but it would be neat to get a discussion rolling on some of the REAL reasons the car fumbled.
I know the car well. I've driven and worked on it. Fisker suffered from several problems. One was, Henrik Fisker was a designer, and not a man that should have been in charge of the company from the get go. What came out of that of course was that being the designer, he didn't compromise on design into production. The car sits on 22" wheels and the dash looks like something out of Star Trek. It literally went from concept to production with almost no changes. Everyone wants to own a concept car, this was a one chance to do so. The vision wasn't bad either, but the combination of some amount of mismanagement, with a drying up of funds, with a string of bad luck incidents did them in. One thing that really hurt them was that the loans that they counted on to move forward were pulled, a lot of it because of political pressure. It happened to both fisker and tesla, but Elon Musk was a more shrewd business person with more means and handled it better than fisker was able to. Then there were things like their main battery supplier, A123 systems that broke contract and was not able to supply what they had promised. They went belly up. There were incidents where cars got flooded sitting in a port by Sandy. A long string of cause an effect things. The loan promised them became more stringent because of political pressure. Because of that, fisker was forced to introduce cars to market earlier than they should have been, in order to not lose funds. The then half-baked cars presented issues, which got an incredible amount of media attention because electric car companies in general are political ping pong balls besides being car companies. They do in fact have many more hurdles to jump over because there is a contingent that has no desire to see their success. Right or wrong, it is there. Their road is difficult. The fact that Tesla managed to succeed in this area, is delivering outstanding cars, is an American company with American ingenuity is a miracle frankly, and the guys there deserve a lot of credit. Henrik Fisker was originally hired by Tesla to design their 4-door. Apparently, fisker stole a lot of information and technical knowledge, then left and created his own company. Tesla then sued him, and that too was one of the things they were dealing with. That's the word anyway, I am sure the details of the story no one truly knows.
As for the car itself, I was struck by two things driving it. How large it is... the arched front fenders and long low hood making the front feel like a coke bottle body corvette, and the rear visibility being compromised. The interior room also, was low compared to the cars of this size. Driving it around you may as well be a Hollywood celebrity, it made the attention my nsx gets seem like zero. The torque is amazing.... 1000 lb/ft... the car felt powerful and strong. Handling is sharp, especially for such a big car. Braking was good. It felt sporty for sure, just big.
The interior panels did come apart on me, and the dealer support was horrendous. The guys servicing the car were lost. 50% of the time the car would go in for one issue, and come out with two.
IMO, it was a good first effort but it needed work and baking time, something that with political pressure, there wasn't much of.
I guess at the end Elon Musk has the last laugh, because although he may have had some design stolen, he produced a car that was just picked as "automobile of the year" by motor trend, is being compared to good BMW 5 series and Jaguars that are NOT electric, and Fisker is done. There is a big difference in both cars, the fisker was a plug-in hybrid using a GM motor to recharge batteries, and tesla decided to do away with engines, exhausts, cooling and emissions, extra dead weight and lost room, and go 100% electric. That's a bold step, and IMO the right one. Hybrids play more to the fears of being stranded, but in reality, the way 98% of cars are used, it is a non-issue.
If you drive a Tesla, you will see it is really an INCREDIBLE car.
