When China’s Wanxiang Group purchased the corpse of Fisker Automotive back in 2014, the company came across as damn near obsessed with hatching a plan to revive the ill-fated Karma. As of this month, those plans finally seem to be firming up: Wanxiang has been approved to build a new factory to produce up to 50,000 electric vehicles annually—in China.
The decision, as Reuters noted this month, means the company that once slung $100,000 plug-in EV sports cars and was founded by a U.S. government loan will set-up shop in a big way across the Pacific. The U.S. energy department lost $139 million on a loan to Fisker after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Wanxiang since renamed the company Karma Automotive.
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But it’s not all sour news. Autoblog noted that Wanxiang’s new factory is expected to produce the two-door Atlantic, which the company’s application said has a top speed of 134 miles per hour and can travel 0-60 mph in 6.5 seconds.
And as we reported last year, Wanxiang purchased a 555,000 square foot facility in California, and the Los Angeles Times said the company’s goal was to produce as many as 3,000 of the luxury electric Karma Reveros.
The Times report said the California-built Revero will be similar to the Karma, which could travel about 50 miles on an electric charge, or 230 miles split between gas and the electric charge.
That’s a nice change of pace from Fisker and its namesake: In case you forgot, Fisker produced the Karma in Finland before it was shipped overseas. So, maybe it’s not a total shelling of U.S. taxpayers after all.
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