Gas Electric Hybrid

Fisker Preps Its Production Car

The Karma will cost $87,900, a little more than expected, but the gas-electric hybrid is coming next November, the company says.

Fisker Automotive says it will be ready to deliver cars to customers this coming November, and will show off its production models to the public this January.
The startup, which has designed an upscale series hybrid car called the Karma, plans to show off the production version of its car at the North American International Auto Show, which starts Jan. 11 in Detroit.

The production model largely resembles the prototype that Fisker showed off at the show last year and at subsequent events. The company, though, has begun to refine the details on the price and performance of its car. As with Tesla Motors, the big question is whether Fisker can market and mass produce what will essentially be an electric car for a price that will appeal to customers and let the company also make money. The automotive world is a harsh place. You have to go back to the 1910s and 1920s to find the last time that there were successful crops of startup automakers.

The Karma will be released at a base price of $87,900, which is nearly 10 percent higher than the $80,000 price estimate given by the company earlier. The four-door car will be powered by a lithium-ion battery from an unnamed vendor and the Q-Drive power-train initially conceived by Quantum Technologies, which has worked with General Motors on a number of projects. The car will be delivered in November, a refinement from the "fourth quarter" statements earlier.

The car is a series hybrid like the Chevy Volt, which has been delayed until 2010. This type of hybrid, the car drives on an electric motor powered by batteries. When the batteries are about to give out, the gas generator fires up, and charges the batteries. The gas engine can also propel the car. The Karma itself will drive 50 miles on electricity and then drive on a combination of gas and electric power. This gives the car an estimated mileage of 100 miles per gallon, according to the company.

The car can hit a top speed of 125 miles per hour and Fisker says it can go from zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds. It also has different driving modes-Stealth, Sport, HEV and Fuel Economy, giving drivers different degrees of fuel economy and power.

Fisker and Tesla in many ways have similar strategies. Both will enter the market with high-end cars and then try to trickle into the mainstream with sedans as the underlying technology in their vehicles becomes cheaper. (CORRECTION: Tesla has already produced and sold "nearly 100" cars according to a spokeswoman. Fisker won't start until November.) The main difference is the gas generator. Fisker makes hybrids. Tesla earlier had planned to make a series hybrid but now says it will make only all-electric cars. All-electrics can cost more than regular cars because of the inordinate expense of batteries.

On the other hand, the series hybrid concept hasn't been tried in mass production cars yet. Some, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and UC Davis Professor Andy Frank, claim that the concept is tougher to pull off than it sounds. Toyota's Prius and the other hybrids on the road are parallel hybrids. In these, the gas motor propels the car and doesn't exist to charge the battery.

As previously stated, the Karma will be assembled by Valmet Automotive, which also produces the Porsche Boxster and Porsche Cayman. The Yearly volume is anticipated to reach 15,000 cars per year.

A total of 40 retailers for the U.S. market will be established by October 2009. Fisker Automotive will announce 20 of its Retailers in January 2009. European pricing will be announced at the International Geneva Motor Show in March.

Hybrid Chevy Volt

GM's Chevy Volt: A Work in Progress

Chevy Volt co-creator Jon Lauckner says that GM's first plug-in hybrid won't have swappable or leasable batteries, but he passes on saying how much it might cost.

Fresh out of bankruptcy, General Motors promises its plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt, will go on sale in late 2010. What else does GM want to tell the world about it?
Jon Lauckner, Volt co-creator and GM's vice president of global program management, didn't offer too many hard answers to the dozens of questions he fielded in an online question and answer session Wednesday. But he did clarify some roads the Volt wasn't planning to travel down.

For example, GM doesn't plan to lease the Volt's batteries to customers. That's a business model being considered by some, including battery charging and swapping station, startup Better Place, since batteries can make up a significant portion of the cost of plug-in hybrid or pure electric vehicle.

Neither does GM intend to make the Volt's batteries easily removed and exchanged, Lauckner wrote. That means the Volt will not be a candidate for Better Place's switch-the-battery business model – not surprising, since Better Place is aiming more at serving all-electric vehicles.

The Volt's battery pack – being designed by GM with battery cells from a consortium headed by LG Chem. is expected to retain enough of a charge to deliver 40 miles of electric-powered range over 10 years and 150,000 miles of service, Lauckner wrote. GM will guarantee that performance and repair or replace batteries that don't meet it.

Afterwards, the battery packs should have enough energy storage capacity for stationary applications. The semi-depleted car batteries will find second homes storing energy at homes or businesses, or utility substations.

GM still isn't talking about a price for the Volt, and likely won't until three to six months before it will start production, Lauckner wrote.

The European version of the Volt, the Ampera, is still on track for a 2011 launch, but GM will also sell the regular Volt in Europe, Lauckner wrote. That was in response to a question about the future of Opel, GM's troubled European division.

And GM doesn't see much point in putting solar panels on the roof of the Volt, Lauckner wrote – unlike Toyota, which will offer buyers of the new Prius hybrid the option of rooftop solar panels made by Kyocera.

"The amount of solar energy you can get by covering the Volt's roof with solar cells is only enough to run a small fan motor," he wrote. "You aren't going to recharge the battery on solar power in a reasonable amount of time."

Toyota expects to start mass-producing a plug-in version of the Prius in 2012.