Lets all maintain perspective. Believe me, I am as anxious as anyone to receive my car. I have car #7 on order. In fact, everyone in front of me in line (#1-6) came in after me, got their spots because Henrik, Barney, Alan, Dale, etc., gave up their spots in line. l am the longest-duration cash-deposit Fisker order/customer in the world, having put my $5,000 Signature Edition deposit down in October 2007 before even the clay model was completed. 4 years now. And most of you will still get your car the same month as me. Because I am in California, many of you will actually get yours before me. You don't hear me complaining, do you? No, because I am a realist.
Patience is key with a new car company. This is not as simple as cranking out a new video game, implementing new enterprise software, or building a one-off custom-built house. Recall that GM introduced and showed the Chevy Volt at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2007, a full year before the Karma was shown at the same show in January 2008. Volt made it to the streets this year. So, even with all GM's resources, it took them 4 years. Was Fisker optimistic? Yes. Did the economy slow them down? Yes. Did the expansion of the model line slow down Karma? Yes. The cars will come, and when they do, I believe they will come with enough volume to satisfy all customers with existing orders, and a whole bunch more. We are all early adopters, believers of the PHEV model, and huge supporters of the company. Let's try to remain that way.
And just because they have another month delay, that doesn't mean they can't fulfill thousands of orders once they are up and running at full capacity. I think you shouldn't despair and assume the delays will be forever, nor cumulative. Clearly, they are working the bugs out of the manufacturing system. And clearly the factory-HQ-Marketing-Dealership line-up is weak at communicating, but I think they are all trying to be sincere and are not "lying" to you... they are more likely just overly optimistic and unwilling to admit there are things beyond their control. Knowing how auto manufacturing works, my belief is that once they get things going, then cars can be produced at a fairly rapid rate (Valmet has capacity for over 60,000 cars a year, and has cranked out Porsche Caymans and Boxters at higher rates than Karma for years). So getting the first 3000 Fiskers produced on behalf of deposit/order-holding customers won't be hard , ONCE they get the system working. The devil is in the details when you need to get to high-volume production, and the last bit of software tuning, etc. must be right, and must be tested on pre-production cars, before they can turn on full manufacturability.
I believe the 100 signature cars may have been built in August, and the 37 demo cars were built in September, so the comments discussed above regarding production dates and volumes may not be inconsistent. Breadman's initial post said that before the 37 demos there were per-production cars. Those are likely the cars that Dutch mentions as the ones previously sitting at the factory.
So, let's all keep time in perspective, and enjoy our wonderful new cars....soon!
