Cartel Blue Inc (CRTL)

[knight247]

Wow a REAL CEO who finishes his car fully ,shows up to the autoshow in paris with full furnished hybrid card!and delivers the product to the client this past october mmmmmmmmmmm when will Peter become a real CEO LMAO,my fault petey FTD LMAO!!!



5 Questions With Henrik Fisker
By Mike Meredith
By Exhaust Notes Nov 4, 2011 10:26AM
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Fisker Automotive was founded just four years ago, in California, with the goal of creating no-compromise luxury vehicles that are also environmentally responsible. The company was co-founded by its namesake, Henrik Fisker, a highly regarded automotive designer -- the Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8 came from his pen -- who set out to produce the world's first truly premium hybrid-electric vehicle.



Thanks to early and intense media interest at every stage throughout the vehicle's development, you likely already know that Fisker’s first production car is the Karma. The dramatically styled 4-door luxury saloon is a series plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) powered by a lithium-ion battery and a 2.0-liter range-extending gas engine. The first Fisker Karma, after receiving official EPA certification, was delivered to a customer in October.



Henrik Fisker was in Seattle for the Seattle Auto Show, and we had a chance to sit down with him to talk luxury cars, EPA ratings and the advantage of having a world-renowned designer as the CEO of a car company. Here's what the man had to say:






Exhaust Notes: For a luxury electric vehicle at this price point, what does a buyer get for the money? How does the Karma compete with other luxury cars?



Fisker: Basically you get everything that you would get with another car that is $96,000. So if you take the Porsche Panamera or a Mercedes CLS or any of these other sporty 4-door cars, you get 400 horsepower; you get a lot more torque than any of the other cars have; you have a luxury interior with a full haptic touch-screen, the largest in the world right now; you get a well-appointed interior either in leather or animal-free. You get standard features that are optional on other cars, such as 22-inch wheels -- which you can’t even get on any of the other cars -- and the large solar roof. And then of course you get this amazing new powertrain, which none of the other cars have, which is the electric vehicle with range extender.



I describe the Karma as "no-compromise luxury" because, when you normally think of an environmentally friendly car, you always think about you have to make a compromise ... such as the car is really small, maybe it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t have any luxury, it doesn’t have the power you want and most of all it’s a compromise if you know you can’t take the car whenever you feel like it, and go as far as you want. Because that's the essence of the car: freedom. So with Karma you have the freedom, and we expect most people over 90 percent of the time will drive electric, but the few times they take a long trip there is the range extender.



EN: The EPA ratings recently came out and the consensus was that they were lower than expected. How important is that and how does it affect what the car was designed to do?



Fisker: I think this is not something we think is that important because it probably doesn’t reflect, really, how people will use the car. No one has real knowledge about how these cars will truly be used. If anybody has that, it’s probably Fisker Automotive because we have developed the vehicle, and tested the vehicle, and we’ve had a lot of people drive the vehicle and what we find is that most often you will get closer to a 50-mile range than what the EPA is saying. We just got the rating from Europe’s regulatory body, TUV, which has an office in Michigan. They independently tested the Karma and got a range of 51.6 miles. I think, depending on how you drive the car, you should be able to get close to the 50 miles we always said.



In terms of the miles per gallon, that’s always very difficult to estimate what it really means. What we believe is that most people should easily be able to drive during an entire week without using one drop of gasoline. And I think that’s what is important to the consumer. It’s not what it says on a sticker from the EPA; it’s what’s actual, because there are lots of people who have other cars that also do not actually give them what it says on that sticker when they actually drive the vehicle. I think in our case, what’s important to the consumer is that they have the choice to drive zero-emission, and that the car looks so great and it’s an exciting car that they feel good about the fact it’s actually extremely environmentally friendly if you use it right.



EN: How will the technology in the Karma be used for other models that are attainable for other buyers?



Fisker: We are already planning a vehicle that is lower-cost than the Karma, more in the segment of an Audi A5 or Mercedes C-Class/E-Class. We have already developed this vehicle; we have signed off the design and we purchased a factory in Delaware where we will start producing that vehicle. We are going to start making prototypes of that vehicle next year in that factory, and then full production in 2013. This will be a vehicle that will be exported worldwide. We see a lot of possibility to bring this technology to more consumers by consistently taking cost out of the technology, and by being able to offer lower-cost vehicles. But we had to go through the path of the Karma first because the technology is expensive, so it has to start out in the high-end market. But you should not underestimate the high-end market: Worldwide, there are more than 1 million luxury cars sold per year -- of course depending on how you slice that market -- but it’s definitely a market that we think an American car company should take part in.



EN: Looking back four years after starting a new company, what has that been like and what does it feel like to have the first cars out on the road?



Fisker: It’s been extremely hectic, as you can imagine, because most car companies take five years to develop a car and we’ve done it in four, and started a company, and raised money and put together a team and put together processes, etc. So it’s been extremely hectic and a lot of work, but it feels amazing when you see that vehicle on the road, because it’s a very dramatic car, proportionwise, and I don’t think a lot of people expected us to actually make it. But we did. And we’re out there with the cars now; it’s very exciting. I think we have silenced a lot of the skeptics and I think when you drive the car a lot of people will really feel it’s an amazing new car. I’m very proud that it was developed right here in the U.S., and it shows how much talent there is here in the U.S. and I think we should all be proud that we can actually develop and engineer cars like that here in the U.S., to compete with the best of Europe and Japan.



EN: You are first and foremost a designer who has designed some of the most beautiful cars in the world. How does that continue and how do the designer and CEO roles interact?



Fisker: I think that is our edge. It is probably our strong point. There is no other car company in the world who has a CEO who also has a design background, and I think there is probably no other product in the world that is so driven by design and desirability as cars. That is why we have an edge, because I am able to create the desirability and make the right decisions to make sure we continue to have the most beautiful and desirable cars in the world. I think that is a huge marketing advantage for our company, because you wrap that new technology, that amazing quality into a beautiful design and you’ve got a winner.






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