The Fisker Pear will cost less than £28,000 when it’s launched in the UK, founder and CEO Henrik Fisker has said – although this has been delayed to 2025.
The Pear – whose name stands for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution – will be positioned below the upcoming Fisker Ocean in the American start-up’s range and is being designed to minimise cost.
Speaking at the Financial Times Future of the Car conference, Fisker said: “Our next vehicle will start probably under £28,000, and it will be quite radical. In fact, it’s so radical that we actually have to make some new production methods.”
The Pear will use a dedicated steel chassis designed to have 25% fewer parts than a conventional platform in a process that he dubbed “steel-plus-plus”.
It will also offer a bare-bones interior with “zero moving parts” – “we don’t have the typical centre console that you can open up, and the typical glove compartment, and all these types of things” – to free up budget for a large infotainment screen.
Fisker continued: “Today we see the buyers care about how big the screen is in the car and how connected the car is. They don’t necessarily care about some of these other typical automotive-related things.”
Key to this approach will be an on-board computer using fewer, more centralised ECUs.
Chief technology officer Burkhard Huhnke said in February that this approach reduces the material cost of the vehicle and “increases the performance drastically”.
Chief financial officer Geeta Gupta-Fisker said the Pear will be “driven by software, not hardware”, and Fisker today added that his firm’s staff roll comprises “more than 50% software engineers”.
Two battery sizes will be offered: one giving 100-150 miles of range, aimed at city buyers, and another giving 300-plus miles.