As recently as 2018, Fisker had announced that it would launch its planned EMotion sports car with a solid-state battery. In addition to the significantly reduced charging time of just one minute, such batteries are also supposed to offer an energy density that is higher by a factor of 2.5. According to Fisker's plans at the time, this should enable a range of 800 km.
According to media reports, Fisker founder Henrik Fisker has now dropped this technology. The reason: the development was too expensive, the effort too high. "We came to the conclusion in the end, I think it was probably late 2019, early 2020 - I forget exactly when - that solid-state batteries are still very, very far away, they are not around the corner," Fisker said in an interview with The Verge.
In contrast to his earlier assessment that the solid-state battery was almost within reach, Fisker has now concluded that volume production of solid-state batteries for the car industry is still at least seven years away. Once a breakthrough was made in research, it would take three years to set up mass production and another three years for durability testing.
Perhaps a legal dispute with battery specialist QuantumScape also plays a role: an employee of this company, which is working on similar technology, had moved to Fisker just over a year ago, taking extensive technical documentation with him. QuantumScape then sued Fisker; the legal dispute was dropped in return for compensation of $750,000.
