QOTD: Will Foxconn Make Fisker's PEARs?
Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Technology Group, announced that it signed a development and manufacturing agreement with Fisker. Foxconn is one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers and the producer of Apple’s iPhone.
The cryptocurrency of carmakers, Fisker has nothing to show for five years of existence. They’ve not produced anything in five years of existence, and they could be the most emotion-stirring, eco-friendly car company.
With Foxconn, Fisker might actually start and build the PEAR Project. PEAR is an acronym for “personal electric automotive revolution”. Like everything else from Fisker, they’re promising a ‘breakthrough’ EV.
Foxconn and Fisker are joint investors in PEAR, with each taking a share upon the program’s successful delivery. For not having a platform to now promising a new, lightweight one tabbed FP28, we’re wondering what expertise Fisker brings to this program, and to vehicle manufacturing in general.
“Our partnership with Foxconn and the creation of Project PEAR has taken shape with remarkable speed and clarity of vision,” Fisker Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Henrik Fisker said.
Fisker’s product development, sourcing, and manufacturing capability will be tested if they are to start building vehicles by the 4th quarter of 2023 as stated.
Likewise, Foxconn’s manufacturing expertise has been largely contingent upon their clients’ design capabilities. How that’ll play out with a carmaker who has never built Job 1 is anyone’s guess.
Fisker is hawking sales of more than 250,000 units annually, with multiple manufacturing sites. Manufacturing will start in the US, and grow from there, the company said.
Doing the math, Fisker said PEAR will start at less than $30,000, before incentives, $7.5 billion in gross sales. This would “Enable us to deliver industry firsts at a price that opens up electric mobility to the mass market,” said Fisker.
There are recognizable industry veterans working at Fisker. So I ask myself, are they on to something? I guess we’ll see. Two years and counting.
[Images: Fisker]
With a father who owned a dealership, I literally grew up in the business. After college, I worked for GM, Nissan and Mazda, writing articles for automotive enthusiast magazines as a side gig. I discovered you could make a living selling ad space at Four Wheeler magazine, before I moved on to selling TV for the National Hot Rod Association. After that, I started Roadhouse, a marketing, advertising and PR firm dedicated to the automotive, outdoor/apparel, and entertainment industries. Through the years, I continued writing, shooting, and editing. It keep things interesting.
More by Jason R. Sakurai
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Henrik Fisker remains a con artist, and Foxconn isn't as smart as they look. What a joke.
Never seen the word "hawking" used as a future sell. Surely the word needed here is hoping. You hawk what you got on hand to sell right now, and Fisker ain't got a darn thing. He knows SFA about manufacturing, the Finnish facility that turned out Porsche Boxsters did the detail work on the Karma, and made them. Fisker is a design stylist, and some say had far less to do with Aston Martin than he claims, not to mention work at other firms that never saw completion. Regards himself as a genius of course. What he has in spades is chutzpah. Give him a bottle of Dr Demento's Cure-All to flog off the back of a Conestoga wagon at a dusty town county fair in the 1880s, then you'd better have a big team filling empty bottles with elixir out back. Said elixirs were generally half alcohol and half oil of laudanum, opium in other words. By the time the customers woke up, the snake-oil salesman had left town. You never know, but I somehow feel this EV of his may actually hit the market. Foxconn has zero design or manufacturing expertise on cars, but there's dozens of Chinese firms who could be hired to do all that actual messy hands-on work. That would allow dear Henrik the opportunity to grandstand worldwide in the interim. (It always annoys me when a circus barker or other flake has the same name as a good friend! Mine is an ex-Mountie and the exact opposite of a flake, but Denmark figures in both Henriks' backgrounds)