Famed automotive designer Henrik Fisker, whose previous electric car venture shut down back in 2013, will be making his return to the industry with a new company that will launch next year.
Fisker, known for his designs of vehicles such as the BMW Z8, Aston Martin V8 Vantage and Aston Martin DB9, created Fisker Automotive in 2007. The company was a rival to current leader Tesla Motors in the then fledgling luxury electric vehicle market, but it folded to bankruptcy after six years.
It was said that during its lifetime Fisker Automotive spent $1.4 billion, sourced from investments from the private sector and from loans given by the Department of energy. However, the company was only able to manufacture below 2,000 electric vehicles by 2012, and by 2013, it had declared bankruptcy.
Some assets of the failed company were acquired by China-based Wanxiang Group, which renamed the firm into Karma Automotive. This was the company that relaunched the Fisker Karma as the $100,000 Karma Revero last month.
Fisker will be looking to carve out a battery story for the new company that will be taking form next year, named Fisker Inc. It will also have a subsidiary focused on batteries, named Fisker Nanotech, and will have no affiliation with Karma Automotive.
"Fisker Inc. will spearhead a revolution in electric cars that will disrupt the electric vehicle market and change the world," Fisker said in a statement, adding that with the maturity of electric car technology and its market will be the factors that will aid in that mission.
Alongside the announcement of the new company, Fisker also revealed an upcoming high-end electric vehicle and its mass-market model. According to Fisker, the new car will have a battery that utilizes graphene to reduce charging time and offer longer range compared with all other batteries in the market, with the technology developed by several UCLA professors who have focused on energy storage research.
The new Fisker electric car, which has not yet been named, will offer a full-charge range of more than 400 miles with more headroom and rear legroom compared with other electric vehicles in the market.
He did not specify when production on the vehicle will begin, though he did say that the high-end model will challenge the Tesla Model S while the mass-market model will challenge the upcoming Tesla Model 3.
According to Fisker, the high-end electric vehicle will be the spiritual successor of the Fisker Karma, which was launched by Fisker Automotive in 2012.
