Henrik Fisker has designed some beautiful luxury cars during his career, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage and (of course) the original Fisker Karma. After declaring bankruptcy nearly four years ago, Fisker Automotive has been working on a strategy to reenter the market as a pure EV for quite some time. Teasing the public over the past few months, their new car has finally been fully unmasked ahead of schedule.
Financial hardships, partly related to the closure of its battery manufacturing partner, caused Fisker to close its doors in 2013. The following year, Fisker’s assets were sold off to a Chinese firm and the luxury automobile manufacturer was rebranded in 2015 as Karma—the same name as Fisker’s original model, which was purchased in the sale. Karma then re-branded the Fisker Karma as the Revero, and hiked up the price.
Today, Henrik Fisker posted a photo to twitter of the EMotion fully built and on the road—something that isn’t always seen with concepts ahead of an announcement. It makes bold claims about having a 400-plus mile range and a nine-minute charge time to reach a range of 125 miles, despite deciding not to utilize supercapacitors in its charging system.
At $130,000, the EMotion is not cheap. But for a mere $2,000 (only 1.5 percent of the purchase price), Fisker will gladly take a deposit on an EMotion of your own. This all comes with a risk, as the technology which Fisker claims to have in the EMotion (fast charging, long range) has yet to be secured in any mass-produced electric car. Fisker also claims autonomy via LiDAR, though no introduction to how well its ability to handle autonomous driving has been made.
Regardless the car looks very futuristic. Its flowing body lines sweep across the chassis and its face looks like a child who’s sucked on a lemon for too long. The car looks great, but until its fully revealed, we don’t have a clear picture of what’s hype, and what’s real.