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Fisker Suspends Its EV Production

Fisker Suspends Its EV Production

Following recent reports that Fisker has been preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing, today the embattled automaker announced that it is suspending all manufacture of its electric vehicles.

“Fisker will pause production for six weeks starting the week of March 18, 2024, to align inventory levels and progress strategic and financing initiatives,” the company said in a statement.

Fisker further said that it has secured a financing commitment from an existing investor of “up to $150 million.” The money would be organized in four tranches, but is by no means guaranteed; Fisker said it is subject to “certain conditions,” including the filing of the company’s 2023 Form 10-K, a comprehensive report filed annually by public companies about their financial performance.

WIRED asked Fisker’s PR representative to expand on what exactly the “certain conditions” are to secure the new investment. They declined to provide additional detail.

EV sales in the US have slowed more broadly, but Fisker has had an especially rocky run. Arguably, it lost a degree of quality control when it ceded manufacturing to Canada-based supplier Magna. Moreover, Fisker seemingly prioritized style over substance, as borne out by build and software issues of its Ocean SUV. These issues have fueled the view that in the car world there’s simply no substitute for the experience gained from making vehicles for a century, like, say, BMW has.

Likely looking for a potential lifeboat, Fisker has also confirmed it is in negotiations with “a large automaker” for investment in the company, joint development of one or more electric vehicle platforms, and North America manufacturing. That company is reportedly Nissan, according to Reuters. However, it sounds like these negotiations are far from completion, as the Fisker statement also says “any transaction would be subject to satisfaction of important conditions, including completion of due diligence and negotiation and execution of appropriate definitive agreements.”

WIRED tested the Fisker Ocean in July 2023 but, due to the unfinished nature of the test car, was left in the unprecedented position of being unable to provide a rating for the EV. Our test Ocean was plagued with squeaky pedals, an inoperative California mode (where the EV drops all its windows save the windscreen) forcing a switch in car mid-test, and poor handling that was supposedly to be fixed with a software update. Simply put, too many features were missing or “coming soon,” making the Ocean SUV an EV we just couldn’t rate properly.

Since launch, the Ocean has been dogged by quality issues, with owners complaining of sudden power losses, glitchy key fobs and sensors, hoods flying open, and brake problems.

Indeed, shortly after Fisker board member Wendy Greuel took delivery of her own Ocean SUV, it lost power on a public road. Similarly, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch, Geeta Gupta Fisker, the company’s chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and cofounder Henrik Fisker’s wife, experienced a shutdown in power while driving an Ocean.

Fisker has a checkered history beyond the Ocean. It was more than a decade ago when its eponymous owner, previously of BMW, Ford, and Aston Martin (where he was design director), last presented a car bearing his name. The Karma, a range-extender sports GT, was ahead of its time in many respects, but it was dogged by problems, including a disastrous Consumer Reports test and fires.

The company’s current situation looks bleak. Fisker states that it has approximately 4,700 vehicles in its inventory, carried over from 2023 and including 2024 production, and believes the completed vehicle value for this inventory is in excess of $200 million. It has delivered 1,300 vehicles in 2024 and shipped 4,900 to customers in 2023.

In February, Fisker reported that it made $273 million in sales last year but was more than $1 billion in debt. It also issued a warning that there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business. The prolonged pause in production seems to reinforce that doubt even further.

9 More of the Bizarre and Wonderful Things We’ve Seen at CES 2024

9 More of the Bizarre and Wonderful Things We’ve Seen at CES 2024

Today is the day the main CES 2024 expo halls will be thrown open to the general public. The masses of show attendees will crowd into the Las Vegas Convention Center to touch, ogle, and photograph the consumer tech industry’s newest attempts to transport the future into the present.

Those of us in the technology press have been here in Las Vegas since the weekend, attending demos, watching presentations, and getting some hands-on time with the products that are debuting at this year’s show. While some of these consumer tech products coming in 2024 are already finished, many of them are still prototypes. Final or not, all of these products signal where the next wave of tech is headed. We showed you a bunch of neat ideas yesterday. Here are some more.

We Found 14 Popular Christmas Toys Worth Gifting (and 3 to Avoid)

We Found 14 Popular Christmas Toys Worth Gifting (and 3 to Avoid)

Picasso Tiles

Photograph: Amazon

Magnetic tiles are one of the most amazing little inventions for toddlers. It takes a while before littles are coordinated enough to put Legos or a lot of other building toys together, but they tend to pick up these snap-together tiles at a much earlier age—and get very creative! This Picasso set is perfect for filling out your collection so you can smash giant buildings like Godzilla—or build something totally calm and serene if you have that lovely kind of child. We intermingle Picasso Tiles with standard Magna-Tiles and haven’t had any issues. They also don’t seem to crack or break easily, so they should last through multiple children. —Jeffrey Van Camp

The Play Box and toys

Lalo 13-15 Month

Photograph: Lalo

There’s a lot to keep in mind when you’re shopping for baby toys. You’re looking for something that can stimulate their little forming mind—and for it to be age appropriate, which can be difficult to discern with those first two years. Lalo’s toy boxes come with multiple toys designed for three-month age ranges, so you can easily pick one for the age the baby is or will be when they receive it. It comes with a little booklet on how to use it, both in the intended age window and afterward. My son just turned 16 months, but he still loves most of the items from the 13-15–month kit – especially the drum. —Nena Farrell

3D Doodler Set

Photograph: Amazon

This was the trending toy in my daughter’s second-grade class last year. Almost everyone had one or wanted one. This pen is simple and safe enough for even a second-grader to use, and it fit easily in my daughter’s tiny hands. Just charge the pen via a USB-C connection, feed the colored threads through the pen, and watch your child magically create little 3D flowers and kittens to leave all over your house. I would also suggest shelling out for a storage case, or maybe an empty shoebox, because it’s been a year and I’m still finding stray little colored filaments in very strange places. —Adrienne So

Star Wars Grogu stuffed animal

Photograph: Amazon

I’ve lost count of the number of Baby Yodas I have in this house—my daughter has a water bottle entirely covered in Baby Yoda stickers—but this simple plush seems to be the one that gets the most action. It’s small enough for a kid to play with next to Barbies or stuff in a backpack but big enough to cuddle or engage in conflicts with other stuffies. —Martin Cizmar

Shiba Inu Stuffed Animal

Photograph: Amazon

However many animals Noah had on that Arc is about as many Squishmallows and Squishmallow-style round stuffies we have in my house. This dog (not technically a Squishmallow and made by the OurHonor brand) is next in line as a surprise this Christmas. I also highly recommend Target’s line of Pokémon plushes, especially Bulbasaur, which you can have extra fun with by introducing him using your imitation of the guttural voice he has in the original TV series. —Martin Cizmar

Melissa Doug Let's Play House Dust Sweep Mop 6 Piece Pretend Play Set

Photograph: Amazon

When this set first popped up at my toddler’s grandparents house when he could barely walk, I thought it might be a good day of fun. That was at least two years ago, and he has used it constantly ever since, along with other littles! Some weeks dusting was the hot item, other times the littles would sweep and mop up a storm. (A pretend spray bottle and squeegee are also a fun addition; just leave the actual water outside.) The pieces are made from wood and still look close to new after a lot of abuse. The house isn’t dust-free yet, but we’re working on it! —Jeffrey Van Camp

Toys to Avoid

Mini Dyson Vacuum toy

Photograph: Amazon

I don’t recommend this trending toy, despite its many positive reviews. There are a lot of ways to help your kid pretend to vacuum, but this one is a bit complex for its own good. It looks neat, and Casdon Toys advertises it as a working vacuum, but it sucks only the tiniest of items up through a half-inch hole on the bottom (barely). Anything an uncoordinated toddler is able to suck then has to fit in a tiny spoon-sized bin that you’ll have to empty frequently yourself because it takes finger coordination. You’ll also need four C batteries (not included) and some replacements handy. There are two switches, one to turn on the suction and another to swirl some beads so it looks vacuumy.

After a bit of initial interest, this toy tends to sit around my house. It doesn’t stand up on its own, so we regularly have to prop it up if it gets disturbed. My advice: Buy an actual, decent little handheld vacuum. They might have a lot more fun actually sucking up the dirt on your floors and in your couch cushions, and they might help a little, too. —Jeffrey Van Camp

Apple’s Pledge to Support RCS Messaging Could Finally Kill SMS

Apple’s Pledge to Support RCS Messaging Could Finally Kill SMS

Good news is coming to your group chat. Today, Apple said it will add support for the RCS messaging standard to the iPhone. The website 9to5Mac broke the news that Apple will release a software update some time next year that will bring support to iOS for the messaging standard, which is already widely used by Android phones.

RCS, or Rich Communications Standard, is a messaging service that’s a step up from the SMS and MMS messaging standards that smartphones have used since they first arrived. RCS can do more than SMS and MMS: It allows users to share higher-resolution photos and videos between their devices; it supports read receipts; and there’s more fun stuff, like the ability to easily drop emoji and GIFs into a conversation. It also adds extra layers of security that the older messaging standards lack.

Apple has famously shunned RCS in favor of its own iMessage platform, resulting in a layer of incompatibility that anyone with an Android phone—or any iPhone user who regularly texts people with Android phones—is painfully aware of. Videos shared between iOS and Android are crunchy and low-bandwidth, and Android users are often confounded by group chats, with missed messages, absent emoji, and other glitches.

For years, Apple has been relying on SMS and MMS to bridge the digital divide between these messaging platforms. It’s the last major holdout, as RCS is already supported by major players like Google, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When Apple adds support for RCS, it won’t need that old bridge, and the move could signal the eventual death of SMS.

“It’s long been time for SMS to go away,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at the technology analyst firm Moor Insights and Strategy. “Now SMS can die, it can be sunset. So all the viruses and all the security flaws that are due to SMS can be eliminated.”

The move isn’t happening immediately; Apple told 9to5Mac that RCS support will come “in the later half of next year.” This timing suggests that support could arrive with the next version of iOS, which typically rolls out in September.

So it’s a ways out, but it’s certainly closer than Apple’s previous plan for the feature, which was apparently “never.” A year ago, it seemed Apple was not even considering supporting RCS on the iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook glibly joked that you could “buy your mom an iPhone” if you’re having trouble communicating with users on different devices. Since then, pressure has mounted on the company to implement RCS, and some compatibility has emerged between the platforms as they each have evolved.

Dating Apps Crack Down on Romance Scammers

Dating Apps Crack Down on Romance Scammers

Michael Steinbach, the head of global fraud detection at Citi and the former executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, says that broadly speaking fraud has transitioned from “high-volume card thefts or just getting as much information very quickly, to more sophisticated social engineering, where fraudsters spend more time conducting surveillance.” Dating apps are just a part of global fraud, he adds, and high-volume fraud still occurs. But for scammers, he says, “the rewards are much greater if you can spend time obtaining the trust and confidence of your victim.”

Steinbach says he advises consumers, whether on a banking app or a dating app, to approach certain interactions with a healthy amount of skepticism. “We have a catchphrase here: Don’t take the call, make the call,” Steinbach says. “Most fraudsters, no matter how they’re putting it together, are reaching out to you in an unsolicited way.” Be honest with yourself; if someone seems too good to be true, they probably are. And keep conversations on-platform—in this case, on the dating app—until real trust has been established. According to the FTC, about 40 percent of romance scam loss reports with “detailed narratives” (at least 2,000 characters in length) mention moving the conversation to WhatsApp, Google Chat, or Telegram.

Dating app companies have responded to the uptick in scams by rolling out both manual tools and AI-powered ones that are engineered to spot a potential problem. Several of Match Group’s apps now use photo or video verification features that encourage users to capture images of themselves directly within the app, which are then run through machine learning tools to try to determine the validity of the account, versus someone uploading a previously-captured photo that might be stripped of its telling metadata. (A WIRED report on dating app scams from October 2022 pointed out that at the time, Hinge did not have this verification feature, though Tinder did.)

For an app like Grindr, which serves predominantly men in the LGBTQ community, the tension between privacy and safety is greater than it might be on other apps, says Alice Hunsberger, vice president of customer experience at Grindr, whose role includes overseeing trust and safety. “We don’t require a face photo of every person on their public profile, because a lot of people don’t feel comfortable having a photo of themselves publicly on the internet associated with an LGBTQ app,” Hunsberger says. “This is especially important for people in countries that aren’t always as accepting of LGBTQ people or where it’s even illegal to be a part of the community.”

Hunsberger says that for large-scale bot scams, the app uses machine learning to process metadata at the point of sign up, relies on SMS phone verification, and then tries to spot patterns of people using the app to send messages more quickly than a real human might. When users do upload photos, Grindr can spot when the same photo is being used over and over again across different accounts. And it encourages people to use video chat within the app itself, to try to avoid catfishing or pig-butchering scams.

Kozoll, from Tinder, says that some of the company’s “most sophisticated work” is in machine learning, though he declined to share details on how those tools work since bad actors could use the information to skirt the systems. “As soon as someone registers we’re trying to understand, Is this a real person? And are they a person with good intentions?”

Ultimately, though, AI will only do so much. Humans are both the scammers, and the weak link on the other side of the scam, Steinbach says. “In my mind it boils down to one message: You have to be situationally aware. I don’t care what app it is, you can’t rely on only the tool itself.”