Fisker Karma Consumer's Review

Fisker Karma

Curvy as a chanteuse and as bright-eyed as a Hollywood musical, the Fisker Karma could be a blue-sky vision of a inexperienced future, a 5,600-pound sedan born from the unlikely wedding of low-slung appearance and guilt-free consumption.

But within the four years since it debuted as a thought automobile in 2008, the Karma has additionally grown to represent what will go south during this fashionable era of high-stakes automotive startups. Oft-delayed and priced at $102,000, twenty p.c costlier than originally anticipated, the Karma was recently slapped with lower-than-expected fuel-efficiency numbers by the EPA, triggering the withdrawal of $529 million in funding from the Department of Energy.

“We don't seem to be smitten by the Department of Energy…. we tend to are here to [launch and] build cash on the Karma,” designer and company founder Henrik Fisker told journalists at the car’s press intro in Beverly Hills, California. “The reality is we’re selling cars a day, we’re self-sufficient, and that we don’t really want that cash,” he added.
Driving the Karma unfurls complicated, mixed emotions; for all its slick, Speed Racer-meets-muscle automobile appearance, some rough spots remind you this can be a beta version of future propulsion.

Political and money hijinks aside, the Fisker Karma proved itself an alluring creature throughout a two-hour drive up the coast and across the looping canyon roads of Malibu, California. Exuding a panther-like road presence, the Karma’s crouched silhouette attracted the not-so-subtle interest of generally jaded Angelenos, drawing lots of slow-downs, camera phones, and “What is it?” queries.

Remarkably, the Karma appearance just about the image of the concept automobile that was unveiled back in 2008. It’s a powerful however not entirely stunning achievement considering the corporate president additionally penned the Aston Martin V8 Vantage and BMW Z8. Karma rides on huge 22-inch wheels, encapsulates a compact cabin amidst a luxuriant overall length that’s but [*fr1] a foot keep of a Chevy Tahoe, and has less cargo house than a Porsche Cayman.

Climb within and you’re hit with a good stronger sense of its meant audience: not like something in need of a Bentley or Rolls-Royce, this cabin lives up to the plus-sized guarantees of its sinewy sheet metal. The materials on our $130,000 Eco stylish tester are the foremost environmentally friendly of the Karma lineup, however they’re additionally buttery soft and imaginatively finished, with whimsically tinted inlays, unusually sew forms, and contours that appear to possess emerged from a schoolboy’s doodles. Though minor details just like the steering wheel-mounted buttons seem sourced from lesser domestic cars, singular focal points like the intricately etched leaf vein patterns on the glass-topped transmission tunnel quite form up for the components bin lapses.

Using a combination of dual two01-horsepower electrical motors juiced by lithium ion batteries and a GM-sourced turbocharged 2.0 liter, 4-cylinder Ecotec engine operating in conjunction with a one hundred seventy kW generator, this low-lying sedan is operated in electrical solely “Stealth” mode (for a complete of thirty two miles in step with the EPA, though Fisker claims it’s simply over 50), or “Sport” mode for a mix of EV and internal combustion. Stealth is nice for 0-60 mph in seven.9 seconds and a high speed of nine5 mph, whereas Sport yields a five.9 second sprint and a a hundred twenty five mph terminal velocity. Fisker reckons a combined total vary of three hundred miles (with fifty of these returning from electricity, that is incrementally aided by a rooftop solar panel.) In Stealth mode, the Karma gets an EPA-rated fifty two MPGe; using the gas motor, that figure drops to the 20-something vary.

Driving the Karma unfurls complicated, mixed emotions; for all its slick, Speed Racer-meets-muscle automobile appearance, some rough spots remind you this can be a beta version of future propulsion. In all-electric Stealth mode, Karma accelerates as silently as you’d expect, though there’s a delicate shudder created at low speeds because the electrical motor’s stator and rotor surfaces omit one another, a top quality inherent to the technology. As tempting because it is to exploit Stealth mode for all its decibel-free deliciousness (save the artificially created, pedestrian-repelling “Tron” sound, that was authored for Fisker by Hollywood sound designers), Sport is that the likelier setting, with its longer vary and fossil fuel-burning accelerative help. And that’s additionally where things get a trifle less attractive, with the turbocharged four-banger firing up with an obvious hum and infrequently disarming valve clatter. The latter, incidentally, is thanks to the engine’s state of tune; it had been designed to start out at two hundred rpm in its GM application, however that was figure was boosted to one,100 rpm here, which ends in an exceedingly few moments of valvetrain oil starvation throughout cold startups before the gooey stuff gets to the metal bits.

Acceleration becomes somewhat wheezy because the Karma climbs steep hills, with the engine operating noticeably tougher to urge these two.75 heaps of automobile up to hurry. This Fisker will actually scoot along respectably, with sticky road holding and sensible body management, thanks partly to the battery’s low center of gravity. however there also are some unpolished edges to the drivetrain’s power delivery that don’t live up to the car’s overall sense of aesthetic polish and finessed styling — little flies within the hundred thousand greenback ointment, but flies, no less.

With eighty world dealerships found out and a couple of,000 cars already designed, Fisker’s dream of forming a innovative automobile company from the bottom up is an absolute reality, all of this despite governmental tussles and operatic criticism from the likes of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

As with all things within the brave new world of eco-transpo, the Fisker Karma — in spite of its attractive style and novel execution — comes hooked up with some pesky asterisks, the smallest amount of that is that the risk that it may go the means of the DeLorean, in that casual, Darwinian style of manner. it'd be a shame, really, a fate no one outside of the foremost hardened ecological skeptics would want upon this four-wheeled creation. After all, who doesn’t crave automotive utopia, even it’s tempered with some imperfections and a prohibitive value tag?