Fisker Karma wagon and Nina SUV among upcoming models

Delaware Online said:

A business plan that Fisker Automotive has submitted to its financiers at the U.S. government show the startup hybrid car maker is planning to introduce six models over the next three years, including a Karma sports wagon and three versions of its Project Nina, one being an SUV.

The News Journal obtained the documents through a freedom-of-information request filed with the federal Department of Energy. DOE funded Fisker with a $529 million loan to work on the two product lines: the Karma, which is just starting to be produced overseas; and the Project Nina, which will be built starting in 2012 at a Newport-area plant formerly owned by General Motors.

Fisker's Karma sports sedan, at the Paris Motor Show last week

Under terms of its DOE loan, Fisker is required to keep the government up to date on its plans. Though the documents are heavily redacted with black marker, they do show Fisker planning to build three models in its Karma and Nina lines.

We’ve already seen the $88,000 Karma sports sedan, and early deliveries of the car should begin in March. Fisker is also planning a convertible version of the Karma that it has talked about. There are apparently also plans for a Karma sports wagon, according to the documents. And it seems Fisker is set to develop the Nina as a sedan, an SUV, and a two-door. Sales estimates are completely blacked-out in the document, but the documents seem to show that Fisker is looking to have all of these models on the road by 2013. (We’ll try to get the plan online so you can check it out for yourself.)

Last week was a big one for Fisker, whose CEO was busy showing off the first factory-built Karma sports sedan at the Paris Motor Show. While there, Henrik Fisker also told a Financial Times reporter of the company’s plans to churn out five other models, but the story did not include many details about what they would look like. Fisker did tell the FT that the company intends to only produce plug-in hybrids.

“We want to create a car company that only makes plug-in hybrid vehicles,” Fisker told FT. “We’re going to have a range of six vehicles in the next five years.”

Fisker bought GM’s old Boxwood Road plant this summer for $20 million, and has promised to eventually employ 2,500 people here building its cars, either directly or indirectly through suppliers. Nina production is slated to begin (though Fisker says the timetable is still adjustable) in the third quarter of 2012. By 2016, Karma production is scheduled to be transferred to the Delaware plant.

While in Paris, Fisker also tipped his hand to a possible public offering of the company’s stock.

“We have to launch the Karma first, that is clear,” Fisker told the news agency Reuters, in Paris. ”You have to get the revenue and launch the Karma, but we already are making sure our company is prepared for this possibility of an IPO.”

That came as old news here. Ray Lane, chairman of Fisker’s board, told us back in June that the company was planning an IPO once it got the Karma on the road. “Certainly we would plan to sell shares in the public market once the Karma is on the road and we have visibility into the revenue plan,” Lane, a managing partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said then.

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FT said:

Fisker Automotive, a US start-up that is launching a rechargeable hybrid sports car, plans to build five more models by 2016, its chief executive said.

Henrik Fisker said the carmaker planned to build two more models based on its Karma plug-in sports car, plus another three mass-market cars at a former General Motors plant in the US.

“We want to create a car company that only makes plug-in hybrid vehicles,” Mr Fisker said. “We’re going to have a range of six vehicles in the next five years.”

At the Paris motor show Fisker, based in Irvine, California, unveiled its first factory-built Karma roadster, which is made by contract manufacturer Valmet in Finland and will go on sale next March.

Fisker is one of two fledgling carmakers exhibiting in Paris that are seeking a first-mover advantage in premium plug-in cars by utilising US government money and cheap manufacturing assets sold after the Detroit industry’s recent crisis.

In late 2012, Fisker will in begin production of its mass-market Nina model at a former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware that it bought for $20m from Motors Liquidation Company, which acquired GM’s “bad” assets after it filed for bankruptcy last year.

“It would be $400m if we had to build this plant from scratch,” Mr Fisker said. The company, backed by private investors, has received two low-interest loans worth $529m from a US Department of Energy credit line for low-emission vehicle technology.

Its competitor Tesla Motors, which is already building $109,000 electric roadsters, will from 2012 produce its mass-market “Model S” at another former GM plant in Fremont, California for which it paid $42m. “There’s never been a better time to buy automotive equipment in the industry,” Elon Musk, the company’s founder, chief executive and largest shareholder, told the Financial Times. “We’re getting first-rate equipment for pennies on the dollar.”

Tesla, which in June floated on Nasdaq, aims to begin delivering the Model S by mid-2012. Like Fisker, it has received approval for a Department of Energy loan, worth $465m.

The two companies face similar challenges as Germany’s big luxury carmakers move towards building luxury electric and hybrid cars. BMW, the industry’s largest premium carmaker, will launch an electric car under a new sub-brand from 2013.

Both companies say they are prepared for the competition. “BMW are doing a little city car,” Mr Fisker said of its planned electric model. “They don’t want to compete with their big vehicles.”

Mr Musk said Tesla was aiming to sell only 20,000 cars a year, a small share of the 2m per year global luxury market.

He added: “We are only talking about 1 per cent of the premium market. We suck if we can’t do that.”

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