Fisker's Full-Force Comeback
After many years 's Henrik Fisker’s new electric car project is finally here, unveiled in full at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Get past those show-stopping ingress points however, and you find something that’ll give a certain electric car company something to chew on…
We must first discuss the looks. Henrik – famously responsible for the design of the Aston Martin Vantage and BMW Z8 – clearly hasn’t lost his touch. There are elements of his former hybrid motor, the Karma, and everything has been sculpted in the name of the tech underneath.
It’s built from carbon fibre and aluminium, and features elements designed around the LiDARs dotted at the front and rear of the car. The door handles are flush, operated via your smartphone. It’s big, too: 5m in length and 1.4m in height, around the size of a BMW 5 Series. The wheels are similarly huge: 24s as standard, on low rolling-resistance Pirellis.
Manage to open the doors, and you’re treated to ultra-soft leather, four-individual, fully electric and adjustable “first-class” seats, three driver-orientated screens, and much more including the option of a monster 27in curved rear screen and a five-seat configuration (basically a rear-bench).
The speed on offer is something else entirely. It features “multiple” electric motors on board, producing more than 575kW of power (or 780bhp) to all four wheels. This translates into a 0-60mph time of “less than” three seconds, and a top speed of 161mph. Any way you cut it, that’s fast.
The range? Fisker reckons on more than 400 miles. Those LiDARs also help it achieve up to level four autonomous driving capability, too.
It’ll be Made in America, at a location to be divulged during the second half of the year, though there’s no current word on prices.
There is word however, on Fisker’s other little project: a new solid-state battery. This is also being showcased at CES alongside the EMotion, and will offer two and a half times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries.
The showpiece of this tech? Fisker reckons “breakthrough technology will enable dramatically longer ranges of more than 500 miles on a single charge, and charging times as low as one minute”. Yowser.
This SuperBattery is scheduled for car use after 2020, though it might appear in phones as early as this year.
“With the EMotion,” explains Fisker, “we’re introducing edgy, dramatic and emotionally-charged design/proportions, complemented with technological innovation that moves us into the future. That design balance is what has made the Fisker brand emotionally connect with our consumers.”
And it looks sexy as ever:
