Fisker has responded to Tesla that sued the coachbuilder for stealing design and trade secrets by asking a California court to arbitrate over the matter.
The newly born carmaker Tesla accused Henry Fisker and Bernhard Koehler to steal industrial secrets Bentley agreeing to take a £438,000 consulting job to complete the company roadster’s design. Furthermore, Tesla accused Fisker to build the future Karma on stolen technology.
The court hearing will be held in mid-June.
Tesla has announced that it will start selling the roadster in Europe at the end of 2009 at a price of £79,000/€100,000, but don’t rush for your chequebook as the Roadster won’t be available in the UK.
Tesla has decided to boost its sales by exporting its cars to Europe. With the help of the weak dollar, one did expect the roadster to be sold at a competitive price, but it seems that Tesla executives don’t really known anything about exchange rate. Indeed, if a Euro is roughly $1.5, a Euro is equal to $1 for them. While the roadster was expected to cost around €80,000, European customers will have to pay €100,000 to own a Tesla car.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Tesla boss Ze’ev Drori justifies the higher price with laughable reasoning such as shorter average driving distances and higher fuel prices. The car will be sold in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
Tesla has started to build the first units of the Roadster model after months of delays.
Tesla President Ze’ev Drori has announced the company has finally started to build the Roadster model and will roll off the first vehicles soon. The first cars are featured with a temporary gearbox as the company engineers didn’t succeed in building a reliable two-speed transmission essential for the car’s performance. The first units will be equipped with a one-speed unit that will guarantee greater liability instead of speed. Indeed, the first production cars called “P1’ run the 0-62mph in 5.7 seconds while the Roadster was expected to achieve the performance in 4 seconds.
The first models will be eligible to a free upgrade when the company engineers achieves resolving the problems encountered by the two-speed transmission.
While the Whitestar is begine developed and a new American factory being planned, Tesl is seriously considering expanding its lineup with a third vehicle cheaper than the Whitestar.
The car would be a sports car with the size of a compact and would be sold at the competitive price tag of £18,000. Such a low price would oblige the company to go mainstream. Aware of the situation and its limited resources, Tesla might consider licensing the production to a carmaker used build 10,000s cars per day.
The company then turned its eyes toward Detroit and is very keen on getting help to build the future sports car. However, Tesla plans don’t imply the company to be bought one day by another giant carmaker in order to get access to the company’s technology. When asked about it, Tesla president Darryl Siry said “[being purchased] is not our desired outcome.”