Plug-In Hybrid Maker Opens Michigan R&D Center to Cherry-Pick Laid-Off Talent
By John O'Dell November 10, 2008
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Fisker Automotive, developer of an $80,000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan promised for the fourth quarter of 2009, said it has opened an engineering and development center in Pontiac, Mich.
The Southern California-based company, a venture-capital funded company founded by Fisker Coachbuild and Quantum Technologies Worldwide, said the 34,000-square-foot facility will be home to "up to" 200 engineering and designers working on development and production of the company's first vehicle, the Fisker Karma (right).
Fisker's headquarters will remain in Irvine, Calif. and production of the car, as previously announced, will be done in Finland, the company said.
Privately-owned Fisker is stepping in to fill a void being created as the traditional U.S. auto industry undergoes massive shrinkage, a seemingly bottomless slide in sales and subsequently catastrophic financial losses
Layoffs of tens of thousands of auto industry workers in and around Detroit, and the impact carmakers' retrenching has had on components and service suppliers, have created a buyers' market for independents such as Fisker looking to supply vehicles that mainstream automakers can't, or won't.
"The available talent, supplier base and infrastructure in Michigan will help us reach our production goal," said Bernhard Koehler, Fisker Automotive's chief operating officer.
Company president and chief executive Henrik Fisker previously has said he intends to build and sell up to 15,000 cars a year by 2011 to an upscale, global customer base.
The present national recession and global financial crunch apparently haven't changed that goal. Many economists have said they expect the economy to begin showing signs of revival by late next year when the initial Fisker cars will go on sale.
"In fact, we've had a lot of new orders in just the past few weeks," Henrik Fisker said in a phone interview Monday. "People see this as the future of the auto...We can even imagine increasing production goals.'
He said that the company had about 500 orders for the Karma at the beginning of October and has taken more than 500 new orders in the past month.
The Karma, unveiled in January at the North American international Auto Show in Detroit, is a curvaceous luxury sedan that uses an all-electric drive system augmented by an on-board internal combustion engine that servers as a generator to supply juice to the battery pack once the initial charge from the commercial power grid is depleted.
As does GM with its upcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in, Fisker calls the system an extended-range electric drive.
The company claims the Karma will deliver up to 50 miles of all-electric travel on that initial charge, with an additional 300 miles of range from the gasoline-fueled generator and a "potential" fuel economy of 100 mikes per gallon on extended drives.
The proprietary drive system developed by Quantum will give the Karma a top speed of 125 mpg and 0-60 acceleration in under 6 seconds, the company says.
LEAVE A COMMENT