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2012 Fisker Karma EcoChic

Good Karma: Fisker's four-door finally submits to the test gear and proves likable and real—and really heavy.

Nobody can deny (can they?) that the Fisker Karma is the lewdest wedge of car porn to hit the pavement since the onset of the 5-mph bumper. From one 22-inch wheel to the other, the Fisker is a heartthrob, a design spectacularly unchained from the shackles of practicality and brand identity that enslave other automakers. It is an auto-show concept car before it has been horsewhipped into bland banality by the finance, marketing, and engineering departments. It is a car built by a company started by a designer.

The Karma also testifies to the many reasons why car companies are run by finance, marketing, and engineering types and not designers, especially designers like Danish ex–Aston Martin stylist Henrik Fisker, he of the handmade suits and the blow-dried blond coiffure.

The Karma’s wheelbase—124.4 inches, or about the same as a 1958 Edsel’s—is 9.4 inches longer than a Porsche Panamera’s. Yet the back seat is smaller than a Honda Fit’s. A Kia Rio’s trunk is more than twice the size of the Karma’s. You try packing two carfuls of powertrain into something this low: The Fisker saddles its aluminum space frame with one engine, one generator, two electric motors, a 315-cell lithium-ion battery pack, a roof-mounted solar panel, and three separate liquid-cooling systems, yielding a curb weight of 5297 pounds.

Leafy but useless bin; 22-inchers

The cheapest version,the EcoStandard, costs $103,000, but if you desire a top EcoChic model such as this one, which is “animal-free,” it’s $116,000. Add $3200 for the sole option: sparkly silver paint—one of four “Diamond Dust” shades that includes bits of recycled glass. Groundup Opus One bottles, perhaps?

It sounds like a recipe for overcooked pretentiousness. Maybe it is, but even if you’re making a 57-point U-turn in the supermarket parking-lot aisle because the Karma’s turning circle is more than 40 feet, you look fabulous. Insert rock stars here.

But is the Karma real? We will attempt to answer that question now that we have a testable unit, just two years after the federal government loaned the company $529 million and spawned a mini-industry of devout skeptics. At this writing, Anaheim, California–based Fisker Automotive claims to have built 1250 production Karmas—one of which was supposed to be ours to test. But on the planned delivery day in late December, Fisker’s men said the car showed up with outdated software. In place of the production unit, the company handed over an engineering development car running the correct software on its onboard computers. Off we glided to the test track.

GM turbo four; No cows were harmed for this cabin.

There’s a lot to like here. The Karma has good visibility to the sides and rear and especially forward over the Corvette-like batwing fenders and hood bulge. The front seats are plush and comfortable, not overly bolstered or sporty but, like an old La-Z-Boy, good for many hours of spinal serenity. The rear seats are confined and vertical, with little legroom and less headroom. Be prepared to apologize to those stuck in back as you scoot forward to make space.

No clichés of black leather and polished aluminum inside this machine. As advertised, our EcoChic spurns animal skins for an assemblage of blue and cream faux suede accented by broad swaths of coarse fabric mottled with blue nibs. Blocks of burled wood salvaged from California wildfires (or perhaps from well-furnished California houses burned by wildfires) complete the interior’s attractive feng shui.

Instead of conventional buzzes or dingdongs, the dash plays a medley of soothing hums and tones as part of the Karma’s pseudofuturistic theater. Gear selection is via buttons clustered onto a small pyramid on the center console. Push one, and the pyramid responds by sending an arc of green aurora borealis through the console as the car sings “hoo-huuumm.” At low speed, speakers located behind the bumpers announce the Karma’s presence to pedestrians with a . . . sound. Either it’s a simulated jet whine or a recording of the Large Hadron Collider making a black hole.

The two multicolor gauges—one for speed, one a consumption/generation meter with fuel-level and battery-charge indicators are high-res digital displays. Most buttons are of the virtual kind and embedded in a 10.2-inch touch screen. Steeringwheel paddles toggle three driving modes, including “stealth” or electric-only; “sport,” which more readily rouses the engine for greater accelerative power; and “hill,” which turns up the regenerative-braking function to take advantage of long downgrades.

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Even in sport mode, the Karma is not particularly nippy, taking 6.1 seconds to reach 60 mph, with the engine furiously cranking the generator and sounding like an old man snoring. Acceleration tapers off considerably after 80 mph, slowing to the rate of “barely detectable” as it approaches the 125-mph speed limiter. In stealth mode, it’s 1.4 seconds slower to 60....

Still, in any mode, the Karma has instant torque and is spry enough to jackrabbit through traffic. The naturally weighted electrohydraulic steering transmits discernible feedback and produces assertive directional changes. It even shames some cars currently wearing blue-and-white propeller badges—it’s that good. The Karma’s only tactile shortcoming is its brakes, which are powerful but a bit unnatural feeling, with several discrete steps of engagement.

Though the huge wheels have the barest shellacking of 35-series rubber, you’re slung between a wheelbase longer than the winters in Uusikaupunki, Finland, where the Karma is assembled. So the ride is well-insulated and pampering even though the car, with the center of its monster gravity just 19.0 inches above the pavement, stays anchored in fast corners. In touchier bends, the understeer comes out, and our 0.87-g skidpad reading demonstrates the bullying effect of the Karma’s mass on the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperCar tires.

Anyone who buys a Karma in the next couple of years is a test pilot as much as a customer. The company has already recalled and fixed 239 cars for improperly positioned hose clamps in the battery’s cooling system, which could lead to a fire. However, our development car showed precious few teething issues: some wind noise around a passenger-side window and a little driveline shudder. Also, the panel gaps are bigger and the alignments less precise than Herr Benz or Lexus-san would allow.

The Karma is not a rational choice. The Mercedes-Benz S-class hybrid is cheaper, the Lexus LS600h better built. An all-wheeldrive Porsche Panamera V-6 we tested was faster to 60 mph by more than a second and $20,000 cheaper, and its fuel economy was not much worse than the Fisker’s. At this stage in the Fisker’s life, the Porsche would undoubtedly be more reliable.

So perhaps the vital question spawned by this Gordian knot of engineering isn’t “Is it real?” (because it definitely is), but rather “Why’d Fisker bother?”

Well, because without the electric component, the Karma is just a pretty car with no pedigree. And for a company run by a designer, that’s apparently not enough.

The Karma is a series hybrid that operates somewhat like a diesel locomotive. A 260-hp, 2.0-liter GM Ecotec turbo four under the hood powers a large puck-shaped AC generator. The exhaust exits from the small rocker-panel cutouts behind the front wheels. The engine (or a wall plug) recharges the 20-kilowatt-hour battery pack filling the high center tunnel. The pack and the generator juice the twin 201-hp electric motors that lie ahead of and behind the rear axle. Peak combined torque is 974 pound-feet at 2000 rpm.

The battery pack is not especially large—the Nissan Leaf has 20 percent more capacity—so the Fisker’s motors run solely on battery power for only 30 to 45 miles, according to the manufacturer. During our testing, we observed somewhat less—an electric range of 24 to 28 miles. As in a Chevy Volt, both electric range and gas mileage can vary dramatically. For example, the Karma won’t go as far in EV mode if you turn on the electric air conditioning, the electric heater, or the electric seat heaters (all four positions have them); climb hills; or do less regenerative braking (as on a freeway).

When the batteries run low or when the driver wants to go faster, the engine automatically starts to recharge the pack and supply the motors with additional wattage. Eventually, you will have to either charge the car from the wall or refill the 9.5-gallon tank. The former takes 16 hours with the supplied charger on a standard 110-volt circuit, much less if you have a 220-volt outlet or one of the various high-speed chargers available. The latter we had to do four times during our 638-mile test, with gas-only mileage ranging from 20 to 28 mpg and an average of 24; hardly a victory for the planet. View Photo Gallery

Notice how the left hates trickle down theory unless it supports their global warming meme.