Upcoming Fisker Ocean EV has a rotating centre screen

After many years of development, EV start-up Fisker has revealed the production version of its first electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV. Revealed at the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show, it has a few separating features, including a 17.1-inch touchscreen that rotates from portrait to landscape orientation.

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“When you use your phone and type on it, you hold it like this, and when you take a picture or if you want to watch a movie, you turn the phone around,” Fisker founder and CEO Henrik Fisker said during a livestream of the event. “In our vehicle we have a screen, on a push of a button, it changes from portrait mode to landscape mode. It just rotates. That is a really cool feature.”

Journalists didn’t get the opportunity to ask questions during the event, so we received no more information about why this rotating screen is useful or what is will do to the experience of using it in the car. This rotating display is only available on the top-of-the-line model; lower spec models will have the same display, but it will not be able to rotate.

The top trim model is called the Fisker Ocean Extreme and will cost $69,000. This model will also be the only one with the full solar roof, a part of Fisker’s designs since early prototypes. The solar panels are able to capture enough energy from the sun to add about 2,500km of battery range per year. The Extreme also has better sound systems and heated seats, which the others don’t.

The middle model in the range, the Ocean Ultra, costs $50,000 and the base model, the Ocean Sport, costs $37,500.

The latter will get about 400km of range, has a single electric motor and generates 205kW of power. The Ocean Ultra and Extreme both have the same 550km of range and generates 400kw of power from its dual motors.