A Closer Look at Fisker’s Plan to Occupy Empty GM Plant
If Fisker Automotive was looking to make a good first impression for many American consumers unfamiliar with the California-based startup–they're off to a hell of a start.
With plans to bring a luxury hybrid plug-in to market in the Summer of 2010 (Karma, $85,000 pictured below) Fisker really needed a family sedan to gain serious traction in the North American market. Thanks to a $528 million conditional loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, they announced their intent to spend about $180 million of that money retooling a shuttered GM assembly plant in Delaware and initiate steps to bring a potential competitor to–ironically–GM's Volt. (Currently, the Karma platform was handled by Finnish company, Valmet Automotive.
Here is a recap of the important factors and a couple interesting tidbits I dug up:
- Tagged as "Project Nina", Fisker plans to quickly retool the plant over a period of 3 years to begin production of their new
family-targeted sedan
2. Production volumes will be approximately 100,000/yr, with:
-a target of 50% domestic sales & 50% slated as exports–yes, exports!
3. Initial sales price of Project Nina cars will be $47,000
- with a federal plug-in tax credit of $7,500
4. Should hit showrooms in 2012 (I wonder if some of the disgruntled Chrysler dealers are interested…)
5. Major venture capitalists at Fisker include the powerhouse group of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The same VCs
that:
-Were early investors of Google ($25 million for 20%) which turned into an approximately $120 billion gain and
Amazon.com for which their return was said to be an unbelievable 55,000%.
-For the record, execs at Google credit the guidance of KPCB as an important aspect to their tremendous
success.
-Instrumental in orchestrating the booming market for mobile applications such as iphone plugins.
(KPCB co-founder Brook Byers (right) pictured with
Google CEO, Eric Schmidt (left) and their spouses)
~Joe Brown
