California based advanced technology car maker Fisker Automotives is awareded $528 million Department of Energy loan to develop plug-in hybrid cars. The measure will help Fisker, which is Tesla's main rival, to create 5.000 jobs in total.
Those jobs also will be saved in the domestic parts supplier companies. The first car will be called Fisker Karma, the second stage of the project will be called Fisker Nina.
Department of Energy secretary Chu praised the loan to Fisker, saying "this investment will create thousands of new American jobs and is another critical step in making sure we are positioned to compete for the clean energy jobs of the future." He also said that "plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could revolutionize personal transportation and cut our dependence on foreign oil, not to mention give us cleaner air and less carbon pollution."
The new and highly efficient electric cars from Fisker should roll off the assembly lines in the U.S. starting 2012. They will be electric cars. The engines will be powered by a lithium-ion battery or, when that is depleted, a generator that is driven by an efficient gasoline engine.
However, the range of the electric part is as much as people drive in one day. When drivers come home, they can charge their battery overnight at home. DE says Fisker plug-in hybrids' cruising range will be nearly 300 miles. This is a decent range, which is expected to result a good amount of cars sold in the U.S. market helping the Administration to meet its goal of putting 1 million plug-in hybrid cars in U.S. market by 2015.
This car development loan that DE is giving to Fisker Automotive is consisting of two stages. During the first stage Fisker will get 169.3 million for engineering the cost of the completion of the first car. It will be named Fisker Karma.
During the second Stage Fisker will get 359.36 million loan for Fisker's Project Nina. It will involve making 75,000 to 100,000 highly efficient plug-in hybrid cars. We should start seeing them in our roads in late 2012.
source: huliq
