Fisker Karma – the Ultimate Green Car Teams up with Danish Crown Prince

By Anthony Crawford | December 15th, 2009

Chances are you haven’t heard of Californian sports car manufacturer Fisker Automotive.

Fisker is an all-green sports car maker from Southern California and is led by Danish designer Henrick Fisker, who just happened to design the BMW Z8 and had a role in the design in some of Aston Martin’s current models.

The big news for Fisker is that Denmark’s Crown Prince HRH Frederik is the first person outside the company’s development team to be driving the eco-friendly Fisker Karma.

The Crown Prince will drive the plug-in hybrid car to and from the COP15 UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

The Karma’s green credentials are impressive to say the least. It can travel up to 80 kilometres on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery, and a further 400 kilometres using its range extending generator turned by a highly efficient four cylinder gas engine.

‘Green’ is 2.4-itres/100 km with CO2 emissions of just 83g/km, which is nothing short of remarkable.

But Fisker is also a sports car company, so performance is important, regardless of its green badge of honour.

The Karma will go from standstill to 100km/h in around six seconds, and will exceed 200 km/h.

Fisker has approval from the US government for a USD 528.7 million conditional loan and has announced plans to purchase an assembly plant from General Motors.

http://www.motormo.com/ Rob

“528.7 million” Geez, let’s hope they’re good at keeping themselves up and running, especially after the troubled history Fisker had with Tesla.
Omale

I always thought that creating a new car, i.e. starting a new brand, would be difficult in this day and age given the established competition and buyers preferences for them.

Now, I am not so sure. We must almost certainly be a the dawn of a new era in the automotive industry, and with this, new manufacturers have an opportunity to stake their claim as tomorrows’ prestige/luxury marques. It must be said that traditional makes also have the perfect chance to change public perception – lets hope Holden and Ford take note.

I’ll give Fisker some time but, even at this early stage, it looks like they’re on the money.
Old Dog

What sort of “gas” does the range extending engine use? LPG isint big in calif.