Henrik Fisker’s Improbable Electric SUV Starts Rolling Off the Assembly Line

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Henrik Fisker rose around 5 a.m. Thursday to squeeze in a quick workout before making his way to a factory spanning the equivalent of more than 150 football fields. Hours later, camera crews captured an unlikely milestone made possible by the blank-check boom: The first Ocean, Fisker Inc.'s debut electric vehicle, rolled off the assembly line.

The SUV zips from zero to 60 miles per hour in as little as 3.6 seconds and is expected to offer up to 350 miles (563 kilometers) of range, a smidge more than Tesla Inc.'s Model Y. The hero feature inside: a 17.1-inch center touchscreen that rotates at the press of a button for more enjoyable binging of YouTube videos and streaming services.

It will be hard for the shows and movies that air on the Ocean's high-resolution screen to match the amount of drama that's played out over Henrik Fisker's 33-year career. There have been exhilarating highs — making a name for himself designing slick BMW and Aston Martin sports cars — and crushing lows, none more disappointing than when his first plug-in vehicle venture, Fisker Automotive, filed for bankruptcy nine years ago this month.

That blemish on his résumé made funding a follow-on car business difficult, at least for a few years. He and his wife and co-founder, Geeta Gupta-Fisker, were forced to stop collecting cash compensation from Fisker and furlough employees right before the outbreak of Covid-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020.

Then, something funny happened: Ventures with little or no revenue began generating enormous buzz by merging with special purpose acquisition companies and going public.

A month after electric-truck startup Nikola Corp. made its stock market debut and briefly exceeded Ford Motor Co.'s valuation, Fisker