2023 Fisker Ocean on 2040-cars

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Fisker talking to 5 automakers, seeks production: 'We have 2 cars that are almost ready'

  BERLIN — U.S. electric vehicle startup Fisker is negotiating with five carmakers over a partnership to secure additional production capacity for its vehicles, its Chief Executive Henrik Fisker said on Thursday. "We have two cars that are almost ready. We can bring them to market fast — we just need the capacity," Fisker said, speaking to Reuters in Berlin. The CEO told Reuters in May he was exploring partnerships with everyone from suppliers to tech companies to scale up production. On Thursday, he said he was in negotiations with five "traditional car companies" and hoped to pick a partner in the coming months. The California-based startup has one vehicle on the market — an SUV called Ocean, being launched from a factory in Austria operated by a unit of Magna International. Two further models, a pickup and a smaller SUV, are due to be released by 2025. The SUV, called PEAR, will be built with Foxconn in Ohio, but further capacity is needed for both models. Production Fisker Pear View 26 Photos It has so far produced 5,000 units of the Ocean car, according to a September update. Still, it cut its annual production target in August and adjusted pricing in October as it grappled with a slowdown in electric-vehicle demand. The chief executive was confident the company was still on the road to profit, and said it would report a double-digit margin this year, in line with its annual forecast of an 8-12% gross margin for 2023. It is due to release third-quarter results on Monday, after reporting a loss of 25 cents per share in the second quarter.    

Bob Lutz predicts Fisker-based VL Destino will world's fastest sedan [w/video]

Ever look at an EV or a dedicated hybrid and wonder what it'd be like with a conventional, high-output V8 under the hood instead of all those batteries and circuit boards? Bob Lutz and Gilbert Villareal did when it came to the Fisker Karma. The result is the Destino from VL Automotive – a vehicle that Lutz says could be the fastest sedan in the world. The Destino was born like a phoenix rising from the ashes of Fisker Automotive and its shapely Karma – an aborted and very costly attempt at making a dedicated hybrid luxury sedan, undertaken by noted automotive designer Henrik Fisker. The project ultimately faltered, but Lutz and Villareal formed VL Automotive to pick up the pieces and put it back together. Only when they did, they got rid of the hybrid propulsion system and replaced it with the 6.2-liter supercharged LS9 V8 from the previous Corvette ZR1, mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. With 630 horsepower, a svelte shape and 1,000 pounds trimmed off the curb weight, the VL Destino is expected to top out at or around 200 miles per hour. According to Lutz in his article for Fortune magazine, that would make it "among the fastest four-door cars in the world," but in the accompanying video below, he goes even further to say that the the Destino "most likely will be the world's fastest four-door sedan." To claim the top honor, though, it'll have to vanquish the 204-mile-per-hour Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat – another four-door sedan with a supercharged V8 made by an American automaker... one over which Lutz used to preside, no less. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

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.