Below is news of a new milestone in the
commercilization of PHEVs: the first lawsuit
among carmmakers. As awareness of the future
market for PHEVs grows, the economic
opportunities are leading to competition -- not
only among large automakers. (For a few months in
summer '07, we had a race between GM and Toyota
about who hoped to be first, until Toyota backed
off slightly -- see http://www.calcars.org/carmakers.html )

Meanwhile, the small carmakers have an open
field. (The large carmakers make clear they're
watching closely -- GM's Bob Lutz attributes
part of his motivation to push for the Chevy Volt
to seeing his company outdistanced by Tesla.)
Before we get to the lawsuit, we note some European developments:


FISKER: UK Auto Industry News has reported
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/11-04-08_11
that Fisker intends to sell its Karma PHEV in
late 2009 in the US and in early 2010 in Europe.
Also see The Car Connection: http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1150

BYD: MotorTrend reports that the Chinese BYD
(Build Your Dreams), which had previously
announced plans to deliver PHEVs to the Olympics
this summer and sell them this fall in China),
hopes to expand to Europe Here's an excerpt from
http://wot.motortrend.com/6237544/auto_news/byd_china_looking_to_build_euro_hybr\
ids_by_2010/index.html
:

Chinese automaker Build Your Dreams (BYD)
is planning on using its experience in mobile
phone battery development to construct dual-mode,
gasoline-electric hybrid plug-in vehicles to be sold in Europe by 2010.
Automotive News reports that company owner
Chuanfu Wang indicated at last month's Geneva
Motor Show that there is a strong potential
market for BYD's hybrid cars in Europe. The
Chinese automaker is in negotiations with several
European car distributors for rights to the brand.
BYD's gas-electric plug-in cars will use
ferrous battery technology that is said to allow
for an operating range of 110 kilometers, or
about 68 miles, versus the reported 20 kilometers
for the plug-in Toyota Prius, which uses lithium ion battery technology.
This fall, BYD plans to sell their F6DM
gasoline-electric hybrid in China, followed by
the smaller F3DM hatchback hybrid. Both cars
will carry a 5000 euro ($7800) premium over
regular gasoline versions and will have a
targeted production run of 2000 vehicles per month in 2009.
Wang predicts the European market will
demand upwards of 2000 BYD hybrids per month and
is currently looking for locations to produce the
cars in Europe to cut production and shipping
costs. BYD's parent group, the BYD Group,
already has battery production facilities in
Romania and Hungary and will supply ferrous batteries.


FISKER/TESLA is the big news:

At a time when Tesla has just begun shipping
small numbers of its first-generation
all-electric Roadster, some people may not know
that management has indicated it's likely the
second-generation 5-passenger vehicle, code-named
"Whitestar," will probably be a PHEV. (A "series
hybrid" -- what GM calls an EREV for electric
range extension vehicle -- in which, once the
battery is depleted, the engine runs at constant
speed to recharge the batteries, and only the
electric motor powers the wheels.)

The original reporting on Fisker's role in
designing Tesla's second generation vehicle seems
to have come from Street Import Online
http://streetimportonline.com/sio/tesla-motors-whitestar-body-originally-designe\
d-by-fisker.html
including the likelihood that the Whitestar would
come in two versions: all-electric and series PHEV, with AutoBlog Green
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/14/rumormill-fisker-designed-teslas-upcomin\
g-whitestar-sedan/
speculating that "The new sedan will start off as
a battery-only vehicle but it is being designed
to accommodate a range extended configuration as well."

Now The New York Times has details about Tesla's
lawsuit against Fisker -- the story is
below. Earth2Tech's blog explains the Silicon
Valley alignment:
http://earth2tech.com/2008/04/15/valleys-green-car-feud-tesla-sues-fisker/
Tesla is backed by Elon Musk, VantagePoint
Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and
individual investors, including Jeff Skoll and
Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Fisker, on
the other hand, is backed by Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers and has KP’s Ray Lane on its board.

Here's the NYT story, which may be somewhat
one-sided, since Fisker has chosen not to respond in the media.

Tesla Motors Files Suit Against Competitor Over Design Ideas
The New York Times April 15, 2008 By JOHN MARKOFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/technology/15tesla.html

SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley
maker of electric sports cars, filed suit in San
Mateo Superior Court on Monday against a
competing company and two of its employees,
saying they stole some of Tesla’s design ideas and trade secrets.

Tesla, which has generated much interest among
fans of cars and technology, recently started
shipping a two-seat electric sports car in
limited quantities. Last year it hired Henrik
Fisker, a Danish-born designer who is known for
his work on high-end exotic sports cars, to do
the body design for a four-seat sedan, code-named White Star.

The Tesla lawsuit contends that Mr. Fisker and
his chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler,
doing business under the name Fisker Coachbuild,
fraudulently agreed to take on Tesla’s $875,000
design contract to gain access to confidential
design information and trade secrets, then
announced a competing vehicle. Last fall Mr.
Fisker founded Fisker Automotive, which is backed
by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The quarrel sheds a light on the insular world of
the Valley’s investors in environmentally
friendly technologies. Sergey Brin and Larry
Page, whose Google search engine was originally
backed by Kleiner Perkins, were both early Tesla investors.

Both the planned Tesla sedan and Mr. Fisker’s
recently announced Karma are meant to be hybrid
cars using a small gas engine to power a
generator that charges a battery, which in turn
powers an electric motor. The design, known as a
serial hybrid, is thought to greatly extend the
range and efficiency of hybrid vehicles.

The Tesla lawsuit states that before doing the
design work for Tesla, Mr. Fisker had no
experience with hybrid technology. It says that
he did substandard work for Tesla, essentially
sabotaging it, and then used the revenue from the
design contract to develop his company’s car.

“I think it’s ironic that Fisker chose to name
his car the Karma, when what he’s done is very
bad karma,” said Adam C. Belsky, a lawyer at
Gross, Belsky & Alonso who represents Tesla.

Calls to Fisker Automotive were not returned. A
person answering the phone at Finck & Dadras, the
San Francisco law firm representing Fisker
Coachbuild, said it was the firm’s policy not to comment on litigation.

Tesla executives said they decided not to use Mr.
Fisker’s design and were starting over on the
design for White Star when they discovered that
Mr. Fisker was going into competition with them.
The design switch caused a three- to six-month
delay in production of the car, which is now
scheduled to go on sale in 2010, the company
said. Tesla is building a factory in New Mexico to manufacture the sedan.

“It caused a slight delay in White Star because
we could not use the Fisker styling,” said Elon
Musk, chairman of Tesla. “The styling was
substandard compared to what he unveiled for his
product. He gave us an inferior work product, and it’s obvious why.”

Tesla has scrambled to come up with a new design
with some help from Lotus, the maker of the
bodies for the initial Tesla Roadster. Mr. Musk
said that he was leading the effort.

“‘I’m not really a car designer,” said Mr. Musk,
who was one of the founders of PayPal and started
SpaceX, a developer of spacecraft. “We’ll see
what people think of cars designed by me versus
Fisker; it’s the amateur versus the professional.”

The Tesla lawsuit seeks to stop Mr. Fisker from
using Tesla design documents, along with a return
of the money from the contract and unspecified punitive damages.

Having previously designed cars for BMW and Aston
Martin, more recently Mr. Fisker has modified BMW
and Mercedes-Benz luxury cars to create even more
expensive custom cars that cost as much as
$234,000. Tesla’s White Star is expected to cost
between $65,000 and $70,000. The Fisker Karma,
which is also planned for delivery in 2010, is expected to cost about $80,000.

At
http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/1/8/tesla_motors_files_suit_against_competi\
tor_over_design_ideas/
you can see blogs and other reports linking to the Times story.

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Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
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