Green, mean, plush plug-in machines

DETROIT — Fisker Automotive and Visionary Vehicles are two companies planning to bring luxurious plug-in sedans to market, proving green doesn't have to come in an economical package.

"If I say 'electric,' people think 'slow.' They think electric cars are golf carts," Malcolm Bricklin, chairman and chief executive of Visionary Vehicles, said at the North American International Auto Show. "What people don't get is they're very fast, and they're real."

Take the Fisker Karma. The sports car, unveiled this week at the show, can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and can reach a top speed of 125 mph.

But it can also travel 50 miles on pure electric power — using a lithium-ion battery and an electric motor developed for military vehicles — before using its small, four-cylinder gas engine.

The $80,000 Karma is expected to go into production at the end of 2009.

Outside, the Karma is reminiscent of a Maserati or a Corvette.

The austere interior, with rich brown and tan leathers and buttons that are flush with the dashboard, was inspired by a Manhattan penthouse, said Henrik Fisker, the founder and CEO of Lake Forest, Calif.-based Fisker Automotive. He designed the BMW Z8 roadster and Aston Martin's DB9 and V8 Vantage coupes.

Fisker said he wanted to erase the image of green vehicles as awkward and small.

"I wanted to make a real statement of how sexy a green car can be," he said. Otherwise, he said, green cars will never achieve the mass appeal needed to make an environmental difference.

Fisker projects worldwide Karma sales of 15,000 a year. Fisker Automotive is talking to several companies about a partnership to distribute the vehicle and should have more details in spring, he said.

"We know the system works," said Alan Niedzwiecki, a Fisker director and CEO of Quantum Fuel Systems, an investor in the carmaker. "We've had it for four years from a vehicle we did for the Department of Defense."

Quantum will make a small number of that "jeeplike" vehicle for the military under a $5 million contract, he said.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that employs former Vice President Al Gore as a consultant, this week bought a stake in Fisker this week.

General Motors holds 4.5 percent of Quantum's outstanding shares and is its second-largest stockholder. Quantum makes hydrogen tanks, fuel-injection systems, software and other components for GM's planned fuel-cell vehicles.

Fisker is one of several startups developing green luxury cars.

Tesla Motors has presold all of its 2008 Tesla Roadsters, a fully electric sports car that sells for $98,000. It expects to begin deliveries soon.

Aaron Bragman, an analyst for the consulting firm Global Insight, said there is a market for expensive, environmentally friendly vehicles, but that it will be difficult for small manufacturers to do what giants like GM and Toyota have failed at because of cost and technological difficulties.

GM says it hopes its Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle will be for sale by 2010, but that's not guaranteed. Toyota is only testing a fleet of plug-in hybrids.

Visionary Vehicles is working on a cheaper but still plush plug-in sedan Bricklin hopes to have on roads by 2010.

His proposed EVX/LS would be the size of Mercedes' flagship S-Class sedan but would also be able to travel 40 to 50 miles on pure electricity. It would sell for $35,000.

New York-based Visionary Vehicles signed a deal with Electrovaya last week to supply lithium-ion batteries to its cars. Bricklin said he hopes in the next few months to announce a U.S. site for manufacturing.

He's also lining up dealers who could sell his cars as well as other vehicles from startups that want to use his battery technology.

Bricklin, who originally planned to sell Chinese vehicles in the U.S. last year but backed out of that deal, said he was won over by the potential of plug-in hybrids.

"When I say I'm building a car that's the size of a Mercedes S, will get 100 miles to the gallon, has unlimited range and sells for under $40,000 ... to a man it's, 'Put me on the list. I want to buy it,' " he said.

Material from Bloomberg News was used in this report.