Fisker Karma: Production finally starts

Fisker Automotive has confirmed that the Fisker Karma has now started production at Valmet in Finland. First cars will be with Fisker dealers in a month.

It seems to have been a long time coming, but Fisker has confirmed that the Fisker Karma has started to roll off the production line at Valmet Automotive in Finland, and the first Karmas will hit dealer showrooms in around a month.

Fisker has said that they are ramping up production carefully at Valmet – which also produces cars for other makers, such as the Porsche Boxster – to ensure quality, but despite that they expect to build – and presumably sell – 7,000 Karmas this year.

Which seems a very tall order for an unknown, unproven car maker with a far from cheap plug-in, range extender hybrid.

The Fisker Karma is likely to cost around £80,000 – oddly, we don’t yet seem to have had an official price from Fisker for the UK – which for a performance luxury saloon isn’t completely daft.

That it will manage 50 miles on electric only (possibly) means it will be cheap to run – for now – and its performance is…adequate.

A 0-60mph of 7.8 seconds (6 seconds when the engine is running) is nothing to write home about, but with the tax breaks that are foolishly in place at the moment for ‘Eco-Cars’ we can see the appeal. Of course, if the whole plug-in / electric car thing actually takes off, the tax breaks will disappear.

But for now Henrik Fisker has the taxpayer fighting his corner in many countries with big tax-breaks for buyers of plug-ins. Whether that means it will be easy to flog 7,000 £80k+ cars in 2011 – and 15k in 2012 – remains to be seen.

Still, huge congratulations to Henrik Fisker for finally turning his dream in to production reality.