US Factory: "An established partner could be on board."

I think Fisker can build their own factory, or buy and repurpose a building / factory that's no longer used. This way they can control the production process fully. But they should be careful and perhaps consider waiting may be until mid-year next year to actually move forward with buying a building or starting construction on a new one. This way, they will already have had a year of experience with the Ocean lineup.

Heard today about partnership talks…code for we are merging or selling tha company, no way the folks on the other side of the table don’t offer that, what with Henrik’s awesome pipeline for the future…would have been nice to remain single but in this world you can’t dance alone…

Interesting if a buy-out might be in the works, but given that this news is about talks with "traditional car companies", my reading is that the plan to have non-traditional car company Foxconn produce the Pear in the Lordstown Motors facility has been abandoned.    The fact that the Reuters piece reporting this was out of Berlin might suggest a German car company with production facilities in the U.S.   BMW?   Seems that BMW and HF might have a friendly relationship.

@carlh been saying BMW is the perfect merge for Fisker. Performance minded attractive vehicles with a great service center network worldwide.

If we are merging/selling, i prefer this to any OEM US manufacturer and especially any asian manufacturer like kia or vinfast.

any link to the story? My googgles were ineffective at finding anything.

@seaphil I have the Reuters app on my tablet and phone, wasn't hard to find in the business section...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fisker-talks-with-five-carmakers-production-capacity-partnership-2023-11-09/

I hope they can sell and stay afloat. No way any legacy manufacturer is going to “produce for them” without charging a huge premium. 

Posted by: @derek-trent

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I hope they can sell and stay afloat. No way any legacy manufacturer is going to “produce for them” without charging a huge premium. 

There is a long history of legacy manufacturers building cars for other brands, not really unheard of (typically, it involved platform sharing but no reason it would need to).  There would be a premium just as there is a premium for Magna to build it but would not be a "huge" premium.  If a manufacturer has excess capacity, it would benefit them as well to be producing a vehicle than leaving factory underutilized.

Henrik is just throwing up a carrot to create some kind of positive, while moving the goalpost to next qtr, again.

Honestly it may not be a bad idea. Magna was touted as building quality vehicles and by the number of different issues popping up with the Oceans at delivery that were seeming missed in quality control it may not be the company to be building vehicles for Fisker. Foxconn I have no confidence in either until I see what they can do with build quality. 

@seancallahan 

 Yep, this seems to spell out that Foxconn is a bye-bye.

What's interesting is that Jorg Grotendorst of Magna attended the conference with Fisker.

Posted by: @evan1

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@seancallahan 

 Yep, this seems to spell out that Foxconn is a bye-bye.

What's interesting is that Jorg Grotendorst of Magna attended the conference with Fisker.

FWIW, article says they are looking for further capacity in addition to Foxconn. 

It also seemed like they were looking for their own factory. It’s confusing of what there next move is and hopefully, we should know more tonight.

Posted by: @carlh

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@seaphil I have the Reuters app on my tablet and phone, wasn't hard to find in the business section...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fisker-talks-with-five-carmakers-production-capacity-partnership-2023-11-09/

This Reuters article was different than what the German media outlet published. The German publication dropped a day before Reuters. Henrik actually took the stage of a conference and said Fisker is considering setting up its own production facility in the USA. I actually got to hear a clip of him saying it. Reuters interviewed him directly from the sound of it and reported something a little different.

@seancallahan Henrik says what Henrik says, we should know by now not to hang too much importance on every word.   I imagine he will be coached to be more careful with his pronouncements at today's earnings call, so let's hold further analysis until then!

@ttrinchi I believe that Reuters' mention of Foxconn in the article was just a repeat of what had been previously said and reported, not necessarily indicating that Foxconn is actively in the mix.  But here again, my belief isn't good for much either, let's see if we hear Foxconn after the market closes.