Electric Car Start-Up, Fisker, Opens Huge Center in Michigan
At least one of the highly touted alternative car start-ups is expanding in the face of an economic meltdown.
Fisker Automotive yesterday announced (PDF) the opening of a 34,000 square foot Engineering and Development Center in Pontiac, Michigan, that will house up to 200 engineers and designers in support of Fisker’s much anticipated plug-in hybrid car, the four-door Fisker Karma.
- » See also: Is the Renault-Nissan Alliance Going in Two Different Electric Car Directions?
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Amid news of Tesla Motors’ (the other much-ballyhooed electric car start-up) recent “shrinkage,” Fisker seems to be flaunting its success. As the press release makes sure to point out, “The opening of [their new] facility comes on the heels of Fisker Automotive’s recent announcement that it prevailed in a lawsuit brought against the company by Tesla Motors.”
The bad blood between Tesla and Fisker goes back a ways. In April, Tesla sued Fisker Automotive claiming that Henrik Fisker took on an $875,000 design contract with Tesla in order to access confidential design information. Less than a year after his contract ended, Fisker launched his own company and announced the Karma. In June, Fisker won the suit in binding arbitration.
So it seems that, for now, Fisker is on a roll, while Tesla is starting to lose its steam. Last September, Fisker announced that they had raised $65 million dollars in a large round of funding while, just a month later, Tesla was forced to lay off employees and scale back operations due to inadequate funding.
Fisker is set to release the Karma at the end of next year. Allegedly, the Karma has a 50 mile all-electric range and more than 350 miles of total range. Fisker claims that the Karma “will have the potential for a fuel economy of over 100 miles per gallon on extended drives.” The car is expected to cost around $80,000 — which is $29,000 less than Tesla’s Roadster — and Fisker plans on selling 15,000 of them annually by 2011.
Source and Image Credit: Fisker Automotive
No disrespect, but Nick, Doug, and Nick are wrong. Putting expensive electric and hybrid tech in the hands of rich people is *exactly* how we get these technologies into the hands of the rest of us.
The world is full of expensive cars full of expensive toys that the rest of us can’t afford. Anti-lock brakes, air bags, traction control, nav systems, all started out on Mercedes. Once the idea is proven, everyone else will get on board.
Let the rich enjoy their expensive, cool toys now, so we can drive *real* $20K electric cars.
Maybe it takes 10 years. I can wait, the planet will survive, and we won’t have spent billions of dollars of federal grant money trying to shoehorn $100K of tech (now) into a $20K car.
I have a question. Given that the purpose of the fancy grille on the front of a conventional car is to allow cooling air to flow through/across the radiator, why, other than lack of imagination, do _electric_ cars have a slotted grille? Why not a nice aerodynamic solid front?
JonD your wrong; I understand that is how it works currently, but part of saving the planet and saving our economy means changing what made our planet and our econmy go down in the first place. instead of doing it right we cater the the rich and their firends first. if you want to change the world, you do it right. Honda and Nintendo have the right idea make it simple and make it affordable. They can do it why cannt the rest of the world get on board. selling one car a month for 80k and selling 30 cars amoth for 30k has a much higher returns.
DensityDuck, there is already an entire industry that “fixes” monocoque composite structures.Shh don’t tell anyone. Also , we have to deal with our structures being load bearing to a much much higher degree than any car.
We also have to deal with aerodynamics center of gravity changes as well as flight characteristics.
Also, you might want to note that composites can easily be stronger and stiffer than any metal based product, so “crashworthiness” is not a valid complaint until we actually start seeing some test results.
Quit bellyaching until you get something realistic to bellyache about.
Do any of you folks remember when the digital watch first came out–how much they cost and who bought them–how about digital slide-rules, now called calculators. The rich first adopters finance the future. Don’t stand in the way.
Nuju - there’s nothing any simpler about a Honda than any other car these days. The condition of our environment is better than it’s been in a century and anthropogenic global warming is found only in computer models, not in real-world evidence. Our economy has tanked because rising interest rates met explosively rising energy costs (partly due to obsessive dollar-weakening by the Bush administration) and a bubble that should have gone “pfft” went “BANG!” instead.
The fact is we are better off that something like plug-in hybrids and battery EVs start as a modest stream into the market and not a flood. There’s a lot of unknowns that aren’t handled any better by computer models than Hansen’s GISS has done on AGW, lifecycle environmental impact, charging and general electric T&D infrastructure, etc.
Oh, here’s one for the unintended-consequences file: http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/10/global-warming-caused-by-solar-panels.html
helowrench: I design composite structures for satellites at my day job with Lockheed; don’t be handing ME any sales brochures. I know what they’re good for, and what they’re bad for. You’ve heard the term “black aluminum”, right? And before this I was with NASA’s AVSP, crashing Lear Fans and Beech Starships and all sorts of nonmetallic airframes. This is not my first time around the block.
To all you who think these cars are a poor idea because they are expensive, think again. When the very first autos came out, only the wealthy could afford them - much like the electric cars of today. We should thank the early adopters of today for purchasing these cars and providing funding for them so that we common folk can someday afford to buy them as well. Prices will come down once the technology catches up and demand increases - just like it did with the very first cars.
OK, so where is the new location?
Brian,
If your question is, “Where is the new Fisker building located?”, re-read the first sentence after the photograph. If that’s not your question, please rephrase.