Fisker Inc. (NYSE:FSR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And after this event, we brought these vehicles to Munich and put them on display ahead of the Automobile Show in Munich. Lots of consumers and commercial bus including from other OEMs interested in a potential collaboration with Fisker, which could quickly increase our scale and manufacturing for these vehicles including platform sharing and manufacturing. Our communication with Foxconn is progressing. In fact, I just talked to them this weekend. And we expect to finalize these plans very soon. And of course it is to manufacture the PEAR in the Foxconn facility in Ohio. And this vehicle has 35% less part than a similar sized EV. So it’s quite unique. And we will also have a surprise around the LA Auto Show, which is about in a week’s time where we will actually show the production intent version of the PEAR to journalists and it will be available to see at our Grove Lounge for about a week during the LA Auto Show.

Another excitement — inciting development in the quarter was our announcement that Fisker will adopt the North American charging standard on its vehicle starting in 2025. We signed an agreement with Tesla that will provide our customers with access to over 12,000 additional superchargers around the U.S and Canada. Sustainability, as I mentioned is one of our strongest pillars in the company and ESG remains at the core of everything we stand for at Fisker. In the third quarter, we published our annual ESG report that reflects the value driven culture we have created across our people, processes, products, and how deeply rooted sustainability is in our business. And it’s paying off. It is differentiating us from any of our competitors as I just mentioned earlier.

This report is an important tool that we use for ongoing CO2 reductions and to apply for future vehicle programs. This ongoing analysts — and analyses helps us work toward our goal to create a climate neutral vehicle. We also expanded our ESG reporting frameworks to now include reporting through the carbon disclosure project, CDP. I’m also proud to announce that we just kicked off our carbon neutral car that will be based on the PEAR, and it will arrive in 2027, way earlier than what anybody else have announced. Next week, Cisco is hosting a sustainability roundtable for journalists on November 18 to elaborate on our ESG initiatives, discuss how we accomplish the lowest possible carbon footprint of any electric SUV, and to encourage deeper engagement on these important topics as we are showing the production version of the Pear and the Alaska electric pickup in about a week’s time.

My optimism about the future of our products is extremely strong. We have unique place in automotive market, we have strong demand, and I expect us to keep growing with a potential strategic partner in the works, where we can go even faster. But first, we need to increase the speed of deliveries. And we are in the middle of doing just that. I appreciate all of you that are joining us on the journey to a clean future for all. Before I turn the call over to our new Chief Technology Officer, David King, I’d like to say a few words of introduction about him. I have known David for many years going back to our time together at Aston Martin. He’s a world class leader, a tremendous engineer, who as Fisker’s SVP and lead of Fisker Magic Works, our Special Vehicle Division, have played a vital role in the company’s growth.

He excels as uniting teams and empowering creativity. I’m confident that he will provide the expertise and enthusiasm for innovation that we need to take Fisker to the next level as we accelerate Ocean production and deliveries and prepare to launch PEAR, our EV pickup truck and RONIN. And with that, I’m now pleased to turn the call over to David.

David King: Thank you, Henrik, for those kind words. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved together so far and honored to take on the role of Chief Technology Officer. The entire Fisker team has a wonderful opportunity in front of us to build on the launch of the Ocean and create more world class vehicles with cutting edge technology. We are entering a new phase for the company now, now that our engineering release process is complete for all our Ocean Trim Levels. Whilst we continue to work hard on supporting and improving the Ocean with our initial over-the-air updates based on customer feedback. The engineering team is fully engaged and working diligently on our upcoming product pipeline, the PEAR compact SUV and the Alaska pickup and striving to deliver the innovation and the engineering excellence that is expected in a Fisker.

More on those products shortly. But first, staying with Ocean. Now we are almost through with delivering our top Limited Edition Fisker Ocean Ones, we are excited to get the Extreme Ultra and Sport Trims into the hands of our customers as well in the coming months. And I wanted to highlight something in particular about the sport. This is Fisker’s most affordable trim and is a front wheel drive vehicle. What it trades versus the extreme and ultra in the ultimate range of performance that gives back with impressive driving dynamics. In particular, its nimble and sporty handling on account of its lighter weight. It’s a lot of fun. Now that we have 1,000s of cars in the hands of our customers, we are rapidly gathering real world data that we are using to continually improve our vehicles.

And I’d like to thank all our first adopter customers for their feedback, both good and bad. With all this feedback along with the anonymous fleet cloud data that we are gathering real time from our customer fleet, we are continually working to iron out bugs, improve performance of features and functions and roll these out in frequent OTA updates. It is a huge benefit to have a connected car and connected customers. And this monitoring will continue to grow as we deliver more vehicles and will allow us to further optimize and refine performance. This depth of OTA capability is something that very few car companies have, but I’m proud to say that we do, and this capability will continue to improve from here. With regards to the Ocean updates that we’ve rolled out, we’ve recently completed the new OTA update 1.10.

This was in direct response to early customer feedback, and included optimization to the electronic stability program, including improved traction control on surface changing roads, refinements to regen braking, improved energy management, and connectivity for low remote functions, along with some other tweaks. Amongst much positive feedback we’ve had from many customers, the center screen UI UX system has been highlighted as very intuitive, simple and enjoyable to use. And we have further improvements and feature enhancements ready for OTA release imminently. This ability to continually refine and enhance vehicle software and release it through our cybersecurity system and OTA platform, means that the customer experience will continue to be enhanced throughout the life of the vehicle, building on the foundation that we’ve released to introduce new features and make broad updates across various aspects of the vehicle.