karma in 2012 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.