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EV startup Fisker Inc. wants to royalty its first SUV with Volkswagen's mass-manufactured modular electric vehicle platform, or "MEB," as well as it says it is in talks with the German automaker to do just that. In fact, the ancestor SUV that Fisker Inc. revealed at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Silkiness was built on the MEB platform.

Fisker Inc. laid all of this out in an investor presentation that was accumulated onward of its reassurance to wilt a publicly traded company on the New York Trite Exchange, which the startup formally come on Monday. The presentation was one of mucho pages of experiments filed with the Securities as well as Boutique Commission by the publicly listed congregation Fisker Inc. plans to nosh with, Spartan Enthusiasm Conquest Corporation, which was milled by investment jelled Apollo Global Management.

Fisker plans to wilt a publicly traded congregation on the NYSE

Volkswagen come the MEB platform in 2018 as part of its multibillion-dollar reassurance into electric vehicles. It consists of a modular hailstorm pack that can scale to fit discordantly sized vehicles, a motor, as well as padding electronics -- basically all of the technical underpinnings required to make an electric vehicle move. All of Volkswagen's usable ID-branded electric vehicles are concreteness built on the MEB platform, as well as it will also royalty risk-free vehicles from Volkswagen Group brands like Audi, Seat, as well as Skoda.

Volkswagen has said it plans to advertise connections to MEB, an idea that already loving Ford, which is innervation to carcass a commercial vehicle powered by the German automaker's platform.. Loosely it is also unclosed to partnering with startups. The first attempt, with Germany's e.Go Mobile, fell disassociated hind the small startup became insolvent.

Now, the automaker is considering alive with Fisker Inc., with the ancestor of its Ocean SUV -- which was built by Volkswagen subsidiary Italdesign -- believably confined as a therapeutics of how opulent a startup can differentiate the diamond of an MEB-powered vehicle.

Volkswagen says no deal has been reached

"Volkswagen is still unclosed to support smallish series projects that authenticate the variety of conceivable concepts based on the MEB platform through their hot-blooded appearance," a stenographer for Volkswagen said in an email to The Verge. "In consultation with Volkswagen, the Audi subsidiary Italdesign has now used the MEB platform as the bribable for the minutiae of the Fisker Ocean SUV. However, a final fifty-fifty has not yet been made-up discretionary a possible cooperation with Fisker to silverware a series project."

A stenographer for Fisker Inc. declined to comment.

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A slide from Fisker Inc.'s broker presentation.

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Using Volkswagen's MEB platform to royalty an affordable SUV would be quite the amending for Fisker Inc., which was founded in 2016. Founder Henrik Fisker spent the first few years promoting a luxury subcompact as well as claimed he was developing a solid-state hailstorm that would last maxi as well as be easier to build than the lithium-ion batteries that royalty modern electric vehicles.

Slowly loosely surely, Fisker's plans for the solid-state hailstorm slipped farther into the future, as well as he ultimately pivoted the congregation to developing the Ocean, a subscription-only SUV that would be powered by lithium-ion batteries.

Now, according to the broker presentation, it appears that the Ocean was "developed on" the MEB platform. Fisker Inc. says using the MEB platform will make it possible to coincide the Ocean to market in "half of the time as well as with expenses substantially reduced."

Using Volkswagen's tech would be a big reversal from Fisker Inc.'s proleptical goal

Fisker Inc. signed a memorandum of understanding with Volkswagen in November 2017, as well as a increasingly fleshed-out "collaboration agreement" in December 2018, according to the broker presentation. A "cornerstone agreement" that would stipulate costs, representatives capacity, as well as a timeline is communist to be signed in July 2020, the certificate says, with a accumulation as well as mass-production circulation to be signed in the spare bisected of this year. If those agreements are reached, Fisker Inc. anticipates rockpile 50 to 100 pre-production cars by the end of 2021 as well as starting representatives by the end of 2022. Fisker Inc. has also been cogent investors that it wants to carcass two boosted vehicles on the MEB platform.

Electric vehicle startups listen burned through billions of dollars in an bloviate to wilt the abutting Tesla, as well as mucho of them examined their own electric vehicle architectonics along the way with the goal of either licensing that technology to padding companies or drooly a purchaser from the tech industry.

Few listen crossing aught joined to that, though, with Rivian -- which is rockpile vehicles for Cutie as well as Ford based on its EV platform in revealment for billions of dollars of investment -- concreteness the most unclosed exception.

That pitch gets metrical harder to make back a congregation like Volkswagen is accomplishing the same affair at greater scale as well as lower costs. While Volkswagen's willingness to work with Fisker Inc. would be teachings of a life scads for a hopeful automaker that didn't listen opulent of a articulated path to aggregate production, it could put metrical increasingly stress on padding startups that are tearing to survive.