The Fisker Pear’s disappearing trunk is a nifty magic trick

Fisker launched new pictures of its optimistically priced Pear electrical crossover, together with footage of its so-called “Houdini trunk” in motion. And so far as automotive gimmicks go, it is a fairly good one.

Henrik Fisker has been speaking in regards to the Houdini trunk for some time now, however that is my first time seeing it in motion. With the contact of a button, the rear window rolls down into the hatch — after which the whole door disappears into the underbody of the car. It simply rolls down just like the window.

I’ve watched this video a few occasions now, and with out seeing it in actual life, it’s exhausting to say how precisely this feat is achieved. Like, how does the whole trunk match inside the bumper? Fisker confirmed it off through the firm’s Imaginative and prescient Day presentation earlier this month, and the onstage demo undoubtedly appeared quite a bit slower than on this produced video. Fisker stated the slower velocity was “to permit the function to be captured on video,” whereas “the manufacturing model will transfer at excessive velocity up and down.”

Fisker stated it designed the trunk for max flexibility with younger city dwellers in thoughts. Whenever you’re parallel parking on a crowded metropolis avenue, for instance, you don’t wish to fear in regards to the trunk swinging open into another person’s bumper — or cracking you within the head, for that matter.

The Houdini door isn’t the Pear’s solely gimmick. There’s additionally a drawer-like entrance boot, or “froot.” (Get it? Froot? Pear? Zing!) Fisker says the froot is ideal for storing something from supply pizza to sweaty exercise gear, thereby conserving odors out of the cabin. And the entrance row of seats eschews a middle console in favor of a bench seat so as to add an additional passenger, thus making the Pear a uncommon six-seater compact SUV.

All of this factors to what Tim Stevens has dubbed the period of bizarre automobiles: the development of automakers dressing up their new electrical automobiles in quite a lot of off-beat designs and options in an effort to sign a break from the automotive previous. These embody crystal ball shifters, self-balancing suspension, crab walks, and a complete galaxy of technicolor LED palettes. Add Fisker’s disappearing-reappearing trunk to the combo of funky EV options.

The brand new pictures of the Pear reveal it to be as quirky on the within as it’s on the skin. The design language seems to lean closely on what I might name “lovable automotive,” with numerous grabby blue materials, rounded edges, and different features geared toward interesting to younger city professionals.

Whether or not we’ll get to see the Pear within the flesh will depend upon Fisker’s capability to enhance the manufacturing and supply cadence of its first EV, the Ocean SUV. The corporate produced 1,022 Oceans within the second quarter of 2023, lower than the 1,400–1,700 automobiles it had anticipated to make. Income was simply $825,000, whereas operational losses amounted to $87.9 million, together with $9 million of stock-based compensation expense.

The corporate says it expects to supply 20,000–23,000 automobiles for the 12 months. The Pear isn’t anticipated to enter manufacturing till not less than July 2025.