Tesla vs Karma

I just caught wind of this new electric car by Fisker called the Karma. Get it?! Car-ma. Hahaha. It's not as far along in production as the Tesla Roadster but it has two features that beat the Tesla hands down: four seats and a hybrid engine. It also comes with a price tag of $80K (still stratospheric) but better than the $92K Tesla wants. Oh, it also looks just as cool. Oh, and I can fit G and S in the back and their fencing bags into the trunk. Definitely an important feature for the chauffeur called Dad.

The hybrid engine is only designed to be used when the charge on the car runs down. Range is about 50 miles which handles an average day of commuting. The engine is an inline 4-cylinder so you're not going to get a lot of power out of it, it's going to help to supplement the charging of the batter.

You still have to plug it in at night (standard 120V or 220V) and if you can't find that shady spot in the school parking lot you can let the solar cells on the roof recharge the battery!

Vroom!



Now, one would imagine that Fiskar and Tesla would be slave driving their engineers and trying to get their cars out the door as fast as possible in order to establish a beachhead in this brave new market. Nah, they're suing each other. Here's the counter-suit. Hopefully, they haven't lost sight of the greater mission of saving the planet.

Update on CNET about Fisker and their plans for a more reasonably priced sedan.