Fisker Eyeing Former GM Delaware Plant for its Second Plug-In Hybrid
By John O'Dell October 26, 2009
Fisker Automotive appears ready to announce a deal this week to lease or buy a shuttered GM factory in Delaware to use for production of the plug-in hybrid family sedan the company has said will follow its Fisker Karma extended-range PHEV.
Vice President Joe Biden and state and local officials in Delaware are slated to attend an announcement at 10 a.m.Tuesday at the former GM Boxwood Road plant, near Newport, Del., and a spokesman for Fisker said Friday that a plant-location announcement was being scheduled for that day.
The new car, expected to be smaller and less costly that than exotic Karma, has been code-named "Project NINA" by the company, homage to the ship in Christopher Columbus' tiny fleet and signifying, company founder and chief executive Henrik Fisker has said, a "new world" for the auto industry.
The car, as previously described by Fisker, is to be a $48,000 (estimated) extended-range hybrid marketed to upscale families in 2012. The Karma, an $88,000 performance car, is just beginning production by a contractor in Finland, with deliveries to U.S. customers to begin in the summer. Both prices are before any applicable federal and local tax credits or other incentives.
Southern California-based Fisker Automotive received a $528 milllion federal loan last month from the Department of Energy to finance Project NINA and to fund additional U.S.-based engineering and development work on the Karma.
Henrik Fisker (left) said last week that his closely held company had identified a site for production of the new family PHEV, and the Wall Street Journal has now reported that its sources say the facility is the 3.2-million-square-foot Boxwood Road assembly plant that General Motors Corp. idled in July as part of its massive restructuring.
The 52-year-old plant had most recently been used for production of the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice two-seat roadsters.
Fisker has said that he expects to be able to build and sell 100,000 of the Project NINA cars each year once production is running at full capacity - the car is to be sold globally - and that a factory could employ as many as 1,500 people,
Fisker also has said he expected to eventually move production of the Karma to the U.S. - the initial cars are being built under contract by Valmet Automotive, an independent Finnnish automotive engineering and assembly firm.
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