Saab seeking a few good partners

Victor Muller (L), Chief Executive of Spyker Cars NV, and Jan Ake Jonsson, president and CEO of SAAB Automobile AB , attend the Reuters Auto Summit in Los Angeles November 16, 2010.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The future of Spyker's (SPYKR.AS) Saab rests on finding more manufacturing partners and bringing down the number of cars it must sell to break even, its executives said.

The company hopes to cut costs by finding automakers to share vehicle platforms, Spyker Chief Executive Officer Victor Muller and Saab President and CEO Jan Ake Jonsson told the Reuters Global Auto Summit on Tuesday.

The company is talking to potential partners, Muller said, but he declined to name any. Muller said the company is in talks with "a few" potential partners to share its new Saab 9-3 platform.

Car platforms represent the basic architecture and engineering behind a vehicle and can take hundreds of millions of dollars and four years or more to develop.

For that reason, automakers including Ford Motor Co (F.N) and General Motors Co GM.UL are pushing to use the high-cost platforms across more models that can be sold globally, a move that reduces costs and improves profitability.

Jonsson said Saab's target is to break even at sales of 85,000 cars annually. But he said that the niche automaker currently needs "north of 100,000" vehicle sales to break even.

Under its last two years of ownership by GM in 2008 and 2009, Saab sold just over 30,000 vehicles in the United States.

The 63-year-old company was on its last legs last year when GM (GM.N) GM.UL decided to sell it. Spyker stepped in at the 11th hour and the links to GM remain strong for the Saab brand founded in Sweden. The deal to sell the quirky automaker with a highly loyal following was finalized on February 23.

In 2014 or so, Saab would also like to introduce a smaller car that harkens back to the automaker's earlier teardrop-shaped models, but only if it finds appropriate partners, Muller said.

The ideal car of this type would carry "the DNA of the original product" without seeming too retro, Muller added.

The automaker is also experimenting with an electric car prototype, planning to launch 70 or so next year to gather data about how such vehicles are used.

Muller thinks by 2020, no more than about 20 percent of cars would be battery-driven in some form including hybrids, plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles.

"Generally, we overestimate electric cars," he said. "The success of the electrical car by 2020 will depend on whether we come up with some technical breakthroughs in this technology."

(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)