Fisker announces Project PEAR: American electric cars promised by 2024 at a price of $29,900.
Affordable electric cars are still hard to come by, but Fisker hopes to change all that with a new model code-named Project PEAR, which will go on sale in 2024.
Fisker CEO and founder Henrik Fisker posted a new teaser image of PEAR on social media on Thursday. The car, which looks like a cross between an SUV and a hatchback, a la Mercedes-Benz's GLA-Class, is the best looking yet.
PEAR is just a code name, an acronym for "Personal Electric Automotive Revolution," and Fisker describes the car as an agile urban EV. At approximately 177 inches long, it is slightly shorter than smaller EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Volkswagen ID.4, and will seat five people.
Fisker said the car will feature intuitive controls, sporty driving characteristics, and a focus on industry firsts. The company also stated that the vehicle will help reduce costs by reducing the number of components and making the design simpler. This is crucial for Fisker to keep its promise to offer PEAR at pre-incentive prices starting at only $29,900.
Another strategy to keep costs down is to outsource production to Foxconn, which produces PEAR at its plant in Road Town, Ohio. Foxconn acquired the plant from Lordstown Motors earlier this year and will also use it to manufacture Endurance, an electric pickup truck in Lordstown.
Fisker said that PEAR will ride on a new platform that appears to be derived from a modular platform originally developed by Foxconn. According to Fisker, this platform will support two other models of PEAR. Fisker's first vehicle, the Ocean, a small electric SUV, uses a different platform sourced from Austrian firm Magna Steyr, which has been contracted to build the Ocean since November of this year. Pricing for the Ocean starts at $37,499.
Fisker's goal is to produce up to 250,000 PEARs annually, with the possibility of adding production at other sites depending on demand. The company has previously stated that a prototype will be unveiled before the end of 2023, and Henrik Fisker said in his latest social media post that the prototype may be unveiled earlier than originally planned.
Fisker is known to be working on at least two additional vehicles, but these are high-end vehicles with limited production runs; one is a sports car code-named Ronin, whose teaser was released in early May. The other vehicle is believed to be an SUV.