After Ocean, Fisker to launch an ‘Extreme’ Sports Crossover

This week, Fisker Automotive announced its new global headquarters to be located in Los Angeles County, California, where Henrik Fisker, chairman and CEO, says 100 more employees are planned to join the electric car maker by end of this year.

The new HQ will enable the company “to take a vehicle from a sketch to launch in an environment that is consistent with our asset-lite, digital-first philosophy”, Fisker said. The announcement of a headquarters comes on the back of the company announcing its engineering and research center in San Francisco last month.

The aggressive build up of the company is inline with their planned portfolio expansions, to a four-vehicle range by 2025. In addition to the Fisker Ocean electric SUV, planned to enter production in the fourth quarter of 2022, Fisker confirmed it will make a super-sports sedan based on the EMotion concept, an “extreme” sports crossover and a new Fisker pickup truck described as a “segment changing lifestyle” pickup truck.

Fisker did not go into the details, but said each vehicle will be delivered utilizing “durability-tested” platforms, battery packs and components from “industry-leading” technology supplies and automotive firms. And on October 15, 2020, Fisker announced this partner will be Magna International Inc, which will provide the EV architecture for the potential, upcoming Fisker electric cars and SUVs.

The announcement added that Magna will manufacture the Ocean electric SUV at its European vehicle assembly plant. Magna’s EV architecture combined with Fisker’s intellectual property will see an “aluminium intensive” platform called ‘FM29’.

With this announcement, Henrik Fisker confirmed that the starting price of the Ocean SUV will be USD 37,499, as promised earlier. Initially, manufacturing will exclusively take place at Magna’s European facility. The Fisker extreme sports crossover would have to share its underpinnings with the Ocean SUV if the company wants to leverage scale, and ease production, as parts commonality generally results in different vehicles sharing the assembly line, which works towards cost reduction.

On October 20, Henrik Fisker wrote on Twitter that it was starting the design on its second vehicle, which would launch “shortly after the Ocean.” Fisker did not specify the vehicle, and our guess is that he is talking about the ‘Extreme’ crossover. Like the Ocean, expect an optional full length solar roof in the next car.

At the end of July 2020, Fisker had 7,062 reservations for the Fisker Ocean, whereas it set a target of 5,000. The Ocean electric SUV has a starting price of USD 37,499 (excluding incentives), and its 80 kWh battery is claimed to offer 250-300 miles of range.

In July this year, Fisker announced it was in advanced talks with Extreme E, a new electric off-road motor racing championship due to start in early 2021. The five-race global event is announced to take place through arctic, desert, glacier, coastal and rainforest terrains, and the learnings from this motorsport event could translate into Fisker’s future extreme sports crossover.

The production Fisker Ocean will debut at the 2021 LA Auto Show In May and go on sale in the US in Q4 2022. The company has also announced that it will call its new global HQ ‘Inception’ and open a European HQ named ‘Matrix’ in Munich, Germany.