Fisker buys BMW engines for Project Nina

Fisker has announced it has reached agreement with BMW for the supply of up to 100,000 BMW 4-pot turbo petrol engines from 2012/13 for Project Nina.

You’ve probably got used to stories about Henrik Fisker’s eponymous car company, makers of the convincing range-extender sports saloon, the Fisker Karma. But you may not be quite as au fait with Fisker’s future plans – Project Nina.

Project Nina is Henrik Fisker’s equivalent of Tesla’s Model S – it’s where a niche car maker goes mainstream. In Fisker’s case, Project Nina is a BMW 3-Series sized car they plan to get on the market by 2012/13, and in quite large numers.

Just like the Karma, ‘Nina’ will be a range extender with a four-pot lump on standby to provide power and charge once the plug-in charge has run out. And Henrik Fisker has now tied up a deal to use possibly the best 4-pot turbo lumps on the market – BMW engines.

BMW are going to supply Fisker up to 100,000 engines year from 2012/13 for Fisker to bolt in to Nina. Nina will come in a choice of saloon, Estate and Convertible, and the volume projected – 100k a year – is ambitious, and will be built in an ‘Old GM’ plant in Wilmington, Delaware.

Interestingly, with this engine deal, BMW will still be a winner even if Fisker succeeds in stealing a few sales from the 3-Series.

And that looks entirely possible. Fisker are projecting $50k as a price for Nina, which you can translate as probably £50k by the time it gets here.

That’s quite steep, but with the tax breaks for plug-ins – and the likely better than decent performance – there will be enough buyers happy to save themselves big BIK bills for Fisker to make decent sales in the UK, and anywhere else Governments are daft enough to use taxpayer money to pointlessly subsidise electric cars.

Of the engine deal, Henrik Fisker said:

The BMW engine was an obvious choice for us, as BMW is known for producing the best and most fuel efficient gasoline engines in the world. We are very pleased to have signed this agreement with BMW.

Now he just needs to keep his fingers crossed that governments continue to give big tax breaks to plug-ins. Without that, there will probably be a big hole in his business plan.