Karma's A Bitch: Fisker Plug-In Delayed Again

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: June 4th, 2011

Fisker’s plug-in luxury car has been delayed again, as sales that were once planned for March and April, and then delayed to May or June have now been delayed until July, according to GreenCarReports. And that’s not just bad news for Fisker and its customers, but it’s bad news for President Obama’s goal of getting a million plug-in cars on American roads by 2015 as well. According to the DOE, the government’s goal banks on Fisker selling 1k Karmas this year, and 5k next year, rising to 10k in 2013. It’s also a bad sign for the government’s expectation that Fisker will sell 5k of its next-gen “Nina” (which has not even been shown in concept form) next year and 40k in 2013. It seems that the DOE’s half-billion dollar loan to Fisker is still a ways from yielding the desired results…

#EV #FutureVehicles #Government #Green

Edward Niedermeyer

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6 comments

Phxmotor on Jun 05, 2011

jhdgvfb

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PanzerJaeger on Jun 05, 2011

40,000 Fiskers sold two years from now? Forget the demand angle and just look at supply. Where are the dealerships to sell them?

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Vww12 on Jun 05, 2011

Money's gone, never to be recouped by taxpayer. Good and mediocre business plans are never lacking for venture capitalists –hey VCs actually did fund the sock puppet thing, anyone remembers that one? So is there anyone out there with half a brain that thought the gubm't could just waltz in and identify a viable biz plan where savvy VCs who spend their lives analyzing such things day in and day out did not?

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- M 1 on Jun 05, 2011
  
  You do realize that VCs don't spend taxpayer money, right? Edit: Nevermind, I see what you're saying.
  
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Michael Karesh on Jun 05, 2011

I've lost track--what month/year was this car first promised? I think the first sales were originally planned for late 2009. I doubt the government expects Fisker to actually hit its targets. Too much flash, too little substance. The Karma has a sports car sales curve written all over it--strong initial demand, quickly fading to nothing a people realize it's thoroughly impractical. But the government can't play favorites, and giving some money to upstarts does put more pressure on the established players to field their own products sooner. And at least it makes Fisker less likely to end the way DeLorean did (there are some interesting similarities). Even 40k cars would be an insignificant percentage of the total. If you haven't checked on the "classy" photo gallery on the Fisker site, it's a must see--mindset from the 1960s: http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/#!/karma/gallery:item=item-1

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- CJinSD on Jun 05, 2011
  
  I was just looking at a four year old Automobile Magazine with Robert Cumberford's styling assessment of the Karma. He loved it, and he talked of Fisker's production plans. At the time, it was 15,000 cars in the first year starting in the 4th quarter of 2009 at a price of $80,000. He quoted Fisker as saying something very much like people who doubt his goals just don't know him. He always does what he says. I guess his word was worth half a billion taxpayer dollars. It was probably worth it. For him.
  
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