00:03
Henrik Fisker
The Hall of Silence, Opus 1, from Richard Mortensen. The composition of different pieces and colors put in a certain order. It's structured, but not quite structured.

00:18
Henrik Fisker
It gives this calmness first when you look at it. And then when you spend a little more time, you see some of the lines are actually not quite straight. The color composition is something that would brighten up a room. There's that interesting energy and a certain optimism in it.

00:35
Henrik Fisker
I think what's unique about this as a painting, too, is it has a little bit of what I would call design strokes in it. I draw with a pencil, and there is some feeling of pencil strokes. And, of course, then is the actual painting of the colors, which I would also do if I do a rendering of a car.

00:55
Henrik Fisker
What I always look at in a car is proportions, and proportions is how different elements come together in size versus each other. The proportions of this painting, they're the right size towards each other.

01:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the National Gallery of Denmark and the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who've made a significant mark in the U.S.

01:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Henrik Fisker, a Danish car designer and founder of the electric vehicle company Fisker Inc. in Manhattan Beach. Welcome, Henrik.

01:40
Henrik Fisker
Thank you.

01:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We're in Manhattan Beach at the Fisker headquarters. I've heard you say that you have not created a luxurious space here to flash a fancy image to your customers, but rather want to make the cars as affordable as possible, and focus on the design and the functionality of the cars. Talk about the latest model Ocean and what is on the drawing board now. What kind of thoughts go into making a car?

02:07
Henrik Fisker
I think that we have three, I would say, brand pillars at Fisker. Number one is sustainability, number two is design, and number three is innovation. And they don't have to be in that order, but those are the three foundations of the company.

02:21
Henrik Fisker
And I think that you can't really sell, I think, sustainability by itself. You have to package it. It has to be exciting so people feel they are taking part in something. And that's what we're trying to do at Fisker with our cars. Of course, design itself has something to do with how people feel almost like an emotional attachment to an object.

02:42
Henrik Fisker
They feel something inside them. They love it, they like it, or maybe they hate it, but there's some sort of emotional reaction. You can of course get a reaction of hate, but then that's probably not what you want because most likely you won't buy it. But you need some sort of reaction.

02:56
Henrik Fisker
And of course there's certain designs which have no reaction and are maybe just a tool that you need. But I like to really work on getting that positive emotion and feedback from people. So, that's what we're doing here. When it comes to innovation, specifically around the Ocean, I felt that there's really no reason to put just another car on the road.

03:17
Henrik Fisker
There's so many cars out there, so much choice. And for me, it was about, can we make something that is different, that has different things that people may like, or would really feel like they've never had that before

03:30
Henrik Fisker
And then with that, thinking about how do we incorporate sustainability into a beautiful design. So the Ocean was really about creating a vehicle that, of course, is competitive, it has the longest range in the world of any electric SUV in that mark price segment. But it was also about creating some new innovative features like our California mode where all the windows open up, and I'm also talking about the rear windows, and the rear window in the hatch, as well as the largest sunroof opens up.

04:00
Henrik Fisker
Or it was about how we could make the world's most sustainable car. So we have over 110 lbs of recycled and bio materials in the interior. So you know, all these kinds of things came together, and in the end we ended up with Ocean, which I think is a very exciting vehicle. We have a lot of people who's really excited about it. And we are, of course, in the middle of the rollout.

04:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And why call it Ocean? I mean, we are in Manhattan Beach, but we're a little far from the ocean where we are at the headquarters.

04:26
Henrik Fisker
I think car names are always difficult. I think if you hire an agency, you're going to end up with some strange fake name that has no relation. And we were just brainstorming around and we came up with the name Ocean because we were talking a lot about how can we recycle plastic bottles that come out of the ocean, the sea. And as we were talking about that, we go, Hey, what about calling it the Ocean? The Fisker Ocean is a cool name and it relates a bit. So that's how it came up.

04:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Fisker means in Danish?

04:53
Henrik Fisker
Fisker in Danish means fishing, which I always was made fun of in Denmark when I was a kid. Fortunately, in America, nobody knows what that name means. They think it's very unique. And little did they know that there's many people called Fisker in Denmark. But I think it has been good for us to have that unique name because you don't confuse it with something else.

05:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, true. What is the philosophy behind your company, Fisker Inc.?

05:17
Henrik Fisker
So the philosophy is, how can we contribute to creating a clean world for everyone? And I think it's almost like I think you have a responsibility today if you start a business to think about sustainability and creating a cleaner world. And I think it's probably as a human, all our responsibility to do something about that.

05:39
Henrik Fisker
It's something that we may not have thought much about 20, 30, 40 years ago because it wasn't so relevant. There was not so much talk about it, but I think we've come to understand that we must do something. Everybody has to do something. It's just like when you were a kid and your mother said pick up that piece of paper you just threw on the road because if you don't do it, there's going to be so much dirt eventually if nobody picks it up.

06:00
Henrik Fisker
And I think that's where we are with the world generally. We have to do something. If we don't do anything, then eventually it'll be so polluted that we don't really want to live here or can't live here.

06:09
Henrik Fisker
Our philosophy is that we must incorporate sustainability and we want to go beyond what other companies do and that's why the goal has been making the world's most sustainable vehicle. We have set us another very tough target, which is by the end of 2027, we want to try and make a carbon neutral car. Probably quite a crazy goal, but we have set it and we're gonna try it.

06:30
Henrik Fisker
So that's the philosophy of the company is really about sustainability. Of course mobility is part of it, because we are a car company, and my personal belief is that rather than forbid something, it's better to see how we can solve the problem of why we are trying to forbid it.

06:46
Henrik Fisker
Cars have been an uncomfortable part of our society in terms of pollution, but rather than forbid it, let's try and solve that problem. And that's what we are trying to do because I personally think private mobility is such an ingrained thing in humanity. It dates back from whenever the first person tried to tame a horse and get on it and have his own or her own private mobility.

07:08
Henrik Fisker
And we have loved that ever since. It's never disappeared. And of course, you can't go everywhere on a bicycle, especially not here in Los Angeles. So you need a car. But we also love to have a car. We love to get in our own car with our colors with our old coffee cup. I don't want to get in the car with somebody else's old coffee cup and old napkins or whatever.

07:28
Henrik Fisker
So we love that idea and so that's why our philosophy is how can we create this clean mobility of the future. And of course it goes beyond using recycled materials. It's also in manufacturing. We are manufacturing our car in a carbon neutral factory in Austria. And so, there's many things we have to look into.

07:47
Henrik Fisker
And at the end of the day, I have a passion for cars. I can't imagine a world without cars. I grew up in Denmark and I know one thing. I never woke up dreaming of taking the bus or the train. I dreamt about a car, even though we had great public transportation in Denmark, nobody dreams about taking the bus or a train.

08:03
Henrik Fisker
They dream about a car. And that's why I want to work on cars. I know how to do it. And that's why I feel I need to put in my effort on how can we make it sustainable.

08:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You build the cars in Austria and they have premium quality, and you started deliveries last year. So there are some Fisker Ocean owners out there now. Tell us, what is it like being a Fisker owner and driver? Do you have a community or is there any special thing that makes you a Fisker driver?

08:35
Henrik Fisker
We actually do, believe it or not. We almost had half of all the Fisker owners meet up across the world at different points. I think it was several thousand actually. We have Fisker Facebooks in each country. We also have our own Facebook where people can join. So we have a very close community.

08:52
Henrik Fisker
And I would also say, that specifically the early adopters of Fisker went through with us what you have in any company, was a launch period where you're still fixing some bugs and you're still fixing software. Of course, what's exciting today is you can fix a lot of things in a fully connected car. Our car is fully connected, so we keep fixing some bugs we have seen.

09:12
Henrik Fisker
So our early owners were able to give us feedback, which we have now put into the car. I would say when you buy the car today, you probably don't give that much feedback because most of the things are fixed. But I think it created a lot of a community for the early adopters that are part of the company's growth last year. And I think we have seen a lot of talk and excitement and discussion and all these different social media sites.

09:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You designed the BMW Z8, you designed for the icon brand Aston Martin, and you designed the Karma plug-in hybrid sedan with your own company, Fisker Automotive, to mention a few. What is the absolute favorite car that you have designed and why? Maybe mention a few cars, because I know it's like asking you which of your children is your favorite, so it might not be quite fair.

10:01
Henrik Fisker
I don't know for other designers, but for me, my last project is always the one I favor the most because the latest is where I put most of my ideas in. So it's a Fisker Ocean at this point in time and I'm sure when the next car comes out, then it's going to be that car. I kind of have an affection for all of them.

10:18
Henrik Fisker
I have been very lucky in my career where I was able to have a lot of input into the designs. And what I mean by that is a lot of car companies, there are certain committees. So we sometimes say a car design by committee, when everybody comes in and has an opinion, you keep changing, and marketing says this, and finances that, we can't afford this, and can you change this?

10:40
Henrik Fisker
So I was lucky in my career with BMW. The Z8 was really designed over holidays, almost. Everybody was gone and I designed that vehicle. And I had a few engineers in the program and the chief engineer at the time that was in charge, head of development, loved the car and we just made it the way it was.

10:57
Henrik Fisker
I came to Aston Martin, same thing. It was sort of a revival of Aston Martin, and we needed something really new that could reposition the brand. So I started with the Aston Martin Vantage, which is probably my favorite Aston Martin, and it became the most sold vehicle of Aston Martin ever, and I think it still is the first generation of the Vantage.

11:18
Henrik Fisker
And so that has a special part in my heart as well, because it really turned the brand around. And again, we didn't have multiple models. I designed one model. That's it. That's how we're going to do it. And the Fisker Karma, of course, the same, because I started the company and I was both CEO and chief designer, which I am today as well.

11:37
Henrik Fisker
So that means I can really get everything through. I think the Fisker Ocean was the most difficult car. When you design a super sports car, you have less restrictions. When you design an SUV, where you have to fit a family of five, at a certain price point, you do need to negotiate with yourself what you are able to do.

11:58
Henrik Fisker
So I think we did it really well because we have a vehicle that has an incredible sculpture in the body, more like a sports car. It's very dynamic. It's got all these incredible features that nobody else has. We got the longest range. We got so much in this package that I'm really proud of it. And I think, in fact, everybody at Fisker is really proud of it. They really worked hard to get where we are today. So, at this moment, the Fisker Ocean is my favorite.

12:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. Which car is in your parking spot outside Fisker Inc. today, right now? And do you have more than one car, or just one?

12:31
Henrik Fisker
There is a Fisker Ocean in my parking spot today. I have a couple of Fisker Oceans. I'm using one of my own cars as a project car with a special color combination, which I think is fun. In fact, somebody also just installed some new upgraded parts in the car that I'll test out.

12:46
Henrik Fisker
And then I, of course, have a couple of Fisker Karmas as well. Now, I decided at the moment, not to have any gasoline cars, even the ones I designed myself. But one day when I can afford it, I will buy them and then I will actually switch them into electric so I can drive them.

13:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In California, most families, at least if you are middle class, have more than one car. What do your other family members drive?

13:10
Henrik Fisker
My sister, who lives in Denmark, drives a Fisker Ocean. And I know it's very expensive there, so I'm very proud of that. Then my son actually doesn't have a car, because he lives in Chicago. My daughter, she drives a Fisker Ocean. She changed it from a Porsche. She had the Porsche SUV.

13:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
None of your cars? A Porsche.

13:33
Henrik Fisker
So she changed from a Porsche to a Fisker Ocean. I may have had a little help in that, but still, it was good. So yeah, so everybody drives a Fisker Ocean.

13:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's good. What do you personally look for in a car? What is a great car in your eyes? And what is good car design?

13:50
Henrik Fisker
So I think a car is going to have some reflection of who you are as a person. It's almost like a piece of clothing. You're not going to wear clothing that you think you're going to look ugly in, or that you don't like. I don't think you're going to buy it and wear it if you don't like it. I think a car is a little bit the same.

14:10
Henrik Fisker
Everybody sees you in that car, you're in it. So I think the first thing is you have to feel some connection to the vehicle itself, that you like the looks of that vehicle. And I think that's what design is about. And of course, there's different levels of what type of emotions you want to create.

14:27
Henrik Fisker
And of course, there's also people who can't afford maybe their dream car. But even an affordable car should still be a vehicle where you look at it and say, you know what? That's kind of me. I really like that vehicle. So I think there's the initial look from the outside. Then, of course, there's the type of vehicle that you need in your life.

14:43
Henrik Fisker
If you have kids, you're not going to be able to drive a two-seater sports car, most likely. And then, of course, once you get into the interior, you have to feel comfortable in it. I think that we are moving a little bit now into a direction where people expect certain technologies and interiors specifically around a large screen where everything is pretty much laid out like on your smart tablet or your iPad or whatever at home.

15:05
Henrik Fisker
People are getting used to that sort of technology in their life. And then I think that colors is of course something that again you choose yourself, that is fitting to the shape and the vehicle itself. I'm looking at all these things and I like different types of cars. I like sports cars a lot, but it's also nice once in a while to drive an SUV because when you're going to go out and get something, something fits in it, which is nice. Or if you bring some people along.

15:30
Henrik Fisker
I think good car design for me is you have to feel that passion went into the design. It's like a beautiful painting. You feel the passion in that. And there are cars out there, where we don't feel the passion because they seem like they were designed by comedians. They were designed to compete in a certain segment, and they were designed only on the computer. So for example, at Fisker, I insist that we always use full size clay models. And these full size clay models, it's just like clay when you make your own pot.

16:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Full size like a car?

16:02
Henrik Fisker
It's full size like a car. So it's the actual size of a car. We mill it out from the computer. But then we have manual sculptors, people that I work with or that our design team work with, where they have special tools and they start sculpting. And I would say, can you move three millimeters away from here? And I like this to be a little thinner or a little more volume in that shape.

16:23
Henrik Fisker
So we do all this in actual real size in clay. And for me, what it does is kind of the same, that for me, there's a difference between seeing a person on a screen versus standing in front of a person. It's almost like you feel some energy. You see the shapes, you see the eyes, you see everything in real.

16:44
Henrik Fisker
And I don't care about how many virtual glasses there's been made or goggles. There's nothing like reality. And for me that reality and working with clay is really what brings the last emotional feelings out of the sculpture of the car. So that's why I insist on clay sculpture, I always will, no matter how good the digital tools are.

17:06
Henrik Fisker
This doesn't mean we don't need digital tools. We do, but the clay model is very important for me. And I think that passion is what you have to bring into the design and people have to feel that when they look at it. They have to go, wow, it's something about that.

17:20
Henrik Fisker
And then when you walk around the car a couple of times, you go, wow. And then most of the time, what happens with really good design is as you live with it, you start discovering little things, you start discovering shapes. Maybe as you wash your car, or maybe you see it in a different sunlight. So you start discovering things, and that's really a good design when you keep discovering nice little subtle things that you haven't seen before.

17:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That sounds like a long creative process.

17:48
Henrik Fisker
It is. Designing a car is, you have the initial ideas, of course, but I would say the design continues well into the engineering phase, where you start figuring out if you can actually make certain things, so you might have to change it a bit. So probably design is ongoing for about one and a half years in the process.

18:06
Henrik Fisker
And then after that, you're really just making very little fine tuning where you're working with engineers or making a molding for the windows or whatever it might be, the steering wheel or whatever. So there's now very subtle things. And now it's all about manufacturing engineering at the end of the program. But the first one and a half years, specifically the first six months, that is really mainly design.

18:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The speed limit in California is 65 miles an hour. That is not fast, and especially not, if you have a powerful sports car. But people spend a lot of time in their cars here. It is very much a car-centric culture. You are what you drive in California. What does that mean to the market and to the cars you see here? And what features does the Fisker Ocean have, for example, to improve the quality of time spent in the car, which is many hours here for many Californians?

19:03
Henrik Fisker
Yes. First of all, the speed limit might be 65, but I think sometimes the average speed is a little over that just because everybody's just driving faster. And then I think they just let it go up to a certain limit. But even if there's a speed limit, people like to have power in their cars, even if they don't need it.

19:22
Henrik Fisker
And it's probably also in Europe, but in the US people have always loved to have more of what they really need. Just because they can, and it just makes them feel good. There is still a demand for power in the cars way beyond what we need. An electric car specifically is way faster than any car we've ever had before.

19:41
Henrik Fisker
Our Ocean SUV in the top version goes 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds. That's faster than a Ferrari could do 15, 20 years ago. These new cars are extremely fast because they automatically have more torque and more power. So people are getting their power now.

19:58
Henrik Fisker
People also like to have a lot of range in their vehicles, even if they may not need it. And of course, when you get to the interior where you spend a lot of time, I think people also like to have interior space. Specifically, if they are in an SUV, for example. So you have to look at how do people feel in that space. And it's all to do with how things are close to each other, where's your elbow landing and all that.

20:22
Henrik Fisker
There's always a certain negotiation when you're designing a vehicle because you wanna stay in a certain class of car. Our car in the US is probably close to a compact SUV, sort of midsize compact. Whereas in Europe, some people might even call it a large SUV. But in our interior, we actually have quite a lot of space. We have space that is the same as a gasoline powered larger size vehicle, one class higher than the Ocean.

20:52
Henrik Fisker
I think just that sort of ergonomics is an important thing, holding the steering wheel. We have a very unique section of the steering wheel, which I feel is very good because you can hold the steering wheel in different ways and even with one hand much easier without slipping because it's got a unique section to it.

21:08
Henrik Fisker
Also, depending on what you're doing in the car, if you, for example, are stopping charging the car, and you spend maybe 25 minutes, half an hour charging your car, we actually have our big screen 17.1 inch screen, we push a button and it rotates, and becomes what we call Hollywood mode. So you got the 16:9 relation, which is exactly like a movie screen when you go to the movie theater.

21:31
Henrik Fisker
And you can sit there and you can watch whatever you watch, Apple TV or whatever you have, Netflix. Or you can play a game. So you can do something in the car while you're there.

21:39
Henrik Fisker
We also have, instead of a glove compartment, we put the glove compartment under the seats, something called taco trays. We call them taco trays because in California people just like tacos. Basically it's a tray that comes out where normally a glove compartment is, you can put your taco on there.

21:53
Henrik Fisker
Or there's actually a tray coming out the center console for the driver where you can put on your taco. Or the other day I was sitting in the car and I had my iPad there and did some work on that. And then of course in the rear seats we have actually in the top model, you can adjust the rear seat angle, which is quite nice, the back of the rear seats.

22:12
Henrik Fisker
And then, just generally, we also look at materials, how you feel when you're in the car, when you touch certain materials, they're unique as well in the vehicle. And then the large screen, what type of information is on the screen, when you're in your vehicle. In Los Angeles, sometimes you sit on the 405 and you're maybe sitting there for an hour in very slow traffic.

22:30
Henrik Fisker
And people, they do use your infotainment system or whatever. So we have tried to make fairly large buttons. So it's safer, you can do it quicker, versus having to find a tiny little button. So those are all things that you go through. And we have actually something called the HEX team, which is the Human Experience Team, which actually do all these trials with the team members to figure out what is the best ergonomics in the car and where should things be.

22:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And for those who don't know the 405, it is one of the busiest freeways in Los Angeles. So busy. We went on the 405 to get here and sometimes it's a nightmare, right?

23:10
Henrik Fisker
Sometimes it is, unfortunately.

23:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes. When I met you the first time here in California, you were the design manager of Aston Martin, I believe. You had reached the top in your field. You said at the time that you did not like reaching the top. You wanted to climb up onto the roof and have a broader perspective, a broader view. So you created Fisker Automotive in Newport Beach in 2007 and went on to start yet another company in 2016, Fisker Inc. What have you seen from the rooftop?

23:44
Henrik Fisker
Well, I have seen that you can change an industry, but it's a lot easier to change it if you leave the industry and create a new company. I think changing the industry from the inside, any industry, is very difficult, because you have to go through changing an entire organization, all their people and all their rules and whatever they have created in that company.

24:09
Henrik Fisker
So when I created, specifically now, Fisker Inc., we don't have any of these traditional rules that probably are bugging down the big car makers. And we are also able to put certain things in the foreground that maybe from a marketing perspective can be easy for a big company to do, but in reality, it might be difficult.

24:28
Henrik Fisker
So for example, sustainability. It's easy to talk about it, but actually doing it is more difficult. And that's something I've been able to do. So I think that the perspective you get when you leave a very traditional industry, which the car industry is, there's a lot more opportunities, a lot more things can be done, even things you thought couldn't be done can be done.

24:48
Henrik Fisker
But you have to somehow take that risky step and by no means is it easy because you're also losing a giant support system when you're leaving a big company, any big company. So you have to take that pain with the freedom.

25:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You've talked about the fact that you were managing one of the world's smallest car factories. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being small?

25:15
Henrik Fisker
The advantages is you can move fast, and that you have fewer layers of management so you can get to people really quickly, and people can get to you and you can get things done quickly. I think the advantages is that you tend to be more innovative, and I think these are all important points that set you apart from your competitors.

25:35
Henrik Fisker
Of course the disadvantages are that you don't have a giant power machine that sometimes can be helpful. For example, if you want to talk to a certain supplier and you want to have a lower price. However, when you're in the EV industry, it actually changed a bit where even the large car makers don't have much more purchasing power than a small car maker because they don't make that many more electric cars.

25:58
Henrik Fisker
When it was gasoline cars, they had all the power. For electric cars, it turned the table. And you see today that some of the startups are actually doing better than some of the traditional car makers and they're making better cars. And that's because there has been that shift to electrification where suddenly everything was open, everything was up for grabs, and whoever moved the fastest and had the most innovation did the best.

26:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know you a little bit, and I would say that you are very self-confident. You want to be the best in your field, and you're designed to be number one. In general, there is no Danish Jante Law in what you've done. How did you manage to let go of that law, have a strong faith in yourself, and go straight for what you wanted?

26:44
Henrik Fisker
That's a good question. When I lived in Denmark, I wanted to be a car designer. I knew from probably since I was six, seven years old, I wanted to be a car designer. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but I just know I want to be part of shaping a car. And through my school days in Denmark, it became very clear that it was impossible to be a car designer in Denmark because we have no car industry.

27:03
Henrik Fisker
So I kind of had to go through many, I would say slightly agonizing years, until I became pretty much a grownup and actually could make the decision to leave Denmark and go to Switzerland and study to become a car designer.

27:17
Henrik Fisker
And I think that was probably something that must have built a certain hard shell on me during these years to keep insisting to my teachers or my advisors, or even my parents, hey, no, no, I don't want to be a dentist, I want to be a car designer. My mother really wanted me to be a dentist. We had some friends who were dentists and they always have a newer car than we did.

27:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A-ha! That was a strange sort of—

27:41
Henrik Fisker
But my dad was an engineer, funnily enough, an electric engineer, and he supported 100%. And he always told me, look, you can be whatever you want. You just have to work hard enough and want that hard enough. So I think that instilled something in me. And then coming to America, I think that in the US, you anyway have that general sense in the US that everybody grows up with that you can be whatever you want.

28:06
Henrik Fisker
Of course, you have to work hard for it, you have to have the right amount of luck, and there's many things that have to fall in place. But essentially, there's nobody telling you you can't do something. And I think that's just something I loved and I adopted very early on. And I think it's important to believe in what you're doing and believe in what you want to achieve and then go for it.

28:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You create great design. What inspires you? Do you go to museums? Do you look at architecture? Where do you find your inspiration?

28:34
Henrik Fisker
So I will say I have too little time, unfortunately, to stroll around in museums and stuff. I would love to do more of that, quite frankly. My inspiration, I think, today, what happens, is you're exposed to so many different things, mainly because of social media. For example, you might see a painting on social media that 30 years ago you had to go to a museum to see it.

28:56
Henrik Fisker
So I think everybody gets enough information, maybe even more than they need. So for me, it's more about indulging a bit in certain things that I see. It could be a really cool house. It could be a beautiful painting. It could be even something in nature. When I travel, I see something new sometimes in a different culture. So I get inspiration from everything when it comes to the visual.

29:21
Henrik Fisker
I still get a lot of inspiration from cars. Just when I see a car passing by, saying, this looks kind of interesting, or this doesn't look good. I wonder why not? And then I'm starting to think how I would do it.

29:30
Henrik Fisker
But, I think for me, and a very important inspiration, is the understanding of what's happening in our culture. And I don't mean only the US, I also mean globally, what's happening in the world, where are we, what are we going towards. For example, I would say when we made Fisker 1.0, I was probably too early out with making a sustainable vehicle with reclaimed wood and vegan interior, so I think it's very important to understand the timing of certain things.

30:03
Henrik Fisker
And I think this time of the Ocean became exactly at the right time with a sustainable vehicle. I think coming out of COVID, pretty much everyone understands the impact it can have in the world if we don't have the daily pollution we normally have. In the middle of COVID, I took a walk on Sunset Boulevard and it's the first time I could hear birds and I could smell the trees because there were no cars. It was right when the cars were not there.

30:30
Henrik Fisker
And we saw fish in Venice. We saw blue skies in Beijing. So I think most people realize that if we actually do something, we can revert. We can actually change and make the world a cleaner place. It can heal itself. We've heard a lot from scientists. No, we're done. We're over. We can't heal. But I think we saw we can heal.

30:51
Henrik Fisker
So with that in mind, I feel the timing for sustainability is right. When it comes to design, generally, inspiration is just something that I get from so many different places. I couldn't pinpoint a specific thing. I don't look for inspiration specifically. I fall over it, I come to it, I try to be part of as many things as possible.

31:13
Henrik Fisker
I switch news channels. I don't watch the same thing all the time. I read different magazines. I look at different things on the internet, whatever it might be. I just try to understand as much as what's going on in the world.

31:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you were six, seven years old and you got that idea to become a car designer, you were in Allerød in Denmark. That's where you grew up. How did you actually start the career as a car designer? How did you go about it? Because I assume you didn't have many role models to look up to.

31:41
Henrik Fisker
My role model was the Italian designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro, very famous. He actually designed the first Volkswagen Golf, and he's designed many other sports cars and other cool cars since. And, you know, I bought magazines at the time and would look at his designs and read about them, and I would sketch.

31:58
Henrik Fisker
Instead of doing my notes at school, my whole notebook was full of cars. So it was ingrained in me. And at one point when I was, I must have been 19 or 20, I'd gone to a sort of drafting school in Denmark and had some boring job. And I said to my dad, I can't get this out of my head. I gotta be a car designer. And he said, why don't you write a letter to Volvo? Because that was the closest, you know, Sweden next to Denmark.

32:23
Henrik Fisker
So I wrote to Volvo. And they basically said, look, we don't just hire people that have no education. You got to go to a design school and we can recommend the Art Center College of Design, which is an American design school here in Pasadena. Now they, for a short period of time, had a branch in Switzerland.

32:42
Henrik Fisker
So I wrote to them and they said, well, you got to bring down your drawings and we have to see if you have talent before we accept you. And then we have a three month class where, if we feel you're good enough, you have to do this as a test. And if you pass that, then you get into the school.

32:57
Henrik Fisker
So I went down there, took my old rusty Alfa Romeo, drove down there and showed all my drawings. I got accepted. I went through the three months of prep school or whatever it was called and got accepted. Then did the three years in Switzerland of that.

33:13
Henrik Fisker
And then when I finished, basically the car companies came to the school to look at who was the best student they wanted to hire. And I had an offer from Alfa Romeo where I really wanted to go. And an offer from BMW and an offer from some French company. Interestingly enough, I did go down to see Alfa Romeo but it was a mess.

33:35
Henrik Fisker
The guy wasn't there and they couldn't figure out how many Lira, there was Lira at the time before the Euro, they were going to pay me and all that stuff. And then I went to BMW and it was just a great feeling. They immediately had an offer ready, they told me what I was going to be —

33:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
They are German!

33:50
Henrik Fisker
Yeah, it was a great process, obviously, it was. So I decided, you know, I'm going to go with BMW. I think I'm really going to learn here, and I don't regret that because it was an amazing time to be at BMW. So that's how I started as a car designer.

34:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you came to California in 2000 and you've stayed with a little break where you went to the UK, where you worked for Aston Martin. Why stay in California? Why are you still here, Henrik?

34:14
Henrik Fisker
I love California. I've lived in England. I've lived in Switzerland. I've lived in Germany and of course in Denmark. So when I came to California, it's probably car culture, number one in the world, first of all. And what's very unique about California is people are not brand loyal.

34:31
Henrik Fisker
You could see somebody here that had a Mercedes, maybe buy a BMW, that would never happen in Germany. You're either a BMW or a Mercedes man for the rest of your life. That's it. So I love this idea of if you have something really cool and new, and it's not only cars, but specifically cars, people will give you a shot. They'll try it out. So I really like that.

34:50
Henrik Fisker
I like that feeling of a city that's always trying new stuff and not really following the norm. A lot of trends come out of California. So that's the one side. That's maybe more on the business and lifestyle side.

35:05
Henrik Fisker
I would say, as an area, I would say LA, and I really think there's a big difference between LA and San Francisco, for example, but LA, what I love about LA is the weather, first of all. You can't beat that. It's amazing. It is very rarely too hot and very rarely really cold. So it's always a great temperature and yeah, seasons are great, but I can fly to Europe and I can go somewhere if I need snow. And snow for me is one week a year is enough. I don't need more than one week. So I love the weather.

35:34
Henrik Fisker
I love the mix of people. It's very multicultural. It's very multinational. I love that as well. So it's just a great place to live, I think. A fantastic place to live. Once I got here, I got bitten by that, and I really didn't want to go back. I went back to Europe for a unique opportunity, worked for Aston Martin for some years. But I always wanted to come back to California, and I would never leave from here in any sort of permanent way. This has become my home, and I love it.

36:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I mentioned that you left the Jante Law behind. But which parts of Danish culture did you bring along?

36:11
Henrik Fisker
I think that what I brought along was probably, first of all, when it comes to design, the simplicity of design, and I've often thought about where that came from and I have a theory of that. I think because of the bad weather in Denmark, we end up spending a lot of time at home and we look at our furniture. Danish furniture design is very famous, but you look at Danish furniture design, it's very clean and simple. The good pieces are timeless.

36:39
Henrik Fisker
And I believe that the reason for that is because when they design a piece of furniture they know people's going to look at this for hours and hours because they're always inside because of bad weather. And I think this simplicity and cleanness is something I try to bring into my design in the cars as well. So that's what I think I brought with me.

36:56
Henrik Fisker
Maybe another thing that I brought with me from Denmark is I feel in Denmark we're pretty good at adapting to other cultures, at least when we are outside, because our country is so small that we would never expect to land somewhere and then somebody should speak Danish. That happens with a few big European countries where, hey, if you don't speak their language, then don't speak to me. I don't think we have that feeling in Denmark.

37:24
Henrik Fisker
Even when in Denmark, if somebody comes to speak English to you, you'll try and speak English to them because you know they don't speak Danish. So I think that adaptability is something maybe a little unique to Danish, I feel. There's probably some bad habits I took along as well. When I see Wienerbrød, I eat way too much of it, for example.

37:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's called "Danish" in English, which is interesting, right?

37:44
Henrik Fisker
And by the way, what they call Danish here has nothing to do with real Wienerbrød. I go to Copenhagen Bakery once in a while here in LA, and get myself some real Danish, some real Wienerbrød. And there's probably some other bad habits as well.

37:58
Henrik Fisker
I think maybe another thing I took was maybe Denmark was one of the first countries, and I don't have any evidence of this, but just speaking to people. Maybe Denmark was one of the first countries that really thought more about sustainability as an integral part of family life.

38:14
Henrik Fisker
I remember since I was a kid, my mother and father would always tell me, don't throw the chocolate paper on the ground, shut off your light when you leave your room. All these types of things that I think in many other countries first became a little later. So I always had that kind of sustainability feeling, meaning, we call it sustainability, but it's about saving energy, making sure everything is clean. You don't need to pollute unnecessarily.

38:45
Henrik Fisker
And I think that's maybe something that I've taken with me and I feel that if we can install that same feeling in a company, it would be quite amazing because sometimes we tend to pollute unnecessarily without even any rewards to us, this low hanging fruit that we can easily clean up and we should do it.

39:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How often do you speak Danish and do you dream or think in English or Danish by now, do you think?

39:09
Henrik Fisker
I dream mostly in English and I think mostly in English, but the one thing I still do when I'm at the gym, I count in Danish. I don't know why, but I still count in Danish for myself when I do whatever some machines, I count from one to 10, I do that in Danish. I don't speak Danish enough.

39:28
Henrik Fisker
I have a sister in Denmark and we speak of course, but because I sort of grew up in my professional life outside Denmark, it's hard for me to sometimes do a professional conversation because some of the words are missing that I didn't pick up.

39:44
Henrik Fisker
My mother used to tell me that I sound like somebody from the '70s when I speak Danish. I don't know exactly what that means, but it's what she said. So I don't have the latest slang words, obviously, of whatever came up in Denmark in the last 20, 30 years. But yeah, I can make a normal conversation in Danish.

40:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is your experience of being an expat? Is it a split identity existence? Are you torn between two worlds?

40:09
Henrik Fisker
So I don't feel like an expat anymore. I felt it in the beginning, the first couple of years, I lived in Germany, England, and then the US, but the US is the country that I, the most quickest way, just felt part of it.

40:21
Henrik Fisker
And it's very simple. I lived in Germany for, I think, probably I'm trying to think, almost seven, eight years. And even after seven years and speaking German, I would go to the supermarket and they would go, Oh, are you on vacation here? I never get that question in the US, and I still have my Danish accent.

40:40
Henrik Fisker
I feel at home here because nobody asks you, are you on vacation here, when you go to the supermarket and you have an accent. But you get asked that, for example, in Germany. So, even though I spoke German as well, but obviously with an accent.

40:52
Henrik Fisker
I would say, I don't feel like an expat. I feel I'm part of here. And of course, in the meantime, I have American citizenship as well as my Danish passport. When I go to Denmark, I feel Danish. When I'm here in the US, I feel American.

41:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And my last question. Where would you like to grow old? You've almost answered that already. And I know this is far too early to think about because you are very young, but if you were to say where you would like to be buried at this moment in your life, which spot would you choose?

41:24
Henrik Fisker
Probably Los Angeles. I must be honest and say I don't really think about that, honestly.

41:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But any spot in particular, like the ocean, maybe?

41:30
Henrik Fisker
I'm thinking maybe in an ocean. Somewhere. In a car, for sure. One of the cars that I've designed. Probably the last one I designed.

41:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you very much for your time, Henrik. We enjoyed it very much.

41:43
Henrik Fisker
Thank you for being here. 

41:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Henrik Fisker chose Richard Mortensen's Stilhedens sal. Opus I or The Hall of Silence. Opus I from 1980 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.