Fisker, the American electric vehicle firm headed by former BMW and Aston Martin design supremo, Henrik Fisker, has provided a glimpse of a new four-door GT car which will, it says, have the longest range of any production EV on the market.
Unique doors
Dubbed Project Ronin, the GT was designed by Henrik Fisker, who also penned the BMW Z8 and Aston Martin DB9 (alongside Ian Callum), and the new car takes the shape of a low-slung coupé with a long bonnet and running lights integrated into the front bumper.
Project Ronin, which is named after the 1998 film Ronin, famed for its car chases, will feature active aerodynamics and a battery integrated into the vehicle's structure, the company says, the objective being to create a four-door GT capable of transporting four adults and their luggage.
Fisker says that Project Ronin will feature "unique doors for better ingress and egress", possibly counter-hinged like those seen on the Mazda MX-30 for example, or even something wilder like those featured on one of Fisker's previous four-door GT concepts, the 2017 EMotion which featured odd butterfly-style doors for front and rear passengers. The interior of Project Ronin will be, according to the firm, "luxurious", "sustainable" and "vegan".
Fisker's other cars
Fisker, in its current form, was founded in 2016 following Henrik Fisker's departure from the now-defunct Fisker Automotive which had produced the Fisker Karma, another four-door GT which was one of the world's first production plug-in hybrids. To date, however, Fisker Inc. has not begun producing cars.
Project Ronin will be, the company says, the third car to be produced by the company, following the Fisker Ocean SUV and the Fisker PEAR, a smaller electric crossover. The Ocean will, Fisker confirmed, go into production from November 2022 at contract manufacturer Magna-Steyr's facility in Austria and will go on sale in the US in 2023, priced at around $38,000 (€36,000). Fisker currently has in excess of 40,000 reservations for the Ocean, which, in some guises, the company claims, can manage up to 563km between charges.
Far less is known about the PEAR which stands for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution, though it is expected that it will be around the same size or a little shorter than the Volkswagen ID.4 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 given that it's due to be based on an EV platform developed by Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer which, among other things, builds products for Apple. Foxconn, it is reported, will build the Fisker PEAR in Ohio in the United States starting from 2024, though few other details about the car have been released - unusually, considering that reservations have been open since February.
When is Project Ronin due?
As for Project Ronin, production, Fisker says, will begin in the second half of 2024.
"The aim is to achieve the world's longest range for a production EV, combined with extremely high levels of performance," said Henrik Fisker.
"Project Ronin will be a showcase for our internal engineering, powertrain, and software capabilities."