Luxury car maker Fisker to build cars in Southern California

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Fisker Automotive is back in business. The high-end automobile firm will create Socal's first new-car manufacturer in over two decades in town of Moreno Valley, where it is going to start constructing its plugin electrical hybrid cars. The respected but embattled Fisker, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013 and was bought by Chinese autoparts large Wanxiang Group a year after, has signed a long term, $30-million lease to get a 555,670 square foot facility in the Riverside County city. See the most-read stories this hour >>Wanxiang Group also possesses A123, the firm that constructs the lithium-ion batteries that power the Fisker. The organization is apparently trying to start sales just as next year. The assembly plant is going to be Southern California's first since Gm shut a Van Nuys facility in 1992, as well as the state's 2nd electric-car production factory - joining entrepreneur Elon Musk's Tesla Motors plant in the Bay Area town of Fremont.It also indicates a 2nd Chinese foothold in the Southern-California choice-vehicle marketplace. Chinese auto-maker BYD employs 160 employees in a plant in Lancaster that assembles electric buses, some for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.The electric car firm was co-founded by Henrik Fisker, a graduate of Pasadena's Art Center School of Style who won admirers for his refined Aston Martin and BMW models. Its Karma plugin electric hybrid vehicles caught the creativity of the automotive press, and despite their $100,000 value tag were lively sellers - until battery glitches led to a callback that broken the battery maker, broken the brand's standing and introduced production to a halt. Fewer than 2,500 of the automobiles were sold before production ended in 2012, and before the corporation could start selling a promised mass market, cost-effective electric-vehicle. Fisker himself stepped down from his executive chairman place in the business amid its fiscal challenges in 2013.

10.08.2015
ID:2648

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