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Karma planning Chinese factory for 50,000 cars per year – reports

The Chinese company behind the Karma Automotive is planning to build a new factory with the capacity to churn out 50,000 vehicles per annum.


Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal are both reporting that the Wanxiang Group has filed an application for an environmental impact review for a new factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, around 170km south-west of Shanghai.

According to the application, the factory will cost around 2.5 billion yuan ($500 million) and, as currently envisioned, will have an annual production capacity of 50,000 cars.


Above and top: The original Fisker Karma.

It's not clear when this new factory will come online or when it will be approved. Production at this facility may be targeted primarily at the Chinese market, where the Communist government is beginning to incentivise electric vehicle sales.

Karma is already constructing a plant in the Moreno Valley, California, which will be able to produce around 3000 vehicles per year.

The first product out of this factory will be the Karma Revero, an updated version of the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid.

Due to be revealed in September, the Revero will enter production later this year, and will be sold through eight dealerships in North America with a starting price of around US$100,000 ($135,000).

Wanxiang, owned by Chinese billionaire Lu Guanqiu, acquired Fisker Automotive for US$124 million ($165 million) in 2014, after the automaker filed for bankruptcy protection a year earlier. This followed on from Wanxiang's purchase of bankrupt American automotive battery maker A123 Systems in 2013.

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