Following Foxconn’s acquisition of the old Lordstown Motors facility, Fisker Inc. and Foxconn announced on Thursday that they will collaborate to produce Fisker’s second all-electric model, the PEAR Urban Lifestyle EV, in Ohio. The “Personal Electric Automotive Revolution,” or PEAR, is expected to go into production in 2024 and scale up to 250,000 units yearly.
The statement was made just hours after Lordstown, a manufacturer of battery-powered trucks, closed a significant $230 million agreement to sell Foxconn the former GM Assembly Plant. The arrangement, which was reached only days before a Saturday deadline, will let Lordstown to continue operating and provide it the funds necessary to produce its first model, an all-electric pickup truck, there. The first quarter of 2022 saw a $90 million loss for Lordstown.
In accordance with the contract, “Foxconn will use commercially reasonable efforts to assist with reducing component and logistics costs, and otherwise improving the commercial terms of procurement with suppliers, and the parties will work together to reduce the overall bill of materials cost of the Endurance,” according to a filing made by Lordstown on Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The second vehicle from EV manufacturer Fisker, the sub-$30,000 five-passenger PEAR crossover, will be produced at the 6.2 million square foot factory by Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn.
Henrik Fisker, chairman and CEO of Fisker, stated in a statement that “The PEAR will be a breakthrough electric car that won’t fit into any existing sector.” The external design will include innovative lighting technologies and a wraparound front windshield that improves frontal view and is modeled by a glider plane’s glass canopy. The $37,499 Ocean SUV, Fisker’s first-ever EV, is expected to start production in Europe in November. The SEC and the US Department of Justice are both still looking into allegations that Lordstown deceived investors by exaggerating its manufacturing capacity and fabricating its book of pre-orders.
Despite not having yet produced a car, the business went public in October 2020 after a $1.6 billion SPAC merger with DiamondPeak Holdings. A small number of pre-production cars will be built by July, according to the business, in order to test, certify, validate, and receive regulatory clearances as well as show potential buyers the Endurance’s capabilities.
