Fisker Automotives buys a former General Motors plant to start producing ...

Fisker Automotives buys a former General Motors plant to start producing hybrid plug-in vehicles

Danish car designer Henrik Fisker is set to begin making eco-friendly cars in the US.

Fisker, a former designer with BMW, Aston Martin and Ford, received a 2.66 billion kroner loan from the US Department of Energy in September to produce plug-in hybrid cars.

The Californian-based Fisker Automotives has bought the ex-GM assembly plant in Delaware for 91 million kroner after a four-month evaluation period. US Vice President Joe Biden announced the deal.

Fisker Automotive has already invested 850 million kroner of the US loan to produce the luxury plug-in hybrid Karma sports car, the production of which is entirely outsourced. A Finnish plant assembles the Karma as no suitable US factory could be found.

But the car to follow the Karma will be assembled solely in the Delaware plant, with Fisker assigning 1.8 billion kroner of state funding to the project.

Fisker described the new car, known for now as Project Nina, as a ‘green BMW’. Vice President Biden also released some details, describing it as a ‘four-door Ferrari’.

‘Technology is so expensive that we have to start with a luxury car and go into a market where people can afford to pay for the product,’ Fisker told trade publication Ingeniøren.

The Nina will be launched in 2012 and is expected to cost half as much as the 430,000 kroner Karma, which hits the US market next summer.

‘We’re positioning ourselves as a green BMW. We don’t want to compete with Toyota, Kia and all the others. It’s going to be a BMW family car, not a Kia one. There are millions of cars around the world in this premium market and that’s what we want to cover,’ Fisker said.

The designer also believed that now was the time to hit the US automotive market, not least because he felt the competition was weak.

‘If you got all Americans driving plug-in hybrids like ours it would have a dramatic effect on oil consumption in the US. Eighty percent of Americans drive less than 80km a day and our car doesn’t use any gas for the first 80km after charging,’ he said.