Electric car startup Fisker claims to have made a breakthrough in battery technology so significant, that within five years its cars will travel for 500 miles and take just one minute to recharge. Aiming for a 2023 release date, Fisker is now filing patents related to a new type of solid-state battery. These batteries, the company claims, will offer 2.5 times the energy density of today's lithium-ion batteries, as used by all other electric car makers like a Tesla and BMW. Not only will the new batteries provide greater range and dramatically improved charging times over lithium-ion, California-based Fisker also says they have the potential to cost just a third of the projected price of lithium batteries. But it all went wrong!
Electric Fisker E-motion
Energy storage
The company says the electrodes of its new batteries could have 25 times more surface area than those of lithium batteries used today. Fisker claims to be addressing known problems associated with solid-state batteries, like reduced performance in cold temperatures, high manufacturing cost, and difficulty in producing them on the scale required by a car manufacturer - even one as small as Fisker. This breakthrough marks the beginning of a new era in solid-state materials and manufacturing technologies...We are excited to build on this foundation and move the needle in energy storage.
Electric Fisker: 500 Mile Range, One Minute Recharge By 2023
These are bold claims, especially as they come from a car manufacturer with a troubled past. Owned by Henrik Fisker, the company produced a plug-in electric hybrid sports car called the Karma in 2011. But it sold poorly, causing the US government to freeze a $200m loan due to Fisker not reaching promised milestones. Then, several customer cars set fire and were destroyed. Fisker's situation then went from bad to worse, as a Karma broke down just as Consumer Reports began testing it, then a shipment of 330 Karmas was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and Tesla successfully sued it for $1.1m. Fisker disappeared in 2012, having sold just 2,500 cars. Now - and this is where it gets confusing - Henrik Fisker has a new company, called Fisker, which plans to produce an electric sports car called the Emotion, pictured above and to be launched at CES. It will cost from $130,000, have a claimed 400-mile range and reservations can be placed now. Meanwhile, a new company called Karma is working on a new version of the original Fisker Karma, called the Revero, but the two companies - Fisker and Karma - are not related.
Unfortunate for Fisker, it all went different or do we have to write wrong. Watch the Video below:
Electric Fisker: 500 Mile Range, One Minute Recharge By 2023
Henrik Fisker delays his luxury sports car and announces ‘mass-market’ electric SUV
The new car will start under $40,000 with ‘close to’ 300 miles of range.
Henrik Fisker, the man behind the ill-fated Tesla-challenging Karma hybrid sports car and current CEO of Fisker Inc., has announced a new electric SUV with “close to 300 miles” of range that will start “below $40,000.” The car, which is the second that Fisker Inc. has announced, is due in the back half of 2021. It will also be the first of three mass-market electric vehicles, according to the company, though Fisker Inc. didn’t mention specific production or sales targets.
EMotion
The company’s first car — the all-electric luxury sedan known as the EMotion — has been delayed, though. Originally meant to ship at the end of 2019 or early 2020, it now won’t be released until after this new mass-market car hits the road, in part because the company’s futuristic solid-state battery technology isn’t ready for commercial release.
SUV from Henrik Fisker
Fisker Inc. didn’t announce a name for the new car, but it shared a few details for interested customers to chew on over the next two years. The SUV will use a battery pack with at least 80kWh of capacity, and the near-300 mile range will be available on the lowest-cost option, suggesting the car could be optioned up above that target. (That would give it an edge over the entry-level Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, which hover around 220–230 miles.) The car will also be available in single or dual-motor configurations.
Fisker Inc.’s first mass-market car will also offer the ability to create an “extended open-air atmosphere” at the 'touch of a button', though a representative for the company said this doesn’t mean it will be a convertible.
Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8
Henrik Fisker, who is responsible for the design of cars like the Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8, started Fisker Inc. in 2016, just three years after his previous company (Fisker Automotive) went bankrupt due to the failure of the Karma. Fisker Inc. showed off a near-final version of the EMotion at CES in 2018. (Meanwhile, the Karma has been reborn post-bankruptcy as the Revero after a Chinese company bought Fisker Automotive’s assets at auction.)
Fisker & Tesla
Like its predecessor, Fisker aimed the EMotion at the same high-end section of the market that Tesla targets with its most expensive cars. It’s reminiscent of the Karma, but it’s supposedly more technologically advanced: it’s got technology built in that Fisker says will one day support highly automated driving, there are three touchscreens on the dashboard, and he claimed it will have 400 miles of range, thanks to a solid-state battery that his company is developing. It also has four wild gullwing doors that make the Tesla Model X’s two Falcon Wing doors look conservative.
Fisker's Karma
Fisker was proud of the Karma’s ostentatious nature when we spoke to him at CES 2018. “Maybe the norm is to start out with an SUV like all these other luxury startups,” he said at the time. “Maybe the norm is conventional doors. We made some unique doors here. We wanted to do something not traditional, to show what kind of a brand we are. And we are a brand that’s nonconformist.”
But now the company will start out with an SUV. The EMotion won’t ship until after the mass-market car showed off, meaning at least 2021. “The previously unveiled Fisker EMotion luxury electric sedan, the brand’s low-volume flagship model, will now be introduced to the market after an affordable model becomes available,” the company wrote in a statement. “As the ultimate symbol of future emerging technologies, the high-end EMotion will retake the stage as patented Fisker Solid-State Battery technology becomes ready for vehicle application and commercialization. More information and timelines will be released at a later date.”
EMotion's solid-state battery pack
Fisker has made some bold promises about the solid-state battery tech his company is developing. He’s said the company’s battery packs will take a fifth of the time to manufacture compared to lithium-ion packs used in all other EVs. He claims they will be twice as durable as current packs with the ability to live through twice as many charge cycles, and he has said they’d be ready to go in time for the EMotion’s originally planned release.
All of this flew in the face of what most battery experts think about the timeline for commercially available solid-state technology. Now, with the new delay announced, it appears Henrik Fisker will have to wait a few more years before he gets another chance to take on Tesla.
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