Leans toward #TeamElon
Fox Business News had Henrik Fisker, founder of Fisker Inc., on its set today, ostensibly to talk about Tesla. Specifically, he was asked by host Stuart Varney whether he thought the California automaker’s CEO Elon Musk should “move away from his current role” to concentrate on being a “visionary.” While the designer-turned-auto-entrepreneur had some interesting things to say on the topic, we feel like the real meat of the 5-minute interview came somewhat later when Fisker quietly seemed to announce an important partnership.
First, Mr. Fisker’s view on the Musk situation. Musk is, as is often the case, in the middle of a number of controversies, one of which is about his continuing leadership of Tesla. If Varney thought Fisker was going to disparage the billionaire whose company once hired, then sued his design company, Fisker Coachbuild, he will have been disappointed. Instead, Fisker seemed to stand up for Musk’s leadership, saying, “If Henry Ford had of been replaced by a Joe Blah, then we probably wouldn’t have had Ford today and we wouldn’t have had an automotive revolution.”
That’s a pretty strong show of support, we think, but he summed it up better with a quick recounting of his own experience. “…I hired two CEOs and, in the end, I got the blame for the decisions they were making…”
But back to the buried lede. When discussing what Varney characterizes as a lack of demand for electric vehicles in the U.S., Fisker mentions the limited choice of compelling EVs below $40,000 “…we have gone forward and made a partnership with a large OEM to actually increase the volume of the electric vehicle parts…”
We have no confirmation which parts Fisker may have been referring to, but just the news of a partnership seems pretty significant. It could be they may share production of certain components or, more interestingly, this could be a supply agreement regarding the solid-state batteries the company is confident it will commercialize soon. It may be too soon for a deal on the latter, though, as we still haven’t seen the cells incorporated into a pack and implemented in a vehicle. However, he did tell us in a recent exclusive interview, that could happen as soon as this year.
Reaching out to Fisker today on Twitter and asking about the partnership, this writer was told: “We will announce more details later this year” (tweet below). Until then, what do you think about this potential deal? Would it give the startup the gravitas some feel the coming is missing in light of the executives earlier business failure, or are you still in the doubting Thomas camp?
We will announce more details later this year.
— Henrik Fisker (@FiskerOfficial) August 21, 2018
Source: Fox Business News via YouTube