The once upon a time theoretical competitor to Tesla, Fisker Automotive — now known as Karma Automotive — just held a job fair for future workers in Southern California’s Inland Empire (east of Los Angeles), according to recent reports.
Going by the coverage of a local paper, the Press-Enterprise, the job fair took place on Saturday, October 10th. Reportedly, the company is looking to fill positions with pay as high as $26 an hour. The positions in question are nearly every position needed during auto manufacturing — everything from paint job techs, to elders, to fabricators, etc.
For some background (or reminders) here, Fisker was bought out by Wanxiang for a reported sum of $149.2 million last year, and subsequently renamed “Karma Automotive,” following bankruptcy in 2013. This was after the company had manufactured roughly 2,600 of its Karma plug-in hybrids (PHEVs).
As it stands, what we know is that the company is developing a 556,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Moreno Valley — around 60 miles east of Los Angeles. The company held a job fair earlier this year, and reportedly hired somewhere between 30–40 people. Altogether, the company is apparently aiming to employ around 150 people at its new manufacturing facility.
Considering the company’s history, and its recent time out of commission, I’m genuinely curious to see what can be mustered with the influx of Chinese money — or for that matter, curious simply about what the plans goals actually are. While the scale of the facility in question certainly doesn’t compare to Tesla’s Gigafactory, the company could presumably capture a specific niche in the electric market if it plays its cards right.
The President of the BYD facility in Lancaster, CA drives a Karma. This new location in Moreno Valley is suspiciously close to the BYD facility. Interesting.