Fisker Automotive secured a key $528.7 million federal loan for the development and production of two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The loan will support the Karma, a full-size, four-door sports sedan, and a line of family oriented models being developed under the company’s Project NINA program.
The California-based will use $169.3 million to cover the engineering integration costs of the Fisker Karma, which will be built in Finland using components sourced from suppliers in the United States.The Fisker Karma is a four-door luxury sports sedan that is designed, like the Chevrolet Volt, as an extended-range electric vehicle. A two-door convertible version also is planned. The four-door Karma is priced at $87,900; no price has been set on the convertible, but the company expects it to be higher than that of the Karma four-door.
Most of the funds, however, will be used to buy and retool an old General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware, to build a mid-sized plug-in sedan codenamed Project Nina.
Fisker plans to manufacture cars at a Wilmington, Del., plant closed recently by General Motors Co. Fisker expects to employ as many as 2,000 assembly workers, with more jobs to be created among suppliers of parts and services.
The DOE gave conditional loan commitments to Ford ($5.9 billion), Nissan ($1.6 billion) and Tesla Motors ($465 million) as part of the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.
