Fisker says it’s going to make an electric popemobile – pope or nope?

We now have the answer to the question: “Who on earth is going to buy the new Fisker electric car?”

The answer: Pope Francis. Is it pope or dope?

Henrik Fisker is a controversial figure in the electric vehicle community. While he is undeniably a prolific designer, he has had a contentious body of work when it comes to electric vehicles.

He was hired by Tesla to design what would become the Model S, but the automaker ended up suing Fisker – claiming that he kept his better design to launch his own electric vehicle company.

That startup went bankrupt after producing a few thousand vehicles. Now he’s back with a new EV startup called Fisker, and this one is also controversial.

After relaunching his electric vehicle startup, Fisker started making a lot of very ambitious claims about the capabilities of the new company’s future electric cars.

We’ve highlighted some of those in a report called: “A look at Fisker’s unbelievable claims about its upcoming all-electric car with ‘over 400 miles of range’ and ‘9-minute charging’.”

But one of the biggest claims was regarding the batteries that Fisker planned to use.

At first, the company announced that their first car will be powered by a new graphene-based hybrid supercapacitor technology.

That idea didn’t stick for long, and Fisker instead announced a solid-state battery “breakthrough” for electric cars with “500 miles range and 1-minute charging.”

As with most battery breakthrough claims, we were skeptical of Fisker’s announcement, and a few years later, Fisker announced that they have actually given up on the supposed breakthrough over a year ago.

The CEO claimed that they realized the technology wasn’t ready for commercialization, but the situation was way more complicated, and Fisker was actually sued by Quantumscape.

It’s fair to say that Fisker’s new EV startup is off to a confusing start, and it’s even fair to question its credibility. But thanks to a reverse SPAC merger, the company is now worth billions, and it’s moving forward to produce its first electric SUV with Magna.

Now Henrik Fisker also announced that they will use their electric SUV to make a popemobile:

The company said in a press release that they plan to deliver the vehicle to Pope Francis next year.

While it would be the first all-electric popemobile, it wouldn’t be the first all-electric vehicle that the pope received.

We previously reported on the Pope receiving a Nissan Leaf and a Chevy Bolt EV.