George S. May Business Blog

Fisker will use old GM plant

Fisker Automotive will be using a former GM assembly plant in Wilmington Delaware to launch its Project NINA. For those unfamiliar with the project, Fisker Auto is working on building a family-friendly plug-in hybrid sedan that costs less than $40,000 with a federal tax credit. Vice President and former Delaware senator Joe Biden joined Fisker executives today for the announcement at the plant.

Fisker expects to begin production of the vehicles by late 2012. In the proces, Project NINA will produce around 2,000 factory jobs and 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs. Fisker looks forward to 2014 when they expect production to enter full swing. The automaker expects to turn out 75,000 to 100,000 vehicles per year and export over half! That would make Fisker the owner of the largest export percentage of any domestic automaker

Fisker will spend $175 million to refurbish the Delaware GM plant. Funding for the retooling will likely come from the $528.7 million loan the automaker received from the Dept. of Energy. 

The Wilmington plant was recently retooled to produce GM’s Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky and Opal GT roadsters and coupes.

Ironically, the vehicle would directly compete with GM’s upcoming Chevy Volt.

Related posts:

1. Fisker gets over a half-billion dollar loan from the DOE It seems the Department of Energy is feeling quite philanthropic these days. First, Tesla got a huge ($465 million) low-interest loan from the DOE...


2. Ford dumps $450 million more into converting Michigan Assembly Plant Ford has made public its plans to throw $450 million at Michigan Assembly Plant and its electric vehicle plan, set to begin in Michigan in...


3. GM puts $336 million in Volt factory General Motors has made the announcement that they will put $336 million into their Detroit-Hamtrack assembly plant in order to get production of their new...


4. Penske pulls out of GM deal Is Saturn done forever? We knew that there were issues surrounding the deal and certain inconsistencies, in reference to plans for the future of Saturn and its ownership,...


5. Toyota tops the list for most recalls in 2009 The Detroit Free Press reports that automakers had a mind-blowing 15.2 million vehicles recalled this year, nearly twice that of last year. Toyota had the...