Fisker wants to use Volkswagen’s EV platform to power his electric SUV

Startup EV Fisker Inc. wants to power its first SUV with Volkswagen’s mass-produced modular electric vehicle platform, or “MEB,” and says it is in talks with the German automaker to do just that. In fact, the prototype SUV that Fisker Inc. unveiled at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show was built on the MEB platform.

Fisker Inc. exposed all of this in an investor presentation that came together ahead of its push to become a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, which the startup formally announced on Monday. The filing was one of many pages of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the publicly-traded company that Fisker Inc. plans to merge with Spartan Energy Acquisition Corporation, which was formed by investment firm Apollo Global Management.

Volkswagen announced the MEB platform in 2018 as part of its multi-million dollar push in electric vehicles. It consists of a modular battery that can be scaled to fit vehicles of different sizes, a motor and other electronic components, basically all the technical bases necessary to make an electric vehicle move. All of the upcoming Volkswagen ID branded electric vehicles are being built on the MEB platform, and it will also power certain vehicles from Volkswagen Group brands such as Audi, Seat and Skoda.

Volkswagen has said it plans to sell access to MEB, an idea that has already attracted Ford, which is going to build a commercial vehicle powered by the platform of the German automaker. But it is also open to partnering with startups. The first attempt, with Germany’s e.Go Mobile, fell apart after the small startup went bankrupt.

Now, the automaker is considering working with Fisker Inc., on the prototype of its Ocean SUV, which was built by the Volkswagen Italdesign subsidiary, apparently as proof of how much a startup can differentiate the design of a MEB-powered vehicle. .

“Volkswagen is still open to supporting small series projects that demonstrate the variety of conceivable concepts based on the MEB platform through its emotional appearance,” a Volkswagen spokesman said in an email to The edge. “In consultation with Volkswagen, the Audi Italdesign subsidiary has now used the MEB platform as the basis for the development of the Fisker Ocean SUV. However, a final decision on a possible cooperation with Fisker to implement a serial project has not yet been made. ”

A Fisker Inc. spokesman declined to comment.

Using Volkswagen’s MEB platform to power an affordable SUV would be an alternative for Fisker Inc., founded in 2016. Founder Henrik Fisker spent the early years promoting a luxury sedan and claimed he was developing a solid-state battery that would last. more and would be easier to build than the lithium-ion batteries that power modern electric vehicles.

Slowly but surely, Fisker’s plans for the solid-state battery slid further into the future, and finally prompted the company to develop the Ocean, a subscription-only SUV that would run on lithium-ion batteries.

Now, according to the investor’s presentation, it appears that the Ocean was “developed on” the MEB platform. Fisker Inc. says using the MEB platform will bring the ocean to market in “half the time and at substantially reduced costs.”

Fisker Inc. signed a memorandum of understanding with Volkswagen in November 2017 and a more developed “partnership agreement” in December 2018, according to the investor’s filing. A “fundamental agreement” is expected to be signed that would finalize costs, production capacity and a timeline in July 2020, according to the document, with a supply and manufacturing agreement to be signed in the second half of this year. If those deals are reached, Fisker Inc. anticipates building 50 to 100 pre-production cars by the end of 2021 and starting production by the end of 2022. Fisker Inc. has also been telling investors that it wants to build two additional vehicles on the Platform. MEB.

Electric vehicle startups have spent billions of dollars in an attempt to become the next Tesla, and many of them designed their own electric vehicle architecture along the way with the goal of licensing that technology to other companies or attract a buyer from the tech industry. .

However, few have accomplished something like that, with Rivian, which is building vehicles for Amazon and Ford based on its EV platform in exchange for billions of dollars of investment, with the most obvious exception being.

That launch becomes even more difficult when a company like Volkswagen is doing the same on a larger scale and at lower costs. While Volkswagen’s willingness to work with Fisker Inc. would be something of a life raft for a hopeful automaker who didn’t have a clear path to volume production, it could put even more stress on other startups struggling to survive.