2023 Fisker Ocean One on 2040-cars

Auto blog

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.

Fisker creditors want a repayment do-over

In February, the Chinese company Wanxiang won control of Fisker Automotive at a bankruptcy auction for a final bid of $149.2 million. The sale meant that Wanxiang would now have to deal with all of the creditors claiming that Fisker owed them money. Those individuals and groups had a combined $1 billion in claims, and they're not happy with how the bankruptcy is shaking out. In April, a settlement was announced that would see those unsecured creditors get back pennies on the dollar. The unsecured creditors are telling the bankruptcy court that they want the judge to take away control of the bankruptcy proceedings from Fisker and implement a new repayment plan. The request was filed by a committee representing the creditors, which said it could have the new plan submitted in a matter of days, if the judge agrees with the request. The committee says there are "unreasonable demands" in the current repayment plan, such as a big paycheck for Fisker's chief restructuring officer, worth $750,000. If the judge allows the unsecured creditors to file a new plan, it will result in the "best possible outcome," the filing said. We admit we're feeling a bit confused and dragged along by the Fisker bankruptcy proceedings. And we're quite sure that the new owners have got to be fed up as well, since they're likely to be in a bit of a time crunch if the company's really going to re-start Karma production next year.

Fisker to team up with Apple supplier Foxconn to build future EV

Electric-car maker Fisker Inc said it will work with Apple supplier Foxconn to produce more than 250,000 vehicles a year from late 2023. This would be the second upcoming new Fisker vehicle, after the Ocean electric SUV, and would be jointly developed with Foxconn. Fisker’s shares jumped 23.4% to $20.10 in premarket trading on Wednesday. The deal, codenamed “Project PEAR” (Personal Electric Automotive Revolution), is looking at markets globally including North America, Europe, China and India, Fisker said. Foxconn, AppleÂ’s main iPhone maker, has ramped up its interest in electric vehicles (EVs) over the past year or so. Foxconn has recently announced deals with Chinese electric-car maker Byton and automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Foxconn aims to provide components or services to 10% of the worldÂ’s EVs by 2025-2027, and has been in talks with multiple car manufacturers for future cooperation, Chairman Liu Young-way said in October. The Taiwan-based companyÂ’s approach poses a major threat to established automakers that technology companies such as Apple and other non-traditional players could use contract assemblers as a shortcut to competing in the vehicle market. The EV space has been booming, with Tesla Inc still being the market leader. This week luxury electric-car maker Lucid Motors announced plans to go public by merging with a blank check company, even before regular production of its first model has begun. The recent run-up in valuations of several EV startups, including Nikola Corp and Lordstown Motors Corp, that have yet to produce saleable vehicles or meaningful revenue, has drawn comparisons to the dotcom bubble of 1999-2000, with analysts and investors expecting a near-term correction. Fisker said last year that Canadian auto supplier Magna International Inc would initially manufacture its first vehicle, the Ocean SUV, in Europe. The production is expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2022.