SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Fisker Automotive Inc, the builder of luxury plug-in hybrids, has picked a large distributor to sell its vehicles in Europe and is looking to sign a similar deal in China, its chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit, Henrik Fisker said the automaker plans to announce the name of the distributor group, which has more than 100 dealerships in Europe, as early as Wednesday at the Zurich auto show.
"We are going to announce one of the largest European retailers with over 100 dealerships," Fisker said, adding that Europe is a huge market for Fisker.
The privately held automaker, which counts Silicon Valley-based venture fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as one of its investors, is also considering launching its vehicles in China.
"We have had some amazing feedback from China," Fisker said. "We have several importers who want to sell our vehicles in China."
California-based Fisker said the company plans to export half of the cars it produces and is now preparing for the production launch of its first vehicle, a four-door luxury sedan called the Karma that has a starting price of $87,900.
The vehicle will be built in Finland by Valmet Automotive.
Fisker said the company is on track to launch the Karma in June next year.
The initial production that Fisker plans for the vehicle is 15,000 units, of which 7,500 will be sold outside the United States, Fisker said.
The Karma will have a 50-mile range on its battery and a total range of 300 miles when its gasoline engine kicks in, for an average fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon for those who commute less than 50 miles a day, according to Fisker's website.
U.S. and many global automakers are betting that battery technology will make electric cars the environmentally friendly transportation of the future, and the switch to electric engines has drawn a wave of new companies into the auto industry, including Fisker and Tesla in California.
Fisker said he expects electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles eventually to comprise about half of all vehicles sold globally.
The automaker, which has received a $528 million U.S. government loan, is also aiming for a lower-cost plug-in hybrid, informally called project Nina, to launch in 2012.
Fisker has agreed to buy a Delaware manufacturing plant from the bankrupt shell of old General Motors to make the lower-cost plug-in hybrid electric cars and expects to produce 75,000 to 100,000 plug-in sedans per year at the plant.
(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Matthew Lewis)
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