New Deal Announcement
Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker Automotive, said today that the company plans to announce a deal with a lithium-ion battery maker by the end of this week for the Fisker Karma plug-in car now that a deal with lithium-ion battery maker EnerDel could not be reached.
Fisker said EnerDel was not able to meet his company’s production requirements for the Karma, which is set to go on sale in October.
“We have been testing several batteries over the last year and EnerDel was one of them,” Fisker said. “The main thing was timing.”
Fisker and Charles Gassenheimer, chairman and CEO of Ener1, shared the stage together today at Automotive News World Congress in Detroit to discuss the future of the electric vehicle industry.
New York-based Ener1, parent company of EnerDel, Dell Latitude D810 battery， Dell Latitude D820 battery， Dell Latitude D830 battery，Dell Latitude X1 battery，Dell XPS M1210 battery，Dell XPS M140 battery，has several other projects under way, including one with Scandinavian electric-vehicle maker Think, Gassenheimer said.
“I think it is relatively clear we have a lot of respect for each other,” Gassenheimer said of Fisker. “We have our hands full making sure the Think project gets launched.”
Fisker said the decision to pick another battery supplier will not delay the Karma.
“We are going to be announcing a battery supplier this week … for the Karma,” Fisker said.
He declined to identify the new supplier, or say where the announcement will take place.
The Fisker Karma, billed as the world’s first luxury plug-in hybrid, is expected to retail for $87,900.