Michael Kanellos
Will Fisker Be First in Serials? July 15, 2008 at 8:36 AM
Fisker Automotive, a start-up that hopes to sell luxury hybrid cars, has lined up a manufacturing partner in an effort to get its cars out by the fourth quarter of next year.
Valmet Automotive, a Finnish manufacturer, will build the Fisker Karma for the company. Valmet also makes the Cayman and Boxster for Porsche. This being an international deal, the Finnish Valmet will make the cars in its Austria facilities.
The Karma, Fisker says, will be an $80,000 four-door luxury hybrid car. Like a Toyota Prius, it will have two engines: a gas one and an electric one. But unlike a Prius or other hybrids now on sale, the Karma will be a serial hybrid. The electric engine will drive the car and the gas engine will exist to recharge the battery. Serial hybrids, say advocates, can be produced for less than all-electric cars and go much further before conking out. The Tesla Roadster, for instance, can go a little under 250 miles on a charge. The Karma and Chevy Volt, another coming serial hybrid, will go more than twice that far. Batteries are one of the most expensive components in an electric or hybrid car, and a serial can get by on a smaller battery pack.
Both General Motors and Tesla have serial hybrids in the works. GM, however, won’t get the Volt out until 2010. Tesla, meanwhile, won’t get out the Model S, which will come out in an all-electric and serial form, until late 2010 and the all-electric version will come out first. Tesla had been aiming for 2009, but delayed it because of earlier delays with the Roadster. (Tesla sort of slipped in the delay part amid the hoopla of announcing a new factory in California.) At the California event a few weeks ago, Tesla said that they had eliminated some of the remaining manufacturing kinks and were getting more cars out of the factory. The company was stuck at less than one a week for a few months.
Thus, Fisker might be first to market. It has backing from prominent VCs and now a manufacturing partner. Founder Hendrik Fisker also has years of experience in designing cars. But getting one out on time isn’t easy. So we shall see.
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Correction: it’s a “series” hybrid, not a “serial” hybrid.
Think of electronics. A parallel hybrid takes voltage/push from the motor and engine on the same drive train. A series hybrid takes current in series from the engine to the battery which then goes to the motor.