Before last week, Fisker Automotive was known to be building two plug-in hybrid electric luxury vehicles: the Karma S and Karma convertible. In September, the Department of Energy announced a $528.7 million loan to Fisker to build plug-in hybrids in the U.S. Fisker announced that this would be for bringing the Karma to the U.S. (currently will be assembled in Finland) and about two-thirds of the loan would be for “Project Nina”. Until last week, Fisker was keeping mum on “Project Nina”.

Last week, Fisker announced that with the DOE loan they would be purchasing a currently empty assembly plant in Wilmington, Delaware (a former GM plant building roadsters for Pontiac and Saturn). The photo op was attended by Vice President Joe Biden.

However, what got even more attention was when during the event Vice President Biden announced that Fisker would be building sedans, crossovers, and coupes at the plant. Many were left wondering if Biden had just revealed the future plans of Fisker.

Apparently, he had. Fox News confirmed with Fisker that Biden had actually revealed the future plans of the automaker. He also revealed that Project Nina would result in 100,000 vehicles being built in the U.S. per year (and that the new sedan that “looked like a four door Ferrari”). Fisker also announced that the Project Nina plug-in hybrid vehicles would be more affordable than their current luxury offering (they are aiming for $40,000 or less). These new product plans (at least for the moment) appear to be poised to steal the thunder from their oft-compared start-up rival, Tesla.

Don’t expect any quick response from Tesla though. In fact, I’m sure if Fisker had their druthers, Biden would not have mentioned the new sedan and crossover quite yet. In the highly competitive world of automotive design and production, product plans, technology, and prototypes are carefully guarded secrets.

This revelation shows that Fisker has big plans, and is planning to hit the key vehicle segments to achieve the kind of volume they need to be profitable. Now comes the long wait for the product to actually arrive. The first plan for the new plant is the Project Nina sedan planned for 2012 or 2013, and that will be followed by moving production of the next generation Karma in 2016 to the plant. Between 2012 and 2016, it sounds like we should expect to see a crossover and a coupe.

So, if VP Biden is to believed, by 2016 we should expect to see a wide range of products coming from Fisker in Wilmington, ranging in price from $40,000 to the high-end Karma in the $80,000-$90,000 ballpark.

Tata Motors has a success on their hands in the tiny car called Nano. They recently increased production by 20% and have sold the first 100,000 units before they are even built. The Nano is the world’s cheapest car and was designed for India where it sells for 100,000 Rupees (a little over US$2,100), but the plan is to expand the market including selling it in Europe in 2011. Tata is building a new plant that will be able to crank out 250,000 Nanos per year, and it is signing contracts with other companies to build the Nano under their brand.

The environmental impact of the world’s cheapest car has been debated mostly in terms of the number of vehicles that it could unleash on the world’s developing cities. The Nano gets about 50 miles/gallon, and is said to perform similar to a Prius in terms of CO2 emissions. This is largely due to its tiny two-cylinder 623cc aluminum engine (with a whopping 32hp). The concern is that the price now makes owning a private car affordable to millions of people who otherwise would not be driving a car.

While this all sounds very democratic and capitalistic, the Center for Science and Environment in India believes that 25% of the 50 million scooter riders in India could become car owners thanks to low priced vehicles like the Nano (others have estimated as much as 30%). That is an additional 12.5 to 14 million vehicle purchasers. That sort of number does not go unnoticed and Toyota, GM, and Nissan have all announced they are working on vehicles that will be priced to compete with Nano. For those who have been following the Nano, none of this is big news.

The real news came on Monday, when Nissan made a more detailed announcement that it will launch its small car in 2010 in India, Thailand, and China to compete with the Nano. The critical piece of this announcement included that Nissan will need to sell 1 million of these vehicles per year by 2013 in order to make the program profitable for them. That huge number would mean that “sales in Europe and the United States are also planned, possibly as early as 2011.”

This competition to bring millions of new customers to the market can be expected to have a few different impacts. First will be an increase in emissions, just from the sheer increase in tailpipes. Using the Prius’ CO2 emissions of 89g/km as a yardstick, 12.5 million more vehicles would equate about 1.1 million kg/km of emissions. Some of this will be offset by fewer scooters (families that can’t afford cars are often currently using scooters for transportation) many of which may actually get worse emissions due to older two-stroke engines.

The second impact may be an increase in gasoline costs as fuel usage increases in India. The main concern with this is that many of the families that now own these new vehicles may shift to running the vehicles with kerosene, which is generally cheaper than gasoline and has worse emissions than gasoline.

The environmental impact of this volume of vehicles will continue to be debated. However, the impact on traffic certainly won’t be. At the time when the Nano went on sale last year, the average speed during peak times in New Delhi was already 7mph. By adding an additional 12.5 million vehicles to the country on a whole, it would not be surprising to see an additional 150,000-200,000 vehicles in that city alone. Surely, an influx of that much traffic would slow the already slow 7mph to a crawl.

In the end, it will be up to individual countries’ governmental agencies to regulate this expansion of the auto market. However, it seems unlikely that they would put on the brakes, as automakers race to the lower end of the market.

Brammo is a startup company that has been getting some good attention for its electric motorcycle (they call it a powercycle) called the Enertia.

On October 13, a Brammo employee and one from their ad agency (Crispin Porter Bugosky) left Ann Arbor, MI to ride the Enertias to Washington DC in order to give one to President Obama. Here’s the official description from their tour website, shockingbarack.com:

“Our plan is to retrace the route of the automotive CEOs who went to Washington DC asking for government loans. But instead of looking for aid, we’d like to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis. And instead of flying in a corporate jet, we’re riding Brammo Enertia powercycles….”

The end result is that the pair arrived in DC on October 26, but did not have a plan to actually deliver the vehicle to Obama and found White House Security less than receptive to two guys handing them the keys to a electric motorcycle. As a result, their last entry was them chaining one of the bikes somewhere in DC and mailing the keys to Obama. We’ll have to watch to see how that turns out for them.

The tour itself provided for some good opportunities to talk about the Enertia and Brammo along the way. So, in this respect, it seems to have achieved their goal of raising awareness. And, it did get the Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher invited to a meeting with the Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. Unfortunately, it also likely played into the fears of those who are not already EV advocates (or at least fans). The fact that it took the pair 13 days to make the 500 plus mile trip demonstrates one of the challenges of an EV motorcycle with 42 mile range (though perhaps it could have been done in a few less days if the drive was not focused on the PR effort). Of course, the Enertia was not designed to be driven on long freeway trips like this.

This kind of publicity event will help prove to many that Brammo’s electric Enertia is ready for mainstream America. However, a trip like this will also help cement concerns that others have regarding EV range. Additionally, with the price of almost $12,000, many will likely feel justified in their belief that electric vehicles are too expensive with too short range. This dichotomy in the market between those who think EVs are ready now, and those who think the technology is still lacking, is the challenge facing the entire industry, not just Brammo. I suspect that we’ll see plenty more of these types of road trips from manufacturers and charging station providers attempting to persuade the latter group that EVs are affordable and ready for mainstream America.

Yesterday, the Detroit News reported that General Motors has announced a delay in the launch of their new, small car, the Chevrolet Cruze to Q3, 2010. Most analysts and those in the blogosphere agree that the Cruze is a critical vehicle for GM to get right. A delay like this may in fact just be something as mundane as what GM tells us – “to ensure a flawless launch”. And, it is certainly not uncommon for any manufacturer to delay the launch of an all-new vehicle.

However, put in context of the financial problems GM and its suppliers have had, it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine that there are supplier issues driving this delay. As recently as last month, GM delayed another important launch, the Buick LaCrosse due to unspecified “quality issues.” This all seems to me to be pointing to a supplier base and production system that is challenging for GM. (I would be remiss in not pointing out that relating to the link above, American Axle did announce this morning a quarterly profit in Q2, so apparently GM’s financing worked out for them.)

The Cruze and the Volt are both based on the same platform – GM’s global Delta platform. Without having too many details on either the reason for the Cruze delay or how much of the underpinnings are shared between the Cruze and Volt, it is speculation (but likely not too far off-base) to assume that this is trouble for the Volt team as well. The Cruze is now expected to launch Q3, which is very close to the previously anticipated Q4 launch of the Volt. As an aside, I find it interesting that GM delayed “3 months” from April 2010 to “about Q3” 2010 – which makes me wonder if that word parsing means it will actually be a longer delay than 3 months. After all, September is still Q3.

Obviously, GM wants the Cruze launch to go off spectacularly, and no doubt it wants the Volt to do the same. My gut says that Chevrolet program and marketing managers alike would rather have the Cruze in the U.S. market for a few months before launching the Volt. This combination makes me think that there is likely a delay coming to the Volt launch. However, at the same time, there is some outside pressure that GM has to keep an eye on – that pressure has a name: the Plug-in Prius. However, if it were me, I’d advise GM to get the launch right, rather than worry about being first.

Finally, to get back to the Cruze, GM tried to put a good face on this delay announcing that variants of the Cruze will be available to launch at the same time with the first version in Q3. The variant is expected to be an upgraded 1.8L engine, a more powerful engine than the 1.4L 4 cylinder turbo of the base vehicle (which I assume will also get slightly lower fuel economy than the base vehicle). GM won’t want to delay the Cruze too much, because it has its own outside pressure in the form of two giants in the US small car market: a redesigned Ford Focus expected in late 2010 and a redesigned 2011 Honda Civic (timing not yet officially announced, but late 2010 seems likely).