Southern California-based Karma Automotive and the iconic Italian luxury design and engineering house Pininfarina have formed a partnership, Karma CEO Dr. Lance Zhou announced at the Automotive News World Congress’ inaugural ‘China Genius’ session.
The collaborative effort is bound to result in beautiful luxury automotive design and is a major addition to Karma’s growing list of strategic business partners who will play an important role in Zhou’s ‘Value-Forward’ business plan to help accelerate future technology and product development. “Our business and product plan is driven in part by collaborating with like-minded and nimble partners such as Pininfarina whose design expertise will help us accelerate product development, differentiation, and personalised customisation that allows every Karma to be truly special,” he said. “Karma is united in spirit with Pininfarina through our shared commitment to stunning design, and we are excited about the reaction we anticipate the end result of our partnership will generate”.
As part of the Value-Forward business plan, Karma seeks to acquire and develop key technologies and partnerships important to connectivity, performance, artificial intelligence, shared mobility platforms and electrification. The goal is to solidify and grow Karma’s place in a unique luxury electric vehicle niche first in the U.S. before expanding to other international markets. The first results of the new partnership are expected in Q2 2019.