China’s Promise
Investors see hope for electric cars through Tesla’s success and China’s subsidies for electric-
vehicle purchases.Tesla co-founder Elon Musk said in January that China may become the company’s biggest market.
Electric-vehicle sales in China may increase 19 percent by 2015 and 27 percent by 2020, according
to an October report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.No Chinese-made car has been certified by U.S. regulators to be sold in the U.S. Chinese investors
bought Swedish carmaker Volvo Car Corp., which sells vehicles in the U.S., and Chinese companies
have automaking partnerships with companies including Daimler AG and Hyundai Motor Co.“In terms of the Chinese, they’re clearly trying to get into the U.S. markets,” Lacey Plache, chief
economist for auto-researcher Edmunds.com, said in an interview. “If they could get something
that totally disassociates them from the Chinese car, that’s a good thing.”Still, Plache said, Fisker is a little-known brand in a niche auto technology. “They’re taking a bet on
EVs being a stable market in the U.S. and that’s an iffy thing,” she said. “It’s not clear to me that
Fisker has enough cachet to bring it back.”To contact the reporters on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at
[email protected]; Susan Decker in Washington at [email protected]To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at [email protected]; Jeffrey
D Grocott at [email protected]®2014 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.Why Would Anyone Want Fisker? In a Word: Patents - Bloomberg Page 4 of 4
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