Detroit Auto Show: Henrik Fisker on Start-Up Pros, Cons

If he can pull it off, Henrik Fisker of Fisker Automotive could be the first guy to put his own name on a start-up car company and make it into production since the late John DeLorean did it in the late 1970s. You can’t do that if you’re a shrinking violet or a doubter, and Fisker, a former BMW designer, isn’t either.

There are plenty of skeptics, but Fisker is serenely confident he can deliver his first production cars before the end of this year, even though that’s just under two years from the first time Fisker unveiled his plug-in hybrid Fisker Karma concept car at last year’s Detroit auto show, in January 2008. Fisker didn’t even disclose who would be bulding the roughly $80,000 Karma for him, until July 2008, when he named Valmet, a small-volume manufacturer in Finland.

Therefore, if Fisker makes his self-imposed deadline, it will be one for the record books. At the Detroit show, Fisker displayed the production version of the concept car he unveiled a year earlier, plus a sporty coupe concept. 

BNET Analyst Jim Henry interviewed Fisker at the Detroit auto show, on Jan. 11. the following are edited excerpts:

BNET: When does the Karma go on sale? Any update? 

Henrik Fisker: The first cars will be around November (2009). By mid-2010, we expect to be at full production, of about 1,250 cars per month. That’s 15,000 cars a year.

BNET: How can you do it so fast?

HF: There are huge advantages to starting a car from zero. We do a lot of outsourcing, and we have very low overhead.

BNET: You’re a designer. At the big car companies, the designers lose a lot of battles. They have a design they like, but they’re forced to change it, because the engineers say it can’t be built, or whatever. Designers end up hammering a lot of round pegs into square holes. Do you avoid that, because you’re the boss? In your company, does the design department win all the battles?

HF: We did have to fit in this drivetrain (into the production car). But we don’t have the lengthy discussions like they have at other car companies, about engineering, about marketing, about design. It is a culture (at Fisker Automotive) where you don’t have many people re-doing a lot of things. We do it that way because we want to do it that way, but also because we don’t have four or five years to mess around.

BNET: What has changed, from the (Karma) concept car to the production car?

HF: Very little has changed from the concept car.

BNET: Can you give a concrete example? 

HF: For instance, the lower air intake got a little bit bigger. We had to put a B-pillar in the car for safety. (The “A” pillars in a car bracket the windshield. The “B” pillars are behind the front seat. The “C” pillars are in the back. The Karma concept car had no B-pillar.) The cooling vents on the side got a little bigger, because we needed more cooling.

BNET: What’s the hardest part of doing this?

HF: The biggest challenge is to build the team and start the company, while hiring people, raising money, building a brand which has no history, all at the same time. You’re doing a lot of things that in an established company are already done. In an established company, pretty much all you have to do is get the car out. We have to do all these other things ourselves, on top of getting the car out.