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Post-bankruptcy, can Fisker make a comeback and compete with Tesla?

The founder of Fisker Automotive is starting a new company under the Fisker name. His former effort went bankrupt in 2013. 

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Damian Dovarganes/AP/File
The Fisker Automotive's Fisker Karma, a sports luxury plug-in hybrid car, at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles. The Fisker brand is attempting a comeback in the wake of its 2013 bankruptcy.

Henrik Fisker in October announced he was starting a new car company under the Fisker name.

His former effort, Fisker Automotive, went bankrupt in 2013, its assets later sold to China’s Wanxiang which used them to start the new company Karma.

The new Fisker is based in California and is focused on pure, battery-powered electric cars, as opposed to extended-range electrics like the old Fisker. The first model is to be a sleek sedan that Fisker has now partially revealed.

Interestingly, the car features butterfly doors, the type you normally find on exotics like the McLaren P1 and Ferrari [NYSE:RACE] LaFerrari, but in this case the design is used for both the front and rear doors. Fisker says it chose this to aid ingress and egress, to what’s likely a low-slung car. (The top of the wheels are almost at the car’s shoulder height.)

Fisker plans to reveal more details next week but there’s a lot we already know about the company’s new car. It will be formally unveiled in the second half of 2017 and feature an industry-leading range of over 400 miles on a single charge.

Fisker claims this will be made possible thanks to its own, revolutionary battery technology that features lightweight but extremely strong graphene in its construction. According to Business Insider, Fisker’s car will store electrical energy in a supercapacitor rather than a conventional battery.  

Fisker is not afraid to state that the car’s only true rival at present is the Tesla [NSDQ:TSLA] Model S. Fisker says its car will offer more space than the Model S and be priced similarly to some of the high-end Model S variants. This means we should expect a starting price in excess of $100k.

If successful, Fisker hopes to eventually launch a second, more affordable model targeting the Chevrolet Bolt EV and upcoming Model 3.

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