What do you get when you marry a 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL
Coupe and a 1974 Lamborghini Countach with an electric powertrain and 21st
century technology? One of the zoomiest, swoopiest four-door sedans ever built
— the all-electric, 161 mile per hour Fisker EMotion. Henrik Fisker has been
touting the E Motion since last summer, but a pre-production version of the car
is finally someplace the public can see it and touch it — the 2018 Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The good news is the car you see is very much like the
concept car, complete with butterfly doors a là Lamborghini up front and
gullwing doors a là Mercedes in the rear. With all doors open, the Fisker
EMotion is definitely not your father’s Oldsmobile, or any other car you can
think of, for that matter. “The Electric Vehicle Renaissance has truly begun —
one that must be met with both timeless, yet futuristic form and
hyper-intelligent function, says Henrik Fisker on the company website.
At the top of it are these four keywords and phrases: 100%
Electric, Autonomous, 400+ Mile Range, and Ultra Charging. Those terms need
some explanation. First of all, the car is not production ready quite yet,
primarily because Fisker has no factory to build it in. According to Motor
Trend, the company expects to announce the location of the factory later this
year, with the first cars rolling off the line in 2019.
Well, maybe. Anyone who has been following the travails of
Faraday Future lately will know that promising to build a factory somewhere
someday is not quite the same as delivering finished cars to customers. Tesla
has been going through “production hell” with its Model 3 and it’s reasonable
to assume every other automotive startup will too.
Fisker Solid State EmotionAutonomous? That’s a stretch. In
all likelihood, Fisker hopes that autonomous driving technology will be ready for
primetime by the time the assembly line gets rolling. What level of autonomy is
unclear, although the car does have a prominent lidar sensor built into its
nose, making it look a bit like KIT from the TV show “Knight Rider.”
Range and charging capability are also pretty much pie in
the sky at this point. Fisker says his company has developed new solid-state
battery and supercapacitor technology
that will eliminate the conventional lithium-ion battery everyone else is using
and be capable of recharging in a few minutes. But in the meantime, while all
that gets sorted out, the car on display features a lithium-ion battery pack
sourced from LG Chem. No specs on that battery or charging times are available.
Once again, this appears to be more of a hope than a definite reality.
The interior of the Fisker EMotion has all the sumptuous
leather you expect from a car costing an estimated $130,000, and it features no
less than 3 touchscreens in front, with an optional fourth screen for rear-seat
passengers. Heaven forfend that anyone inside a car of the future should be
without entertainment for a second.
Henrik Fisker is an accomplished automotive designer and the
EMotion is certainly an emotional vehicle. In the end, it is a pricey bauble
for the rich to show off their wealth. If Fisker actually brings solid-state
batteries and supercapacitors to market, that will likely have a more
significant impact on the electric vehicle revolution than another 4 door
sedan, no matter how unusual those doors are.
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