While some automakers flee Detroit, start-ups see opportunity
With all three of the domestic automakers scrambling to shed jobs at U.S. facilities including their Detroit area engineering facilities and headquarters, others are seeing opportunities. When Tesla Motors started doing some preliminary work on their WhiteStar sedan early in 2007, they opened an office in Rochester Hills and started hiring engineers who had left the domestics but had experience in body engineering and manufacturing. Those were both areas that Tesla had left largely to Lotus when the Roadster was being developed.
Another aspiring alternative drive automaker is now apparently looking at southeast Michigan this time as a potential manufacturing base. After publicly showing a styling mockup of the Fisker Karma at the Detroit Auto Show, the designer-turned builder is considering staying in the area to do manufacturing. There is no shortage of shuttered factories and experienced auto workers in the area. In addition, most of the major suppliers who might be called upon to supply components, subsystems or even complete final assembly have at least offices or engineering facilities in the region. The Big Three might be scaling back as fast as they can but there seems to be no shortage of scavengers willing to pick through the wreckage to find some good pieces.
[Source: Detroit Free Press]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Throwback 4:47PM (1/30/2008)
Let's see how many UAW members these new companies hire.
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Mort 5:38PM (1/30/2008)
We need new auto companies that aren't in bed with the oil corporations.
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Tim 5:58PM (1/30/2008)
Union scale, benefits and job security make it almost impossible to turn a profit when competing against foreign workers.
I guess unions prefer no jobs rather than accepting less pay and benefits so American employers can compete. Taxpayer "assistance" and minimum wage hasn't helped us our products compete abroad, the just sent our employers abroad.
$20.00/hr and full benefits for sweeping the floor? We deserve to loose our employers. The Democratic-Socialists and liberal Neocons like Romney & McCain will just make the problem worse.
Buckle you seatbelts. It’s going to be a long, rough ride that will make the 1930s depression look like the good times.
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Tony Belding 6:17PM (1/30/2008)
What's really killed the Big Three in the USA is their pension and medical obligations to their vast armies of retired workers from decades past, when those companies were bigger and less automated than they are now. Manufacturers who aren't saddled with those bills can compete globally. Even with the unionized work force, startups like Fisker could make a go of it in Detroit.
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Zigster 7:03PM (1/30/2008)
what that has to do with automotive engineers is beyond me
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stevejust 6:20PM (1/30/2008)
As someone who put a deposit on the Fisker, this is really good news to me. I would love to see this be a real american car. They can add another $20k to the base price, if that's the case, as far as I'm concerned.
P.S. ABG: Fisker needs a "manufacturers" link to the right -->
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