Fisker Announces 5 GWh/Year Battery Deal With CATL

The production-intent version of the Fisker Ocean will be unveiled this month.

Fisker Ocean

Mark Kane

By: Mark Kane

Nov 2, 2021 at 5:16pm ET

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Fisker announced that batteries for the upcoming all-electric Fisker Ocean will be supplied by CATL at a volume of over 5 GWh annually over multiple years.

Considering that the deal concerns 2023-2025 - as we understand - it could be over 15 GWh or three years. That might be a lot for Fisker (150,000-200,000 EVs), but just a small order for CATL.

Fisker reveals also that two lithium-ion battery chemistries were selected - NMC for the long range versions and the recently hugely popular LFP for the more affordable ones.

"Under the terms of the agreement, CATL will supply two different battery solutions for the Fisker Ocean SUV, with an initial battery capacity of over 5 gigawatt-hours annually, from 2023Y-2025Y. The primary high-capacity pack uses a lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cell chemistry with the second high-value pack offering CATL’s latest cells based on lithium-ion phosphate (LFP) chemistry."

It seems that all the talk about the in-house solid-state batteries were empty promises and now the company is buying cells off the shelf from a proven supplier.

According to the press release, CATL is not only a cell supplier, but through collaboration since 2020, is also engaged in the battery pack:

"Fisker and CATL teams have been working seamlessly together in close collaboration since 2020 to develop class leading Fisker battery solutions optimized for vehicle structure, crashworthiness and very high levels of energy density. Currently, the teams are engaged in extensive testing and validation at the pack and vehicle level."

The company does not reveal battery pack capacity, but said that it will support peak charging power of up to 250 kW. That is 100 kW more than the 150 kW mentioned in 2020.

An interesting part is about "direct charging from the optional solar roof." We would like to see whether it's viable.

"In addition to meeting the demanding packaging requirements for the Fisker Ocean program, the Fisker Ocean battery packs have additional features that permit direct charging from the optional solar roof, using an innovative engineering integration strategy. Further, both battery pack solutions are engineered to support peak charging powers of more than 250 kilowatts."

Fisker Ocean

CEO and Chairman, Henrik Fisker said:

“Securing this supply agreement with CATL is another important step in the development of the Fisker Ocean and achieving our battery performance objectives. By utilizing multiple chemistries and designing an extremely efficient pack, we will be able to achieve our targeted driving range for the Fisker Ocean Sport and bring segment benchmark-driving range to the longer-range versions of Fisker Ocean.”

CATL President, Zhou Jia said:

“As CATL expands its global footprint to help create clean mobility for all, we are delighted to reach long term collaboration with Fisker and provide battery technology that is unique to Fisker’s product rollout. We are excited to support Fisker to reach its sustainability, performance and growth targets,”.

Fisker Ocean - unveiling soon, production in November 2022

The Fisker Ocean is promised to be unveiled in the production-intent version at the the Los Angeles Auto Show (on Nov. 17, 2021) together with "additional battery specifications and product features."

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The production of this new model is expected to start in November 2022. That's at least a year from now. In July, we saw that Fisker reported some 17,300 reservations.

Over the last two years we heard that the car will be based on the Volkswagen MEB platform, and later that Magna will take care of the production in Europe using its in-house EV architecture. The deal with Magna was signed at the very end of 2020.

Gallery: Fisker Ocean

Fisker Ocean