Column: This time, is Fisker ready for launch and beyond?

GRAZ, Austria — As I often say: Starting a car company is really hard — that's why basically only one outside of China has been successfully launched and sustained in the last half-century.

One of those that tried and failed was Fisker Automotive, which offered a luxury plug-in hybrid but didn't last long, largely because of supply chain woes and a lack of cash.

Henrik Fisker's second shot at an eponymous automaker, Fisker Inc., is also coming out at a time of great economic turbulence. But it's also a very different company: electric vehicles, not PHEVs; aiming for mass-market, not luxury, appeal; defining the brand with ecological sustainability from the start.

And this time, he has his wife with him in the C-suite.

Geeta Gupta Fisker — who has a Ph.D. in biotech and organic chemistry — is a force in the young company, which is not a surprise given that she is the CFO and COO. But more important is how her talents complement her husband's. While he comes from the artistic side of the industry — he's the company's master designer as well as CEO — she has the knack for the industrial nuts and bolts of getting all the nuts and bolts (and batteries) in the right place at a reasonable price.

While he's spent his career in the auto industry, best known as a designer for Aston Martin and BMW, she is new to it. Well, not exactly new: Her father, she told me, had an aftermarket auto parts business in India, so she kind of grew up around it. She's spent most of her work years in investing with Lloyds Banking Group and later with family offices — companies that build private wealth for efficient transfer across generations. That's where she honed the deal-making skills that are so often called upon now with bankers, battery makers, other suppliers.

While purchasing is one of her core areas, Geeta Fisker told me that she's careful not to micromanage negotiations because she doesn't want to undermine the good team she's put together.

Some big, strategic decisions, however, must be made at the top of the house, like where to make vehicles and who supplies the batteries. The big ones that stand out to me right now are around timing and pricing.

The company is set to officially begin production of the Ocean on Thursday, Nov. 17, as has been planned for more than a year. It should win the company some credibility in contrast to Elon Musk's track record at Tesla, where he repeatedly announced plans that didn't get done when he said they would — or sometimes at all — though it mostly has worked out fabulously for him.

Still, this start of production doesn't mean that the first of the Ocean's 60,000-plus reservation holders are going to get their cars in 2022: Approval for global sales is still weeks or months away.

I found it curious that the car will go into production with many key features to come later. Cruise control, for instance, is a pretty basic offering that won't be ready at launch. Other, higher-end capabilities also won't be immediately released, such as its Power Bank package for vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-vehicle charging, which should roll out over 2023 and '24, according to materials provided to journalists here.

One factor, of course, is the need for such systems to work quite perfectly so as to not endanger drivers, passengers or neighbors. More strategically, Henrik Fisker explained, is prioritizing the exceptional features that would compel a purchase. (He isn't a big fan of cruise control himself.)

The consumers of the world, he argues, are not clamoring for another car that does what all cars do. His aim is to provide features that can't be found anywhere else: best-in-class range, the rotating 17.1-inch screen, the solar roof that helps charge the battery — as well as the doggie windows in back and taco trays for front-seat passengers.

Another tough decision: pricing.

It's no secret that inflation is bedeviling not only the U.S. economy but the entire world — and perhaps nowhere more than in Europe, where war has made energy scarce and dollar-euro parity has made imports more expensive.

And the EV boom has sent the prices of critical minerals for batteries soaring — with years to come before new mining, processing and manufacturing can be brought up to speed.

Tesla raised prices. Ford raised EV prices. Rivian raised prices — then quickly reversed course.

Henrik Fisker said he promised customers to hold the line on prices at least through the first 40,000 vehicles produced — a threshold the company expects to surpass in the second half of next year. Geeta Fisker stressed that the company has good cost controls and didn't plan for any models to be loss leaders — underpriced products that lose money in order to attract customer interest.

Including money raised in the third quarter that essentially covered the cash used in operations and investing, the leaders are confident they can make it through the first launch, find their place in the market, and earn enough to get through the introduction of its planned second model, the Pear, and beyond.

Will Fisker Inc. make it? Working with Magna as a manufacturing partner gives me some confidence that doesn't necessarily extend to the Pear, which Foxconn is supposed to start making in Lordstown in 2024.

But the addition of Alpay Uguz, who had been at BMW's South Carolina plant and said he has managed 18 launches, mitigates that somewhat.

As he showed us around Magna's legendary Graz, Austria, plant, he kept emphasizing the extraordinary emphasis on quality processes and control systems. It's also nice to know that the workers at the factory also produce the BMW 5 Series and Z4 as well as the Toyota Supra. (The Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon comes down a separate line.)

"What's important is not to have the output," he said, "it's to have the right quality output."

When Henrik Fisker was talking about the features planned to be added over time — including some that are being developed but haven't been announced yet — he mused: "I think you're going to end up seeing that a car will never really seem finished — that it will continue to evolve."

(Until it reaches the end of its usefulness and is dismantled for reuse and recycling.)

Which I guess one can also say about the companies that make and sell cars, too.