#FiskerInc

Despite having never manufactured a single production model, Fisker Inc. is a company reportedly worth billions. On Thursday, the prospective automaker indicated that it was ready to see how much more it could get via an announcement that it had officially completed its business combination Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp — a special purpose acquisition company — and was ready to be publicly traded.

Better call your broker.

Listen, if we could explain to you why technology firms with no product lineups or revenue sources are eligible to receive cash enemas from the stock market, we absolutely would. But the amount of mental gymnastics required to rationalize an answer has surpassed what your author can entertain without risking his own sanity. Special purpose acquisition companies (aka SPACs or “blank check” firms) have exploded in popularity and allowed dozens of businesses going public to rake it in via reverse-mergers this year. Whether it’s economic voodoo or sheer madness, it has become the status quo for IPOs seeking to raise insane amounts of money.

Fisker Inc. is reportedly in talks to go public after seeing how well other electric vehicle manufacturers (prospective or otherwise) have performed on Wall Street this year. In case you missed it, Tesla became the most valuable automaker on the planet this summer, while startup Nikola saw its shares explode through the ceiling ⁠— despite having never manufactured a single product for purchase.

It seems like complete madness, so it aligns perfectly with just about everything else that’s happened in 2020.

The Fisker Ocean electric crossover debuted in Los Angeles over the weekend. Company founder Henrik Fisker claims the model will be competitively priced (for an electric), starting at $37,499. There’s also a subscription service, priced at $379 per month with a $3,000 down payment. Customers receive an allowance of 30,000 miles a year as well as “free” servicing, maintenance, and (presumably) insurance.

Considering Fisker’s track record, having a sales model that allows customers to invest a few grand upfront and cancel at any time might help the Ocean’s take rate. The Fisker name is now synonymous with underdelivering. Poor corporate decisions, combined with plenty of bad luck, ultimately forced the first iteration of the brand to cancel production of the Karma hybrid. Fisker Automotive declared bankruptcy in 2013, with Fisker Inc. emerging in 2016 with more mainstream aspirations.

Fisker recently announced plans to debut the first of three affordable electric vehicles it wants to sell. The model, which founder Henrik Fisker said would be an SUV named Ocean, is scheduled to land on the North American market in 2021. “More info” is coming on November 27th and a near-production prototype is supposed to manifest in January.

The EV was originally supposed to appear in December, making this a modest delay. Normally we wouldn’t bat an eyelash at such a meager postponement, but Fisker has a poor track record for delivering on its promises.

Back when the company was still Fisker Automotive, it was building the Karma. Unfortunately, luxury plug-in hybrid didn’t sell and was plagued with quality issues. This author only recalls seeing one Karma outside of automotive trade shows, parked clumsily at a Massachusetts golf corse during the 2014 PGA Tour. While there were plans for the company to eventually build the more-practical Atlantic with help from BMW, things did not pan out.

Everyone’s favorite Danish designer has put his plans for an electric performance sedan on hold, turning his attention instead to an affordable, mass-market electric SUV.

Half a century ago, the foremost automotive trend was ordinary family cars stuffed to the gills with huge, fuel-sucking V8s. Today, if you’re not planning a bland, long-range EV with a liftgate and a somewhat sensible price, you’re nobody. Henrik Fisker doesn’t want to be a nobody.

Fisker, now called Fisker, Inc. after the company Henrik Fisker originally created fell into bankruptcy, is going after the luxury EV market for a second time. Don’t let past money troubles worry you too much, though. Even Henry Ford filed for bankruptcy twice before forming the company that build the Model T.

Instead, let your fears stem from the questionable build quality of the Fisker Karma, which faltered on the market in 2012. Because the new model, dubbed the EMotion, appears to be a rehash of the old formula with its ambitions set much higher. Offering self-driving abilities, an impressive electric range, an extravagant design, and some of the market’s most desirable infotainment functions, the EMotion is either a trumped-up prototype or the absolute pinnacle of electric luxury sedans.

Auto executive and hypeman extraordinaire Henrik Fisker has trickled out details and images of his upcoming electric supercar, the EMotion, but the details simply raise more questions about the vehicle and its technological feasibility.

Eye-rolling name and marketing buzzwords aside, the CEO of the newly formed Fisker Inc. has laid bare the basic abilities of the vehicle, which is expected to debut next year. Boasting a predicted range of 400 miles, the EMotion’s long legs and claimed top speed of 161 miles per hour all depend on a cutting edge technology that some experts say is flawed — at least for use in electric cars.

Fisker, always the optimist, claims this isn’t a problem.

Whenever you hear the words online reputation management, two underhanded marketing activities should immediately come to mind.

The first: fake reviews. There are agencies that exist solely to place fake reviews on sites like Yelp, DealerRater, and Google Reviews to increase a business’s overall rating. For a great example of this, see Bark M.’s piece on Orlando Kia West.

The second reputation management tactic is to, again, hire an agency to place comments from fake readers in article comments that cover topics related to a particular business.

It’s this second tactic we are going to discuss today.

Fisker is no stranger to controversy and bad press. However, much of the automotive press is more than willing — more than happy, even — to give Henrik and his new company a “get out of jail free” card as it covers the new Fisker Inc. Yet, a small subset of the media exists to find the real story behind the press release and we’re more than willing to offer up the bad news with the good.

Fisker or another actor (who we’ll get to in a moment) is trying to make those professional opinions irrelevant by any means necessary. And they’re using — wait for it — an Indian online reputation management company to lift its own corporate profile and wage a proxy war against Karma Automotive, the same company Henrik founded as Fisker Automotive in 2007.