Fisker EMotion Revealed At CES 2018

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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.

Fisker E Motion at CES 2018

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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Steve Hanley

Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else The Force may lead him. He is proud to be "woke" and doesn't really give a damn why the glass broke. He believes passionately in what Socrates said 3000 years ago: "The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new." You can follow him on Substack and LinkedIn but not on Fakebook or any social media platforms controlled by narcissistic yahoos.

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