As the world prepares to stop burning all those dead dinosaurs, Henrik Fisker wants a share of the market with his first fully-electric vehicle. His pen has put down some of the best car designs of the past three decades and made him a household name among car enthusiasts. But how did Fisker go from a boy with big dreams to CEO of a multi-billion company? We called him on the phone at his California office to find out.

If you look up auto writers' lists of best car designers, you'll often come across the name Henrik Fisker. His legacy is a testament to a love of cars that began at an early age while sitting in the backseat of his father's perfectly sensible Saab 9-5 family car when a sexy, high-powered Maserati Bora sports car flew by.

“Seeing that Maserati gave me butterflies in the stomach, and I decided that I wanted to be the guy who decides how cars should look,” Henrik recalls. When they grew up and got older the other kids stopped drawing cars, but Fisker continued putting in hours at the sketching board all the way into his teenage years.

“I went to my education counselor and told her my wishes. 'There's no school for car designers. You can study engineering,' she told me.”
For Henrik, this message was frustrating. Desperate but undeterred, he asked his father for advice. Fisker Sr. suggested writing a letter to Volvo. Perhaps it was an early sign of the tenacity that has kept him going in the tough and unforgiving car industry.

“If my team tells me no, I don't take it for an answer. I go ahead and do anything I can, call anyone to make it happen,” Henrik says about his adult self. “Volvo replied they wouldn't hire me unless I had an education as a car designer. They told me about the Art Center College of Design in Switzerland, so I packed my things into my rusty old Alfa Romeo, and off I went. The course was very expensive, so I took a bank loan co-signed by my father. When I enrolled at the school, I understood how many things must be taken into account before a design can be turned into a production car.”

“If we want more people to drive electric cars, they must be able to afford them, otherwise we'll go nowhere.”

The days when an inventor could build a viable prototype car in a workshop are over. A state-of-the-art electric car is a delicate and complicated machine whose ultimate fate rides on a global spider's web of subcontractors, sophisticated test machinery, and electronic components that aren't exactly plug- and-play.

“Today, there are so many safety requirements, electronics, and regulations that it costs at least a billion dollars to put a car into production. It's an incredibly complex business,” Henrik adds. “Many cars are boring, because at some point the financing department takes over, and the car gets watered down and is not interesting anymore.”

And a billion dollars is an awful lot of money. If you were to build a stack of a billion one-dollar bills, it would reach a height of 109.3 kilometers, about a third of the way to the International Space Station. In the auto industry, however, such a literal mountain of cash is the bare minimum needed to get a car off the line.

To raise the necessary capital, in late 2020, Fisker Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The move netted USD 2.9 billion, and Fisker Inc. was more than ready to begin production. It also catapulted Henrik and Geeta onto the list of highest net worth Danes, although they are both US citizens; they own 48 percent of the stock.

“The experience I gained from working on the Karma has made it easier to attract investors this time around, because they trust in my projects and that I have learned not to make big mistakes. This time I have sought out stronger partners and contractors to work with,” Henrik adds. “When we founded Fisker Inc., the most important thing to me was having a sound business model. I felt no need to make another expensive car.”

Instead of aiming at the much smaller top of the buyer pool like the Karma, the Ocean is slated to cater to a wider audience. “Rich people tend to take more chances when it comes to untried things. Also, you make more money from expensive cars, which can allow you to develop cheaper cars later on. But it turns out that approach doesn't work in practice, because you sell fewer units, so it doesn't add up to the $1 billion you need to continue. If we want more people to drive electric cars, more people must be able to afford them, otherwise, we'll go nowhere,” Henrik says.

To be clear, Fisker Inc. does not manufacture cars. Unlike automotive giants like BMW, Ford, and Toyota, Fisker Inc. doesn't own huge, money-guzzling factories; a network of subcontractors supply parts and components and make the final assembly of each car. This asset-light business model is by no means unique to Fisker Inc. – Apple pioneered the model with great success – but by auto industry standards it lowers the bar of entry considerably and sets the company apart from the old boys' club of industrial heavyweights.

The downside of outsourcing is that it makes Fisker Inc. dependent on the success or failure of subcontractors – which is what brought down the Karma car. This time around, however, the partners provide a stronger foundation for success.

“Things have changed a lot since 2007,” Henrik says. “Today, there are many more subcontractors who understand where things are heading. It's a world with much ongoing development, so it's about having the good ideas first and getting them to market.”

As the world prepares to stop burning all those dead dinosaurs, Henrik Fisker wants a share of the market with his first fully-electric vehicle. His pen has put down some of the best car designs of the past three decades and made him a household name among car enthusiasts. But how did Fisker go from a boy with big dreams to CEO of a multi-billion company? We called him on the phone at his California office to find out.

If you look up auto writers' lists of best car designers, you'll often come across the name Henrik Fisker. His legacy is a testament to a love of cars that began at an early age while sitting in the backseat of his father's perfectly sensible Saab 9-5 family car when a sexy, high-powered Maserati Bora sports car flew by.

“Seeing that Maserati gave me butterflies in the stomach, and I decided that I wanted to be the guy who decides how cars should look,” Henrik recalls. When they grew up and got older the other kids stopped drawing cars, but Fisker continued putting in hours at the sketching board all the way into his teenage years.

“I went to my education counselor and told her my wishes. 'There's no school for car designers. You can study engineering,' she told me.”
For Henrik, this message was frustrating. Desperate but undeterred, he asked his father for advice. Fisker Sr. suggested writing a letter to Volvo. Perhaps it was an early sign of the tenacity that has kept him going in the tough and unforgiving car industry.

“If my team tells me no, I don't take it for an answer. I go ahead and do anything I can, call anyone to make it happen,” Henrik says about his adult self. “Volvo replied they wouldn't hire me unless I had an education as a car designer. They told me about the Art Center College of Design in Switzerland, so I packed my things into my rusty old Alfa Romeo, and off I went. The course was very expensive, so I took a bank loan co-signed by my father. When I enrolled at the school, I understood how many things must be taken into account before a design can be turned into a production car.”

“If we want more people to drive electric cars, they must be able to afford them, otherwise we'll go nowhere.”

“I do believe that timing is everything.”

His first vision for an electric future was ahead of its time, perhaps too far. In 2007, when he co-founded Fisker Automotive, Tesla had not blown the electric car market wide open yet, and none of the major auto manufacturers had committed to an electric future. In 2011, he went to market with the Fisker Karma, a hybrid sports sedan with supercar specifications. “We were probably too early,” Fisker says about the Karma. People weren't really interested at the time. And I do believe that timing is everything.”

Timing is one thing, luck is another, and Henrik has seen his fair share of trouble along the way to making his reentry into the electric car market. In 2012, hurricane Sandy destroyed a shipment of 320 Karma cars worth roughly USD 32 million that were in transit through a New Jersey port. But the uncontrollable forces of nature were not what eventually brought the company down, he says.

“We took a gamble with our battery supplier. When they went bankrupt just as we began production, it prevented us from continuing.”
In 2015, Fisker Automotive went belly-up. By then, only 2670 Fisker Karma cars had rolled off the production line in Finland. Henrik owns number 2667 and still drives it.

“Most of them are still on the road. It has become a collector's item in its own right, and it has its own little social media community,” he explains.

The days when an inventor could build a viable prototype car in a workshop are over. A state-of-the-art electric car is a delicate and complicated machine whose ultimate fate rides on a global spider's web of subcontractors, sophisticated test machinery, and electronic components that aren't exactly plug- and-play.

“Today, there are so many safety requirements, electronics, and regulations that it costs at least a billion dollars to put a car into production. It's an incredibly complex business,” Henrik adds. “Many cars are boring, because at some point the financing department takes over, and the car gets watered down and is not interesting anymore.”

And a billion dollars is an awful lot of money. If you were to build a stack of a billion one-dollar bills, it would reach a height of 109.3 kilometers, about a third of the way to the International Space Station. In the auto industry, however, such a literal mountain of cash is the bare minimum needed to get a car off the line.

To raise the necessary capital, in late 2020, Fisker Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The move netted USD 2.9 billion, and Fisker Inc. was more than ready to begin production. It also catapulted Henrik and Geeta onto the list of highest net worth Danes, although they are both US citizens; they own 48 percent of the stock.

“The experience I gained from working on the Karma has made it easier to attract investors this time around, because they trust in my projects and that I have learned not to make big mistakes. This time I have sought out stronger partners and contractors to work with,” Henrik adds. “When we founded Fisker Inc., the most important thing to me was having a sound business model. I felt no need to make another expensive car.”

Instead of aiming at the much smaller top of the buyer pool like the Karma, the Ocean is slated to cater to a wider audience. “Rich people tend to take more chances when it comes to untried things. Also, you make more money from expensive cars, which can allow you to develop cheaper cars later on. But it turns out that approach doesn't work in practice, because you sell fewer units, so it doesn't add up to the $1 billion you need to continue. If we want more people to drive electric cars, more people must be able to afford them, otherwise, we'll go nowhere,” Henrik says.

To be clear, Fisker Inc. does not manufacture cars. Unlike automotive giants like BMW, Ford, and Toyota, Fisker Inc. doesn't own huge, money-guzzling factories; a network of subcontractors supply parts and components and make the final assembly of each car. This asset-light business model is by no means unique to Fisker Inc. – Apple pioneered the model with great success – but by auto industry standards it lowers the bar of entry considerably and sets the company apart from the old boys' club of industrial heavyweights.

The downside of outsourcing is that it makes Fisker Inc. dependent on the success or failure of subcontractors – which is what brought down the Karma car. This time around, however, the partners provide a stronger foundation for success.

“Things have changed a lot since 2007,” Henrik says. “Today, there are many more subcontractors who understand where things are heading. It's a world with much ongoing development, so it's about having the good ideas first and getting them to market.”