Fisker, Motec Recruiting Automotive Talent

Automotive design icon and entrepreneur Henrik Fisker us linking up with Berlin-based Motec Ventures as a member of its advisory board as it looks to cultivate new and innovative tech companies worldwide.

Motec Ventures is a collaboration between German automotive and mobility consulting firm, e&Co and Venionaire Capital, an Austria venture-capital firm.

Fisker designed the BMW Z8, Aston Martin DB9/V8 Vantage, Fisker Karma and the new Fisker EMotion luxury electric sedan.

His company, Fisker Inc., also will engage in co-investment opportunities that are synergistic with the automaker’s upcoming vehicle lineup, as well as the proprietary Fisker Solid-State Battery program.

The JV says companies for too long have needed to source talent from California’s tech-heavy Silicon Valley region, ignoring the abundance of talent located worldwide.

“With this new partnership, Motec Ventures and Henrik Fisker aim to tap into the hotbed of engineering and tech talent in Germany, Europe, India, China and more, to cultivate new and innovative tech companies and usher in the next generation of the automobile industry,” it says in a statement.

Motec Ventures was founded in June as a joint venture investing in the future of mobility and linking innovative high-tech and deep-tech start-ups together with leading family-owned and medium-sized companies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrolian region of Italy.

Fisker will support Managing Directors Berthold Baurek-Karlic and Geza Brugger through regular meetings on technical and entrepreneurial issues.

The JV also will focus on increasing collaboration between small and medium-sized enterprises, global OEMs and promising new suppliers to help drive down manufacturing costs and to achieve economies of scale.

“Henrik Fisker is, from my perspective, the Steve Jobs of the automotive world: a strong visionary and full-blooded entrepreneur with experience from both successful projects, as well as those that brought challenges and lessons learned,” Brugger says in a statement.

“As a European living in the U.S., having implemented some revolutionary projects there, we will be strongly challenged and reinforced by him.”