Autoblog Wrote:Nearly half a year ago, Fisker Automotive's chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler, promised that the company would host a "supplier day" to give Delaware-area businesses a crack at vying for contracts with the automaker. After six months of waiting, area businesses began to doubt that Fisker would ever host the event and started to lash out against the automaker.

Fisker finally held its first meet-and-greet event last Wednesday at the DuPont Country Club outside of Rockland, DE. It was focused on securing suppliers for the company's upcoming plug-in hybrid Project Nina. Fisker spokesman Russel Datz stated that representatives from nearly 90 companies attended the event, the first of several scheduled meet-and-greets. No deals were inked out, but Fisker did listen to pitches from possible suppliers and will hear many more before finalizing its production plans. The event was closed to reporters, so information is sparse. However, Koehler said, "It's the first one of many to come. We want to have this car in production in 2012 and we need to start now."

While we're thrilled to see that Fisker has finally taken the necessary step of meeting with Delaware-area suppliers, we'll hold off on saying this represents a big step forward on getting Project Nina finished, as we're still waiting for the oft-delayed Karma to hit the streets.

Quote:The EPA has to adapt to changing times. New vehicle types like the Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF require new types of fuel economy testing and labels to allow consumers to compare among them.

The agency has just released two new sets of labels, and are asking the public to comment on them to decide which will be implemented.

Included among the group are the two different labels that would be specifically used for plugin hybrids and for pure EVs.

There are two design option for each. The first gives the car a grade from A+ to D- indicating how much emissions the car releases. It does not include the emissions created to generate the electricity.

The other label design is similar to the present day label. For plug in hybrids it shows the MPGe (mile per gallon equivalents) on the left for the first all-electric miles of driving, how much gas and energy will be used to achieve it.

This is determined by the following formula:

MPGe = (miles driven) / [(total energy of all fuels consumed)/(energy of one gallon of gasoline)])

On the right it shows the miles per gallon when only gas is used. There are two different labels, one for blended PHEVs and one for EREVs (the Volt). It also includes typical fuel cost per year (electric and gas).

For pure electric cars the sticker will show MPGe in large font as well as kwh per 100 miles and annual electric cost in smaller font.

It is important to recognize the images in this post used by the EPA are only for illustration, they are not the actual Volt values.

You can download the whole brochure here which includes proposed labels for other vehicle types including conventional gas cars.

To weigh in to the EPA with your comments go here.

“We are asking the American people to tell us what they need to make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “New fuel economy labels will keep pace with the new generation of fuel efficient cars and trucks rolling off the line, and provide simple, straightforward updates to inform consumers about their choices in a rapidly changing market. We want to help buyers find vehicles that meet their needs, keep the air clean and save them money at the pump.”

Quote:Fisker.me is the exclusive owner's only website and community providing personalized resources and vital vehicle information.
Coming Soon

Wired Magazine via Fisker Automotive Wrote:Henrik Fisker’s ‘Timeless’ Automotive Designs

Henrik Fisker uses a single word to describe his design aesthetic: timeless.

Fisker is the founder and CEO of Fisker Automotive, a company hoping to shake up the auto industry and prove eco-friendly cars can be as lustworthy as the finest luxury sedans. But Fisker is, first and foremost, a car nut, one whose highest ambition is to design cars that will be as beautiful 50 years from now as they are today.

“The thing I really believe in is, in a word, timelessness,” Fisker says. “That’s something you have to put into car design.”

His designs draw as much inspiration from the human body as they do the classic cars of the past. They are long and muscular, like an athlete, and he has called them a “human-like form of sculpture.” Proportion is paramount. He believes cars look best with flowing lines, short overhangs and an assertive stance, which explains the look of his Karma plug-in hybrid (shown above).

“The Karma shows the perfect proportions of an automobile,” he says. “It’s long and low with short overhangs, large wheels and sweeping line. We wanted to design a car we knew no other automaker would do.”



Fisker Sunset

Planned production TBA

The Karma isn’t slated to roll into driveways until sometime next year, but Fisker already has his second model in the works — the Sunset, a convertible based on the Karma. From the start, Fisker had only one goal: Create the ultimate open-top luxury car.

“There was no compromise made on that,” he says. “Its all about beauty and the open road.”

The open road is where Fisker, who was born in Denmark, fell in love with cars. He was a boy riding in his father’s Saab 96 when a Maserati Bora passed by. Fisker found it utterly gorgeous. The die was cast, a design aficionado born.

“I realized I love the way cars look,” he says. “I wanted to be a part of it. Like most little boys, I was drawing cars. Sooner or later they grow out of it, but I never did.”



BMW Z8

2000–2003



The BMW 507 was the inspiration for the Z8.

Fisker graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Switzerland in 1989 and went to work at BMW Technik, the automaker’s advanced-design center. It’s where BMW develops some of its most innovative ideas.

Fisker spent 12 years at BMW and made his name with the Z07 concept car, which became the Z8 roadster in 1999. It resembled nothing BMW was making at the time, and it looked back at the company’s heritage even as it looked to the future.

“My inspiration was the BMW 507,” Fisker says. “The task was how would that car have looked if it evolved like the Porsche 911 evolved. That’s why it has that slightly retro look. But the thing I really like about it is — even if at first glance it has a retro look — it is very, very modern.”



Aston Martin DB9

2004–present



Fisker left BMW for Ford in 2001 and became design director at Aston Martin, which Ford owned at the time. His first job was wrapping up the DB9, a design started by his predecessor, Ian Callum. (Callum, in an interview with Car & Driver, says “pretty much 100 percent” of the design is his, a point Fisker vigorously denies.)

“My time at Aston Martin was very interesting because I came from BMW, which had this huge design-and-engineering department,” Fisker says. Aston Martin, on the other hand, was a far-smaller operation that allowed him greater say in the car’s design and development.

In working on the DB9, as he did with the Z8, Fisker drew from his employer’s storied heritage and most-beautiful cars. He was particularly inspired by the DB4 GT Zagato.

“I brought back the strongest elements from the best of Aston Martin’s history,” he says.



Aston Martin V8 Vantage

2005–present



Jaguar XK-E, one of Fisker's favorite designs.

Fisker draws tremendous inspiration from the past, because it speaks to his “timeless” aesthetic. He counts the sensual Jaguar XK-E and the angular Maserati Boomerang concept as two of his favorites. And he’s especially partial to Giorgetto Giugiaro, whose work ranges from the Ferrari 250 GT to the Volkswagen Rabbit to several Nikon cameras.

Of course Fisker admires the work of the big Italian design houses like Carrozzeria Bertone, but he also is influenced by American designers, particularly those who shaped the luxury and muscle cars of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

“Growing up in Denmark, they were dream cars for me. Cars like the early Pontiac Firebirds,” he says. “People might laugh now, but at the time they were very cool. I draw influence from American car design. In the 1950s and 1960s, American cars were extravagant. They were generous with form. They were affordable cars that were very dramatic.”

After completing the DB9, Fisker turned his attention to the V8 Vantage. (Again, Callum says he was largely responsible for the design, telling Car & Driver “a good 80 percent” of it is his. Fisker vigorously denies this claim.) Here, as always, Fisker focused heavily on giving the car the “right proportions” — a long hood, short overhangs and an aggressive stance.



Ford Shelby GR-1

2005



Concept and show cars are where designers really get to stretch their wings, and the Shelby GR-1 radically reimagines the Shelby Daytona Coupe race car of the 1960s. Fisker didn’t design it — that was done by George Saridakis, for a project conceived by J. Mays, Ford’s global VP of design. But he led the Global Advanced Design Studio where the car took shape.

Although Fisker cites many high-dollar sports and luxury cars as his favorite designs, he finds inspiration everywhere. Even a Hyundai might spark an idea and get him sketching.

“It might make me think, ‘Hey, they tried something different’ and it will make me think of something,” he says. “I think about car design every day as I go back and forth to work, looking at cars.”



Fisker Tramonto

2005

Fisker left Ford in 2005 to launch Fisker Coachbuild with Bernhard Koehler, with whom he worked at BMW and Aston Martin. The company was an anachronism, a return to the days when specialized design houses made bodies for cars built by others. Coach building was common before World War II and led to some of the most beautiful cars ever made.

Fisker Coachbuild’s first car was the Tramonto, a roadster based on the Mercedes-Benz SL. Fisker gave the car a longer hood line and a slimmer rear with no visible bumpers. Fisker spends a lot of time designing the back end of his cars, an area he says is too often overlooked.

“Too often you walk around a car you’ll find beautiful and you’re disappointed when you get to the back,” he said. “They’ll have square taillights or an unsightly bumper or they just aren’t very distinctive. The back of a car is a place where I think you can create a strong, beautiful design.”

And not just because it’s the only thing people will see if you’ve got a particularly fast car like a Tramonto. When fitted with carbon bodywork and a supercharged V-8 from the Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, it’ll do zero to 60 in (a claimed) 3.6 seconds.



Fisker Latigo

2005

Fisker’s second coach-built car was the Latigo CS, based on the BMW 6-Series coupes. Again, he gave the car a sleeker front and a tidier rear. Although you can see the Bimmer’s DNA, the Latigo doesn’t look quite like anything else, which is the point.

“We wanted people to wonder, ‘What is that?’” Fisker says.

Fisker Coachbuild uses exotic materials like magnesium, and forms the body in aluminum, steel and carbon fiber. It also customizes the drivetrain and interior to each customer’s taste. That makes the vehicles frightfully expensive — Fisker says they cost $300,000 and up — but ensures a high level of exclusivity. Although each car was slated for a production run of 150 vehicles, no more than a handful were built.

“We wanted customers to be able to personalize the vehicles,” Fisker says. “No two of them are the same. But we knew that was not a long-term business model.”

And so Fisker Coachbuild and Quantum Technologies launched Fisker Automotive in 2007 to develop the Karma plug-in hybrid.



Artega GT

2009–present

Fisker can design mid-engine cars, too. The Artega GT is a super-exclusive two-seater built by German boutique builder Artega Motors. Fisker drew influence for the design from cars like the “Ferrari” Dino 246, one of the most beautiful sports cars ever.

Fisker has big plans for his eponymous company. He says he’ll deliver the first Karma sedans to customers next year and begin producing the Sunset convertible in 2011.

Beyond that, though, he’s looking ahead to an “affordable” mid-sized plug-in hybrid sedan codenamed Project Nina. The Department of Energy was impressed enough to lend Fisker Automotive $528 million to help get Nina rolling. He’s already lined up a factory in Delaware to build the car, which he says will be here in mid-2012.

And what will it look like?

“You can expect that it will be the most beautiful car in its class,” he says, promising a car about the size of a BMW 3-Series. “It will set new standards. And that’s all I’ll say.”

Wired Wrote:Tucker, Cord, Delorean—the history of the auto industry is full of entrepreneurs who set out to rethink how cars are made. Most of them went bankrupt. Henrik Fisker is looking to buck that trend, challenging Tesla, Nissan, and GM with an ambitious entry into the amped-up field of electrified autos. After conjuring up such lust-worthy machines as the Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8, the designer is now CEO of his own startup, Fisker Automotive. He aims to rock the market with a gorgeous $90,000 plug-in hybrid and a business model that’s more Silicon Valley than Motown. Wired talked to Fisker about how he plans to use a big idea, a tiny staff, and an open supply chain to blow the doors off Detroit.

Wired: GM went bankrupt; Chrysler is disintegrating. Is this really a good time to start a car company?

Henrik Fisker: It’s the perfect time. Especially for an environmentally minded automaker. Governments are handing out money—in April we got a $529 million loan from the US Department of Energy—and consumers are ready to change their lifestyles in the name of the environment.

Wired: No offense, but outside the auto industry, hardly anyone has even heard of your company. Where did you come from?
Photo: Joe Pugliese

Henrik Fisker says his company will sell more cars than Porsche by 2016.
Photo: Joe Pugliese

Fisker: I come from Denmark; Fisker Automotive comes from California. When we first showed the Karma in January 2008, we had barely started the company. In fact, we had just incorporated in August of the previous year.

Wired: You went from incorporation to unveiling a car at the Detroit Auto Show in only five months? That’s insane.

Fisker: Well, it was really just a shell; it didn’t even have a drivetrain.

Wired: OK, you had a shell in 2008—yet you promised delivery by 2010?

Fisker: You know what? Starting a car company is risky. We were brand-new, and we needed investment to develop our car. But we needed a car to attract those investors.

Wired: You got the funding—from Kleiner Perkins and now the DOE—and you’re already set to deliver your first vehicle. How did you do in three years what usually takes five?

Fisker: Most automakers develop multiple options for a single project. Then they present those options to a committee of executives who decide which one to go with. That takes a lot of time. I’m our head designer, and I’m also the chief executive; I choose a direction very early on, and we don’t look back. We don’t waste time doing 3-D models and design work for products that will never exist.

Wired: So being small can actually give you an advantage over the big guys?

Fisker: Absolutely. The industry hasn’t really changed since the last century. The big automakers are bogged down by excessive management and staff. They’re inefficient. We’re modern, fast, and light. Take the design process: At a typical car company, it lasts about 12 months. At Fisker it’s two. And we don’t feel the need to create every component in-house, either. We encourage suppliers to use our vehicles as a test bed for new ideas. Then we help them develop the technology and adapt it to our car.

Wired: Sounds like you’re outsourcing a lot. Doesn’t that make Fisker more of a design firm than a car company?

Fisker: No. A car has about 3,500 parts. Every time you move one of them 5 millimeters, several hundred others have to move as well. We have to integrate every component into a crash-worthy package that meets our performance expectations. That’s the hard part.

Wired: But it’s probably cheaper than developing all those parts in-house.

Fisker: Much cheaper. Say we wanted to design the stamping presses that make our fenders. We’d need 15 or 16 engineers just for that task. It would be hard to make money with 16 engineers working on every component. So we don’t. We have one. And we can turn a profit by selling as few as 15,000 vehicles.

Wired: Which is exactly how many Karmas you’re planning to build.

Fisker: Exactly, but that’s only the beginning. We just bought a factory in Delaware where we’ll produce our next car: a $40,000 model aimed at the mass market. We’ll be producing 100,000 a year by 2013. And we’ll have six models for sale by 2016.

Wired: You realize that will make you bigger than Porsche, right? In a fraction of the time that Porsche has existed.

Fisker: Yes, but that kind of growth isn’t unusual these days. Look at Google: They’ve been around for just over a decade, and they have a larger market cap than Coca-Cola. Look at Apple: They took 20 percent of the premium phone market in the US in six months. Now look at us: We created the premium green-auto market, and we’ve already got a waiting list 1,600 customers long.

Edmunds Inside Line Wrote:If California had a state car, it would be this bright orange Tesla Roadster. It looks sensational in the fierce Los Angeles sun, as its eerily silent, electric-powered acceleration makes it an orange streak through the rush-hour traffic. You feel dangerously exposed to the vast Hummers and Suburbans on either side, but the Tesla Roadster makes the crass SUVs look like dinosaurs whose time have long since passed.

"Is that an Italian car?" a driver yells at a stoplight. "No," I'm pleased to answer. "It's from about five blocks back that way."

We're in the New Detroit, the place where investors, car-makers and a bunch of new technology companies have come together. They think they can do things better, and they're going to do it with electricity. We're in California — Los Angeles, to be exact.

Electrified Futurism
Though Tesla's headquarters lies in the San Francisco Bay Area, its design studio now is in Hawthorne, a suburb near the Los Angeles airport once noted for the manufacture of fighter planes. Henrik Fisker is developing his $87,900 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid in Irvine, just about 40 miles away. And AC Propulsion (ACP), the technology company that scienced much of the drivetrains that underpin the Tesla and Fisker, is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, too. Meanwhile, small firms in San Francisco and Los Angeles are working on developing infrastructure, while the money flows from venture capital firms along Sand Hill Road near Stanford University in the Bay Area.

So is California the New Detroit? Will the next great technological leaps come from these firms and not the old-world industrial giants back East? And could one of these companies go supernova, Google-style, and become the next General Motors?

It's easy to dismiss the idea when you consider that only Tesla has actually put any cars on the road yet, and even then only a thousand examples of an otherwise irrelevant $100,000 sports car. Meanwhile, the other players are hip deep in unfulfilled promises about the future. But technology start-ups don't follow normal growth patterns. The recession that nearly did in Detroit has only helped Tesla and Fisker. Each has received approval for loans of around $500 million from the $25 billion Advanced Technology Manufacturing Loan Program announced by Congress in November 2008.

I need to do what I can to steer this ship around, away from making these death-creating explosion machines.

If you want to predict the future, it's useful to follow the money. And right now the money is coming here to the New Detroit.

Making the Motors of the Future
AC Propulsion lies in San Dimas, a Los Angeles suburb better known for its water park than its technology base. We park the Tesla Roadster in front of three utterly anonymous buildings in an industrial park. The only sign of what lies within is the presence of a place to plug in the Tesla so it can charge while we're inside.

The firm was founded in 1992 by Alan Cocconi, an engineer involved with the 1990 GM Impact concept car and the General Motors EV1 electric car, 1,117 examples of which were built between 1996 and 1999. AC Propulsion's most important accomplishment since then has been the all-electric tzero drivetrain, which it licensed to Tesla and which powers the 500-strong test fleet of Mini Es. AC Propulsion has been regarded as the visionary of the electric car revolution, although as former Tesla executive Darryl Siry once noted, "They lacked the entrepreneurial vision to see how big an idea this would become and the means to achieve it."

Tom Gage, AC Propulsion's lanky, laid-back CEO, laughs at that. "We're a bunch of engineers here; we're not venture capitalists. Sure it's possible that we don't end up making the big money, but we're the only company in this business making any money at all right now. Tesla and Fisker have huge investments. It will be a long time before they see black ink."

The premises look like the lair of a mad inventor. The area where the batteries, electric motors and power electronics are stored and assembled is surgically clean, but the main workshop is, frankly, a bit of a mess and appealingly low-tech, full of greasy, grimy drills, mills and lathes — everything you need to build a complete car from scratch. Outside there's a pile of discarded gas tanks from the business ACP does in converting conventional cars to electric propulsion. "We don't know what to do with them," Gage jokes about the gas tanks. "Nobody seems to want them."

Do Electrons Attract or Repel?
AC Propulsion's CEO doesn't think that the new car businesses clustered around L.A. and San Francisco see themselves as a New Detroit. Relations between the firms seem to be marked by bitterness and legal action rather than by a sense of common purpose. In late 2008 Tesla lost a lawsuit it brought against Fisker, and it sounds as if there might be another row brewing between ACP and Tesla.

"It's fairly competitive," says Gage. "There's a lot of inventor's jealousy; mine is better than yours, that kind of thing. We're all engaged in the same thing — trying to build cool cars that people will want to buy.

"We licensed all our patents to Tesla. They built their drive systems under those patents for the first 500 cars, then announced abruptly that they'd changed the design and accordingly were no longer paying the royalties. There has to be an accounting at some point and the time is approaching when we have to confirm if that is true or not."

The Tesla Connection
We coil up the Tesla Roadster's charge cable and move off into the L.A. traffic. We're reminded again that countless surveys indicate drivers despise the need to visit the gas station and will do anything to avoid the chore. Much of the enthusiasm driving the electric car comes from this hatred of gas stations.

Though the final assembly of Tesla Roadsters takes place at Tesla's headquarters in a small industrial building near the train tracks in San Carlos up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the firm's design studio lies in this aircraft hangar in Hawthorne where fuselage sections for the Boeing 747 airliner once were built. The most visible player in the Tesla game is Elon Musk, the engineer who made his money when he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. The proceeds have gone into SpaceX, his company dedicated to create a private spacecraft for public access, as well as Tesla. This building is a vast silver edifice on Rocket Road, the opposite of AC Propulsion's unassuming premises.

Tesla's chief designer Franz von Holzhausen meets us and immediately launches into a tour of the Space X factory. We've just missed the colossal Falcon 9 rocket, which is about to be launched for the first time, but we can still gawp at the prototype Dragon manned module. The tour is a substitute for access to the Tesla design section. There's so much new, secret product in a small space that it can't all be hidden, and we just can't be let through the door.

Drawing the Electric Sedan
Von Holzhausen joined Tesla last year after a brilliant term at GM where he did the Pontiac Solstice and then a time with Mazda where he created the Furai and Nagare concept cars.

"To be in at the start with a company that could be one of the great American brands is the opportunity of a lifetime," Von Holzhausen says. "This is where industry needs to go. It needs to have more thinking like this. The recession weeds out the dead wood. We're seeing the break-up of the norm because it hasn't been delivering what the consumer needs."

Von Holzhausen says he's invigorated by the Silicon Valley pace of innovation, where decisions are made quickly. "Here it's just Elon and me," he says. "We make the decisions. It might be 8 a.m. or 11 p.m.; it doesn't matter, though more often it's late in the evening. But having that direct connection is what will take this brand to market quicker and make the product more focused."

Von Holzhausen takes us for a brief drive down Rocket Road in the concept vehicle for the Tesla Model S electric sedan, fitted with a Roadster drivetrain. The designer says the car's appearance is 90 percent of the final production version. It looks sensational, designed simply to be beautiful, rather than to underscore its environmental credentials.

"When I first came to California to study car design at Art Center College of Design in the late 1980s, it was two months before I could see through the smog to the other side of the valley," Von Holzhausen says. "I thought even then that it was ridiculous, and that if automobiles are doing this and I'm part of this business then I need to do whatever I can to steer this ship around, away from just making these death-creating explosion machines. So really, that's why I'm here. We live or die — literally as a business and as individuals — on getting this technology into people's hands."

Early Adopters Have Lots of Money

"We were in the right place at the right time," says Henrik Fisker, leaning back in his chair in his brightly lit design office. Now that Fisker has closed its engineering center in Detroit and centralized its operation here in L.A., almost all of the building is packed with product secrets so no public access is permitted. Fisker even had to clear a bunch of sketches off the drawing board before he could let us in.

Noted for his contributions to the Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8, Fisker admits that his step toward car manufacturing was a big one. "Two years ago when we started out, our plan was to build the Karma, make some money, then think about another car," he says. "In the meantime GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and suddenly the government saw that we still need car industry in the U.S., so they created these loans and we got a half a billion dollars which accelerated our plans dramatically."

Fisker's plans are particularly bold: not just for their sheer scale, but for his aim to export half his production from the U.S. to the world's major markets, including those that have spurned American cars in recent decades. "Nobody needs another supercar and America doesn't have a history of making them," he says. "But America does have a history of innovation and this is not just a new car, it's a new technology and a sexy design. It's like the iPhone.

"If you want to be successful you have to design vehicles for the world, but for the past 30 or 40 years they've been designed for the U.S. market only. I don't know if that's to do with being in Detroit, but it's a fact. But California is a melting pot; it's a very international place. You can't sell a car here just because it's American, and if you want to design a car for the world you do it best in California."

The New Detroit?
AC Propulsion's Gage and Tesla's von Holzhausen were reluctant to identify themselves as part of a movement, part of a New Detroit. But Fisker, a Dane by birth, displays the real bravura about California's sense of place in the automotive future.

He says, "There's a spirit in California that anything is possible, that money is available if you have a great idea and are willing to take a risk. And yes, there is that feeling that California could become the second place in the U.S. where car development will thrive. The action is clearly in California right now. Quite a few companies are starting up, although not that many will survive."

But of those that do survive, how big are the prizes? Will one of these companies be the next General Motors? Fisker is plainly aware that for all his plans of six-figure sales, he hasn't built a car yet.

"I don't want to outline a whole huge plan because we have to get our first car on the road. But we've already planned our second car for significant volumes, a minimum of 100,000. I don't think there are any limits on how far we can go, and we have some investors behind us who think the same way, I'm Danish, I've lived in England, Germany and Switzerland and maybe in Europe we tend to put limits on ourselves. But not here. We're living in a land of endless opportunity."

Wall Street Journal Wrote:Even though Fisker Automotive Inc. is not hurting for cash, with more than $300 million in private funding and a $529 million federal loan, the hybrid electric car manufacturer is looking for funding from the old-school car manufacturers that many might think are its enemy.

Some say taking money from an established competitor with the stodgy old technology of an internal combustion engine is heresy for the new breed of electric vehicle makers. Kevin Czinger, chief executive of electric car start-up Coda Automotive Inc., in a recent interview with VentureWire questioned the true commitment such companies have to electric and alternative vehicles.

But, he added, one should never say never. Meanwhile, Tesla Motors Inc. recently signed a deal in which Toyota Motors Corp. may buy up to $50 million worth of Tesla shares, in another sign of the new school and the old school sharing the road.

As for Fisker, the maker of a plug-in hybrid sedan called the Karma, it is talking to some gas-engine automakers about investments, said Chief Executive Henrik Fisker in an interview on the sidelines of the Lazard Capital Markets Alternative Energy Summit in New York on Wednesday.

In an email exchange after the conference, Fisker said electric-vehicle companies could see several benefits from teaming up with traditional car companies, including partnerships around gasoline engines for future models (a gas engine developed by General Motors Corp. is already integrated into the Karma).

“Of course, joint volume in purchase of batteries, etc., is a cost advantage for both sides as well,” he said. “Other future joint development and plug-in hybrid specific platforms and production could also be a possibility.”

The traditional companies could also learn something from the upstarts, Fisker suggested. During a panel discussion at the conference, Fisker said his company has done a few things very differently in the design of its cars and in its manufacturing that cut “hundreds of millions of dollars” and years from the process of making a new car. “We have very low overhead and we can move extremely fast,” he added.

Fisker declined to say which automakers he’s talked to, though the company does have a relationship with GM from its use of GM’s engine. Fisker also has made an offer to buy one of GM’s unused factories in Wilmington, Del., and GM holds an equity stake in one of Fisker’s partners and investors, Quantum Fuel Systems Woldwide Inc.

Fisker has already pre-sold several thousand of its luxury Karma vehicles, with customers paying $5,000 each in down payments. The car, which sells for around $88,000, is now on a dealer tour, going through 45 dealerships in the U.S. and 50 in Europe.

Los Angeles Times Wrote:Coulomb Technologies plans to install 4,600 stations for free around the country, and California is slated to get about a third of them.

California will receive about a third of the 4,600 electric vehicle charging stations that Coulomb Technologies plans to install for free around the country.

The company, based in Campbell, Calif., will immediately start setting up public and private stations in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose and the San Francisco Bay Area. The stations will also go up in Austin, Texas; Detroit; New York; Orlando, Fla.; Redmond, Wash.; and Washington.

More than 1,000 stations are scheduled to be installed by December, with the rest in place by September 2011.

Partnerships with major automakers mean that charging stations will be available in metropolitan areas where electric vehicles including the Chevrolet Volt, the Ford Transit Connect, the Ford Focus and the Smart Fortwo from Daimler will be sold.
» Don't miss a thing. Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.

A wide network of charging stations is expected to help quell fears that future electric car owners won't be able to drive far beyond their home charging base.

The installations are part of a $37-million project called ChargePoint America, funded partly by a $15-million stimulus grant administered by the Department of Energy through the Transportation Electrification Initiative. Once the stations are in place, Purdue University and Idaho National Labs will analyze data about vehicle use and charging patterns.

At the end of last year, Coulomb already had 700 stations operating around the country.

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

Edmunds Wrote:Fisker Automotive welcomed the long Memorial Day weekend with word late this evening that it has just closed a $189 million private equity funding round - bringing its private capital base, by our count, to at least $339 million since its inception three years ago.

The new funds, which add $74 million to a $115 million commitment the company announced in January, will be sufficient to trigger a $528.7 million federal loan guarantee Fisker plans to use to help acquire a former GM assembly plant in Delaware, develop its upcoming "Project Nina" line of family oriented plug-in hybrids and complete development work on the $88,000 Fisker Karma (right) extended-range plug-in hybrid sport sedan that has been in progress for several years.

The Karma, now slated to go on sale early next year, initially will be built under contract in Finland but was engineered and designed at Fisker's Southern California headquarters, the company says, insisting that federal funding will be used to pay only for U.S. development efforts on both the Karma and Project Nina cars.

Fisker did not identify investors in the financing round that closed today, and a spokesman said no company officials would be available for comment over the holiday weekend.

Previous investors have included the renowned green energy investment firms Palo Alto Investors and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, lithium-ion battery maker A123Systems, a unit of the Qatar Investment Authority - an arm of the oil rich state of Qatar - and a low-key European-American investment firm known as Eco-Drive Investment Partners.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Quote:Everyone talks a good game: We need electric and biofuel-powered cars to cut emissions and reduce our dependence on oil. But change has been a long time coming. Cars are getting smaller and more efficient, and some hybrids are making inroads. But how can we achieve truly game-changing progress? How close are we getting to revolutionary technology changes that can be taken to scale? What will the cars of the future look like? Hear the answers from representatives from some of the most innovative car companies in the business.

Detroit News Wrote:Wilmington, Del. -- Delaware Gov. Jack Markell personally lobbied the Obama administration's top auto adviser to help seal the deal by an electric vehicle startup to acquire a shuttered General Motors plant.

Fisker Automotive Inc. acquired the GM Boxwood plant in Delaware in October for $18 million after it received a $529 million Energy Department loan.

But Fisker also expressed interested in New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. in Fremont, Calif., according to documents released by the Treasury Department and posted online this week.

Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation, filed suit seeking the records, and the department released 109 pages of e-mails in response.

The documents also disclose the Obama administration's active role in trying to find uses for shuttered auto plants.

Delaware was very aggressive in courting Fisker -- with the governor personally e-mailing the top Obama administration auto adviser for help securing funding.

"We've had some very positive conversations with Fisker about the GM plant. We're working hard to reach a satisfactory conclusion," Markell told auto czar Ron Bloom in a Sept. 8 e-mail.

He said the primary hurdle was convincing the Energy Department to approve a $529 million retooling loan.

"The main issue appears to be their loan from the Department of Energy," Markell wrote in a follow-up to Bloom. Markell, a former state treasurer, is a first-term Democrat. Delaware saw both of its major auto factories close -- Chrysler closed its assembly plant in Newark, Del., in December 2008 and the GM plant closed in July 2009.

The e-mails show Fisker was also considering other sites.

Laura Lovelace, an adviser to Fisker and president of Wellford Energy Advisors, said in an Aug. 10 e-mail to the Obama administration's top auto adviser Ron Bloom that the startup was interested in acquiring NUMMI or shuttered GM plants.

Lovelace followed up with Al Koch, who is CEO of "Old GM" -- which is tasked with winding down and selling off the company's "bad assets."

The following day, Koch referred Lovelance to NUMMI, since Old GM has "no ownership of the facilities or ability to direct activity at that company."

But he said the company "can move quickly with respect to GM locations." Koch offered Fisker three GM locations.

Koch said Delaware officials were especially aggressive in courting Fisker.

Markell and state officials are "the model of how a state should respond to an opportunity. If they were firemen they would have the fire truck rolling out of the firehouse before the alarm bell stopped ringing. And, they've really got their act together. Other states could really learn from them," Koch said in a Sept. 9 e-mail to Bloom.

Markell changed his schedule to have dinner with company CEO Henrik Fisker in August as Delaware courted the company.

Another Delaware official wrote Bloom to ask him to help win the Energy Department loan.

"While we can't influence the outcome of the loan decision; it is very important to make sure the application is handled quickly and efficiently," said Larry Windley, state director for Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. "Anything you can do is appreciated. We have a unique opportunity to stage an amazing comeback for the auto industry in Delaware."

Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, urged Koch to accept a "reasonable" price.

"Fisker is on a tight timetable and our ability to deliver a reasonable price, that fits with their business plan, will go a long way to bringing this matter to a head and put this facility back into operation," Levin wrote.

In late September, Fisker won its low-cost government loan from the Energy Department. Fisker's board approved the deal Oct. 16 and it was announced Oct. 27.

Brian Deese, a White House staffer who was heavily involved in the auto restructuring, noted that the administration was eager to find new uses for plants that were left behind in GM's bankruptcy.

"Some will take months or years to dispose of, while others are closer to prime time," he wrote in an Oct. 18 e-mail to other White House officials. "The first major announcement from this group is slated for October 27, when Fisker Automotive will sign a letter of intent with the Old GM to purchase the GM Assembly plant in Wilmington."

Deese referenced the fact that Fisker is developing an $88,000 plug-in hybrid vehicle due out this year called the Fisker Karma.

"Fisker is an upstart electric carmaker that is purchasing the facility to build their first 'affordable' electric car in the U.S.," Deese wrote.

He noted that few jobs will be created initially.

"One important caveat: This isn't an immediate jobs story. Fisker will have a skeleton crew into the plant to begin the retooling and reengineering, but won't have a production line up and running until 2011."

Fisker will build a new $48,000 family sedan at the Wilmington plant that will retail for around $40,000 after tax incentives.

Los Angeles Times Wrote:BOSTON -- Yet-Ming Chiang relishes his 20-mile drive to work. His hybrid car gets more than 100 miles per gallon, recharges by plugging into a regular wall outlet, and purrs so quietly that it's his favorite place for making important phone calls.

But what makes Chiang's ordinary-looking beige Toyota Prius even more special is that it's powered by a break-through battery he invented himself and is working to turn into the kind of high-tech, green, "Made in America" product that many see as the key to the nation's economic future.

Safer and more long-lasting than conventional lithium-ion car batteries, the 52-year old MIT professor's invention packs 600 cells into a case the size of an airplane carry-on bag. His technology has already transformed the batteries used in many cordless power tools.

So why are Chiang and his company, A123 Systems, having trouble moving to full-scale commercial production and creating thousands of new American jobs with his better mousetrap?

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The answer is a story of both the current obstacles to a rebirth of U.S. manufacturing – and of the tantalizing possibilities if such a rebirth could be achieved.

The obstacles are rooted in the sad history of manufacturing's decline in the United States: Despite the promise of Chiang's batteries, many in Wall Street and Silicon Valley were incredulous when he and other leaders at A123 asked for capital to build factories in America – Asia, yes, but Michigan, why would you want to?

Even more daunting, virtually all of the world's battery manufacturing industry is now in Asia, where plants can be built faster and supplies and equipment are much easier to get than in the United States These days, it's hard to find Americans who even know how to build a battery factory.

That's why A123 had to give in and build its first plants in China – where the company could move into production quickly to show auto industry customers that it could deliver on future contracts.

"Without question, we would rather have done it all in the U.S.," said Chiang, who left Taiwan as a six-year-old with his family, earned degrees at MIT and has been a materials science professor there since the mid-1980s. "I'm an American citizen," he adds. "We're an American company. It's an American-born technology."

Despite the obstacles, A123 and a handful of other advanced battery producers are building plants in Michigan and other states – thanks massive government support that has offset Wall Street's skepticism. A123 alone is getting a whopping $250 million in aid from Obama's stimulus program as well as tax incentives from Michigan.

A123's first U.S. plant opens in June, in an abandoned brick building near Detroit that once made VHS tapes for Disney.

That achievement is a testament to American inventiveness, still-flourishing entrepreneurism, and a belated conclusion on the part of government that making things in America is critical to the nation's economic future.

For years U.S. manufacturers have complained about Beijing's industrial policies that, among other things, subsidized its export companies. Now, at least for clean-tech industries, Washington is challenging China at its own game, for which American officials make no apology.

"Too often we've done the innovation and we've outsourced the manufacturing," said Matt Rogers, a senior adviser to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. "That's where A123 becomes important."

Such talk challenges the long-held view that the U.S. economy could continue to prosper even when manufacturing moved overseas, so long as Americans churned out the best research and ideas for high-value products. Recent experience has suggested that big manufacturing complexes devoted to a single industry -- like those in China – act as magnets for research and development facilities too.

Chiang, who wears big silver-rimmed glasses and smiles easily, won an initial $100,000 grant from the Energy Department in late 2001. It helped pay graduate students who, working in an MIT lab on a June night in 2002, suddenly shouted the battery developer's equivalent of eureka -- "Higher power!"

The team was testing nanoscale phosphate materials as a substitute for the cobalt that's used in conventional lithium-ion batteries. The results surprised even Chiang.

"Keep going, keep going," he told his students that night as they logged discharge rates five-to-ten times those of other high-powered lithium-ion batteries. The idea of applying the battery to electric vehicles wasn't far from Chiang's mind; achieving rapid acceleration from a reasonable sized battery was critical for hybrids.

"Gee, what can you really enable if you can do this?" he thought to himself.

Yet going from lab results to commercial products and mass production looked daunting. After all, rechargeable lithium-ion battery technologies were pioneered in the United States in the early 1990s, but their most lucrative application -- for laptops and cell phones -- gave Asian companies a huge advantage because virtually all electronics design and manufacturing had shifted to that part of the world.

Japanese firms such as Sony and Panasonic led early commercial developments in the field. Then South Koreans and China built up such scale and low-cost production capabilities that large American battery makers such as Duracell and Eveready couldn't compete.

American manufacturing in the last three decades is replete with similar stories. That came across when David Vieau, A123's chief executive, made the rounds seeking capital in Silicon Valley and on Route 128, Boston's version of California's high-tech hub.

"A majority of the people liked the idea of letting someone else make things," said Vieau, sitting in his small non-corner office at A123's headquarters in Watertown, a Boston suburb. "

"In the software-oriented, Internet-age investment environment, [they] suggested you do the thinking and let someone else put together the bricks and mortar."

A123 did attract some early private investors, including Qualcomm and Motorola. But with limited funds, the company felt compelled to launch its manufacturing in Asia. It went to South Korea, home to perhaps today's most advanced lithium-ion manufacturing, to China, which is moving up the technology ladder fast, thanks in large part to foreign companies.

Now, A123 has five plants in China, coincidentally located in Chiang's father's hometown of Changzhou, about two hours' drive west of Shanghai. Chiang remembers visiting relatives there a year ago; their village didn't have roads yet.

Where the roads are is Changzhou's industrial zones. Bart Riley, an A123 co-founder and chief technology officer, figures it took about nine months to get a Chinese factory up and running – one-third the time typical for the U.S.

The quicker launch helped A123 make a name for itself through Black & Decker, which in early 2006 began putting A123 batteries in its Dewalt power tools.

Since then, A123 has been supplying batteries and battery systems for New York City buses built by Daimler, among other customers, and the company has agreements to develop products for Chrysler, Navistar and American green-car maker Fisker Automotive.

But in ramping up production in China, A123 paid an immeasurable price, Riley says: Loss of its intellectual property – the ideas and engineering that made its products better."

The company did what it could to slow the technology transfer by breaking down the manufacturing process into steps, Riley said, but "we ended up having to teach these guys how to make our state-of-the-art, world-class batteries...And some of them are [now] competing with us directly."

To stay ahead of such competition, Riley and his R&D staff of 100, made up of young MIT graduates and former scientists at Bell Labs, Polaroid and Duracell, are pushing hard to devise innovations and to drive down costs.

In Michigan, the company is racing to open its first production plant in Livonia, 20 miles west of Detroit. By the end of next year, it expects to have two plants in the area with a workforce of 400, with plans to go up to 2,000, and initial capacity to produce some 30,000 battery systems.

The company's sales reached $91 million last year, and it currently has about 1,700 employees, two-thirds in Asia.

If experts are right, sales of hybrid and electric cars will begin to take off next year, putting at least a million such vehicles on American roads by 2015. First out among U.S. carmakers, General Motors' Chevrolet Volt is slated for release later this year.

After looking at A123, GM went with LG Chem, a South Korean battery maker that is building plants in Michigan but for the short term will be shipping cells made in Korea for the American-made Volt.

The White House, which bailed out the struggling automaker, wasn't happy that GM settled on a foreign battery supplier, but A123 officials candidly admit that LG Chem was farther along in manufacturing readiness.

Even so, U.S. officials see in electric vehicles the opportunity to revive American auto manufacturing. In addition to backing battery makers, Obama's stimulus package awarded millions of dollars to build domestic factories supplying separators and other critical parts for lithium-ion cells.

For battery makers, the need to be close to car-producing customers, hefty shipping costs and the high degree of automation also argue for substantial domestic production over the long haul.

Labor, though a small part of the overall costs, still figures into the equation. Average wages for production workers at major suppliers to car makers run about $13.50 an hour in Michigan, will go up for companies that unionize, as A123 and others operating in the state likely will.

By comparison, workers in Changzhou earn about $2.80 an hour, according to the local government figures.

Chiang is betting that America's superior technological capabilities will not only help close cost gaps but force foreign rivals to keep chasing American innovations.

Apart from government policies, he thinks that may be the only way to ensure his company and green-car manufacturing in the United States flourishes.

"It's going to be a fight," he said.

Quantum Press Release Wrote:Quantum Signs Definitive Production Supply Agreement with Fisker Automotive for the Exclusive Supply of Q-Drive™ Plug-In Hybrid Components and Control Systems for the Fisker Karma Program

IRVINE, Calif., May 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide, Inc. (Nasdaq: QTWW) announced today that it has signed a definitive Supply Agreement with Fisker Automotive to supply key components and control systems for the Q-Drive™ powertrain system that is being incorporated in the Fisker Karma. Under the terms of the licensing and supply arrangement, Quantum will be the exclusive supplier of the Q-Drive™ hybrid control systems and the solar roof module. Quantum will also receive a royalty payment on each Karma sold that incorporates Quantum's Q-Drive.

The supply agreement will also provide Quantum with the opportunity to supply components and systems for future Fisker Automotive vehicle programs, upon Quantum meeting the automaker's performance, cost and delivery requirements.

The Q-Drive control and software system has evolved over several years of innovation and development at Quantum. Quantum's Q-Drive system takes full advantage of the performance potential of electric drive systems while achieving high fuel mileage and low emissions through its integrated plug-in hybrid electric design.

Quantum is continuing its test and validation of its Q-Drive system, under a funded development program with Fisker Automotive, with production expected to begin later this calendar year.

Fisker Automotive, an American green car company that Quantum co-founded, closed a Department of Energy loan for $529 million in April 2010. This DOE loan to Fisker will be used for the development and production of two models of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, including the Karma, a four door sports sedan, and a line of family-oriented models being developed under Fisker's Project Nina program.

"We are quickly approaching the Karma production phase and are excited about commercializing our innovative Q-Drive PHEV control systems," said Alan P. Niedzwiecki, the President and CEO of Quantum. "Fisker Automotive has announced that production will begin at the end of calendar 2010 and plans on producing 15,000 Karma vehicles per year starting in calendar 2011."

About Quantum:

Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide, Inc., a fully integrated alternative energy company, is a leader in the development and production of advanced propulsion systems, energy storage technologies, and alternative fuel vehicles. Quantum's portfolio of technologies includes electronic controls, hybrid electric drive systems, hydrogen storage and metering systems and alternative fuel vehicle technologies that enable fuel efficient, low emission hybrid, plug-in hybrid electric, fuel cell, and alternative fuel vehicles. Quantum's powertrain engineering, system integration, vehicle manufacturing, and assembly capabilities provide fast-to-market solutions to support the production of hybrid and plug-in hybrid, hydrogen-powered hybrid, fuel cell, natural gas, and specialty vehicles, as well as modular, transportable hydrogen refueling stations. Quantum's customer base includes automotive OEMs, dealer networks, fleets, aerospace industry, military and other government entities, and other strategic alliance partners. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Schneider Power, Inc., Quantum, is one of North America's premier renewable energy companies, with a portfolio in excess of 1,000 MW of clean electricity generation development projects and advanced exploration projects located across two continents, and large land positions on the most promising and prospective wind and solar power areas in North America and the Caribbean.

Venture Beat Wrote:Having already banked $100 million Fisker Automotive has raised its sights on a new round of venture capital funding, now seeking $175 million, according to a filing with the SEC (and first noticed by Earth2Tech).

The company is perhaps best known as Tesla Motors‘ top competitor, having also received a hefty loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy ($529 million versus Tesla’s $465 million), and pursuing a similar strategy starting with a green luxury sports car, to be followed by a more practical consumer sedan. Now the Irvine, Calif., company is closing in on $1 billion in funding.

Based on the amounts in question, it is pretty clear that Fisker will be using this newest round of funding to convert the old General Motors plant it acquired in Delaware so that it can roll out its new line of more affordable hybrids (an effort it is calling Project Nina).

The goal is to get the Delaware facility up and running by 2012 — the company’s deadline for churning out its first plug-in hybrids, estimated to sell for $47,400. The Project Nina cars, which could be available in sedan, sport utility, and truck form, are the follow up to Fisker’s initial creation, the Karma sports car, which will launch later this year and retail for $87,900.

As Earth2Tech pointed out, another filing has popped up for an entity called Fisker Holdings, which has already raised $202 million of an expected $232.7 million round of funding. It’s unclear what the relationship is between this company and Fisker Automotive, or what this funding would be used to do.

For all the hundreds of millions it has raised from prestigious investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (driven by proponent Al Gore), Quantum Technologies and A123Systems, Fisker has yet to produce anything concrete, or pitch a business model that does not depend on the unrealistic immediate sale of thousands of Karma models.

With Nissan and General Motors gearing up to launch their consumer-priced green vehicles — the Leaf and Chevy Volt, respectively — before the end of this year, it’s hard to imagine Fisker breaking into the market in any big way two years after the fact. On top of that, it will in all likelihood, have a high-profile Tesla IPO to contend with.

Fisker last announced funding, amounting to $115.3 million, in January, citing A123, Kleiner Perkins, and Ace Investments as backers.

Edmunds Wrote:California-based electric-vehicle makers Coda Automotive and Fisker Automotive helped double the amount of first-quarter venture-capital funding granted to clean-technology companies from a year earlier, signaling the growing confidence venture firms have in the ability of independent EV makers to compete against larger competitors, according to a report released today.

Santa Monica-based Coda and Irvine-based Fisker attracted a combined $193 million in first-quarter venture funding and accounted for about 26 percent of the $733.3 million secured by so-called cleantech companies, Ernst & Young LLP reported, citing data from Dow Jones VentureSource.

Cleantech investments outpaced the 11 percent year-over-year growth rate in overall U.S. venture funding, according to Ernst & Young.

The consultant said that private equity money is mirroring that of larger corporations when it comes to electric vehicles, noting that General Motors is investing $246 million in its electric-motor manufacturing efforts, while companies such as Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi will all help fund the worldwide expansion of EV-charging networks.

Delivery companies UPS and FedEx have also invested in hybrid-electric and battery-electric trucks, Ernst & Young says.

Still, despite competition from large automakers such as GM and Nissan, which later this year will start selling the Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in electric vehicle and Leaf battery-electric vehicle, respectively, the first-quarter venture funding surge illustrates that private-equity firms believe smaller automakers may be able to attract sufficient demand and compete against their larger competitors in the burgeoning EV market.

Coda later this year plans to debut a five-passenger sedan that will have a single-charge range of about 125 miles, a top speed of about 90 mph and a price of about $40,000 before federal tax credits are applied.

Fisker is building a four-seat extended-range plug-in electric sports car, called the Karma (pictured), that will have a 0-60 mph acceleration time of less than six seconds, a top speed of about 125 miles and a price of about $89,000. That car is also expected to debut later this year.

Both closely-held companies are in discussions with municipalities in Southern California about new manufacturing plants, as is electric carmaker Tesla Motors.

Autoblog Green Wrote:Virtually every company has one thing in common these days: the need for more money. Just days ago, Fisker finished the deal on quite a sum of cash, a whopping $528 million from the federal government. Now, Fisker is turning to the state of Delaware, home to one of the company's upcoming production facilities, in search of more dough. They are only asking for pocket change this time around, relatively speaking.

Fisker is asking the state for a $9 million grant to help pay its utility bills. But it doesn't end there, they want an additional $12.5 million in loans (which could become grants) to fund upgrades needed at the production facility, a former General Motors assembly plant. If it comes as a surprise that Fisker is asking the state to cover its utility bills, it shouldn't. This is common practice as states do virtually everything in their power to secure sources of employment.

Fisker has to meet certain requirements to receive the money without being obligated to pay it back. They must employ 2,495 workers and spend a minimum of $175 million on renovations for the $12.5 million loan to convert over to a grant. If they fail to meet those guidelines, the loans will have to be repaid. The $9 million utility grant is icing on the cake to keep Fisker happy.

Delaware CDF Board Press Release Wrote:CDF Votes for Economic Renewal of Former GM, Valero Plants and Supports Other Jobs

The Council on Development Finance, the advisory board to the Delaware Economic Development Office, recommended the agency award financing Fisker Automotive and Delaware City Refinery, as well as five other projects for job creation, relocation and expansion.

New Castle, DE (Vocus/PRWEB ) April 26, 2010 -- The Council on Development Finance, the advisory board to the Delaware Economic Development Office, recommended the agency award loans and grants to seven projects for job creation, relocation and expansion at a public hearing today.

Among the projects, the Council voted unanimously to recommend the agency to commit $21.5 million to Fisker Automotive and $20 million to the Delaware City Refinery Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of PBF Energy Partners, LP. Both companies will acquire plants previously shuttered in Delaware, pledging to spend millions in capital investments and create thousands of jobs. The recommendations by the Council finalize months of work by the Markell Administration to recruit the companies to Delaware.

"CDF members cast critical votes for Delaware's economic renewal. They made a decision to aid our team effort to get people back to work and help those already working improve their economic opportunities," Markell said.

"The favorable recommendation from the Council on Development Finance reaffirms our work to make wise strategic investments that will contribute to a stronger economic future for our state," said Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office.

Fisker will make plug-in hybrid electric cars at the former General Motors Boxwood Road plant near Newport. If the plant employs 2,495 workers and Fisker has spent at least $175,000,000 renovating the facility after five years, the Delaware Strategic Fund loan will convert to a grant. An additional $9 million grant will help with utility bills. PBF Energy will acquire the former Valero refinery in Delaware City and restart operations as early as spring 2011. Its loan agreement will also convert to a grant if the company spends in excess of $100 million and supports 600 full-time jobs per consecutive year for five years.