Fisker and Foxconn team on new EV with outsized ambitions

Fisker and Foxconn are teaming up on an an electric vehicle, with the EV-company and the manufacturing heavyweight aiming for go far beyond the niche production in the automaker's past. Codenamed Project PEAR – or "Personal Electric Automotive Revolution" – the goal is to make a more affordable EV that can hit the sort of sales numbers more commonplace among mainstream gas models.

Fisker is probably best known for its role in the style-forward Karma hybrid sedan, a project now being run independently by Karma Automotive. Plans rebooted, Fisker first unveiled the EMotion EV back in 2018, a striking luxury electric sedan with double-gullwing doors.

Production for that, though, was put on the back-burner, as Fisker turned instead to more affordable, mainstream fare. The Fisker Ocean is promised to be a sub-$40k electric SUV, with the car company inking a deal with auto parts behemoth Magna to build the plug-in. Manufacturing is expected to begin in Q4 2022, and even without a production-ready prototype shown – something Fisker says will happen later this year – there are apparently upwards of 12k paid reservations for the car.

One vehicle does not an automaker make, though, and so Fisker is looking to its next model. That'll be jointly developed by it and Foxconn, sold under the Fisker brand, and included as part of Fisker's Flexee Lease program. Foxconn will be responsible for manufacturing, bringing the same heft that powers iPhone production to automotive.

Project PEAR – details on which are scant, currently – will be "destined for multiple global markets" Fisker said today. Production is currently earmarked for Q4 2023, and it'll be the second EV in Fisker's range.

Fisker's ambitions aren't exactly low. The expectation is that it'll take just 24 months to develop the car, including research and development, and becoming production-ready. That's about half the time most automakers would expect to take. Foxconn hasn't been shy about its EV hopes in the past, either, already cutting deals with Byton and Fiat Chrysler in the past on electric vehicle technology.

"The key success elements of electric vehicle development include the electric motor, electric control module and battery," Young-way Liu, Foxconn Technology Group Chairman, said today in a statement. "We have two major advantages in this regard, with an exceptional vertically integrated global supply chain and the best supply chain management team in our industry."

Discussions are underway between the firms, with a formal partnership expected to be signed in Q2 2021. The two firms are aiming high, too, with projected 250,000 annual volume of the vehicle. Exactly what it will look like, cost, how much range it might pack, where it will launch, and other details are still in short supply: Fisker's design inspiration sketch would seem to imply a crossover of some sort, a sensible choice given the skew of sales right now toward that category.