the coolest new car on the planet and its green!

[Kevin Gregoire]

i dont know about anyone else but this new 2012 Fisker Karma is the most awesome looking new car on the planet!
its just way to cool and its a hybrid.

check out the pics and the story on this car.

http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2012-...photo-3903482/
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/02/21/2...iew-road-test/

[ray hampton]

the electric cars may be cute as a bug in your pudding but what are you doing to help the drivers that need trucks to haul materials ?

[Jeff Nicol]

I can't figure out why someone would If you looked into how much pollution and non-green materials are produced and spewed into the atmosphere by the manufacturers of the LITHIUM that is mined and refined to make the batteries, you would see that no matter what the "Greenies" say the pollution is produced before it even hits the showroom floor. How much petroleum, coal, natural gas and so on were burnt up to manufacture each car? Do they look at that when they shell out the opulant amount of cash to buy a car that they don't need?

Sure is a pretty car, but it is not "GREEN" at all if you use some common sense, not trying to make waves just putting some information out there that is more important than spending a lot of money to impress your neighbors.

My opinion with good information,

Jeff

[Jamie Buxton]

A car that costs over $100K is irrelevant to anything real. Only the extremely extremely rich could buy one. And no matter how green the car is, the few hundred that will be built will have infinitesimal impact on the planet. Making expensive cars is easy -- just pour cubic dollars into it. A car that would actually be cool would be a 100 mpg one that'll haul a family and cost less than $20K.

[Jerome Stanek]

I wonder how much energy it takes to produce this car

[Joel Goodman]

I do agree that the energy cost of producing new expensive stuff (and the disposal costs of dumping the old) should be part of the green calculus but.... that's a pretty car! I saw a Fiskar on the road (I think it was a two seater) and it was beautiful.

[ray hampton]

disposal of the old cars is not hard to do and it will not cost any money ship them to Mexico or overseas to China and get pay for them

[Mark Bolton]

I suppose its the tried and true formula of refinement and innovation most always starts from the top down. Kinda like all the innovations that have trickled down to the masses from mega endeavors like the stealth bomber/fighter, Apache helicopters, all the projects funded by DARPA, space program, X-prize, and so on. The simple fact is the drones (us) are so busy just trying to bring air into our lungs we simply cant afford what it costs to innovate and R&D at the level required for our future. We are way beyond the days of toasters and waffle irons. Heck, many coffee makers today you never even touch a single coffee ground in the process. Not that they are essentials but all things like these self parallel parking, blind spot warning, lane drift alerts, all come from programs and R&D that the average consumers dollars simply dont, or wont, pay for.

Extreme innovation has always worked this way, aircraft, boating/yachting, even woodworking equipment. The Martin's and Altendorf's set the standard and what the rest of us use is trickle down. I would guess, and its only a guess, that we wouldnt even have access to a LiOn cordless tool had it not been for some extreme high dollar R&D operation funded by either some government, or the rich. Most all extreme refinement comes this way. Maybe a watch would be a 4lb hunk of brass hanging off your wrist had it not been for Rolex.

Mark

[Kevin W Johnson]

Not to mention all the hybrids that will litter the used car dealers in the coming years because neither the dealers or the consumers are going to be willing to pony the the $$$$ to replace the batteries.

I just can't figure why people get so hyped about hybrids (a Prius @45mpg hwy) when we had cars in the late '80's to early '90's that got 52mpg hwy. If the auto industry would focus more on "exotic" materials like carbon fiber, and ultra-light aluminum alloys, etc., the cost of those materials could/would drop substantially and the mpg's would increase drastically. The enemy of MPG's is weight and drag. Drag is easy to tame, our cars and trucks just weigh too much.

[Mark Bolton]

If the auto industry would focus more on "exotic" materials like carbon fiber, and ultra-light aluminum alloys, etc., the cost of those materials could/would drop substantially and the mpg's would increase drastically. The enemy of MPG's is weight and drag. Drag is easy to tame, our cars and trucks just weigh too much.

Or the consumer could be willing to compromise a little too. Unfortunately the over ruling mindset nowadays is to want it ALL. The consumers fueling the return of massive cars want the illusion of safety they bring, the room, the status and prestige, and so on. Fuel economy is a mere perk that if thrown in is great but most will gladly trade a hefty portion of salary in reduced fuel consumption for the other attributes.

Im not sure it can happen but I would hope we can innovate ourselves into a place of being able to have our cake and eat it too but it doesnt seem like thats ever been possible in the past so I am not sure physics will allow it now either. You can only lighten up an Escalade so much.

I cant say much, one of my primary vehicles in my business is an F350 utility/dump that gets about 9. But try to run a smaller truck that gets about 20 whenever possible. When I drive the smaller truck I dont see it as something being taken away from me, I happily think of all the dollars I am getting to keep rather than giving them to the billionaires in the petroleum industry.

Mark

[Curt Harms]

The thing I wondered about reading the article is "why use a 200 H.P. engine?". Cars use a relatively low % of their rated H.P. except when accelerating. Run the gas engine at its most efficient output and use the battery for the acceleration surges. But then I'm not an engineer.

[John McClanahan]

I agree with Curt. The electric motor should supplement the gas engine. It would be used to help the gas engine when the extra power is needed. Then hybrid autos could get the travel distance needed. And if the batteries ran down, you could still drive, just with reduced power. The experts think the opposite is the better idea.

John

[Brian Elfert]

That car would look a lot better as a coupe than a sedan. The rear doors look like some sort of afterthought the designers were forced to add.

I doubt the cost of using aluminum for cars will go down as the cost of the raw aluminum keeps going up as worldwide demand increases. A big reason cars get less mileage today is the EPA. Increased emissions standards have reduced MPGs. A lot of those 52 MPG were stripped down compared to today's cars. They probably had manual transmissions, no A/C, and no power windows/locks. No airbags either. It is quite difficult to buy a car today without power windows/locks, automatic, and A/C. Some manufacturers do offer such models, but try buying one new without having to order the car.

[Gerald Wubs]

@ Kevin W Johnson, I agree with your basic thought, but I am struggling to think of cars (plural) that got 52 MPG in the 70's or 80's. I had a Mini 1000 that got good mileage, and it was very cool indeed, but I'm not sure it really got 50 MPG in normal driving. Please give some examples of the high mileage vehicles you remember. (Oh no, not the Chevette! arrrgg!)
Would these vehicles pass todays safety tests? I know my Mini wouldn't - the brakes were antilock though - you couldn't lock a wheel unless a wheel cylinder was leaking brake fluid into one of the 4 wheel drums! (frequent occurance) LOL
Also on a side topic, I don't believe for a second that there is any "oil company" conspiracy, the laws of physics dictate that extremely high fuel mileage in a real world, driveable car is not that easy. I'm sure that if any car company had a 100 MPG car, not an oil company in the world could buy them off.

[Ben Hatcher]

The 3 cylinder Geo Metro got 52 mpg...or at least was rated at 52.

Hybrid drive systems are just another power adder not unlike superchargers or turbochargers. The huge advantage electric motors have is that their full power and torque are available at very low RPM. I think that the “debate” as to if they are a net positive or net negative is completely missing the point. They’re a step in the right direction and the technology and learning that we get from them will lead us to the next best thing. To argue that they aren’t THE answer or don’t do as much as the greenies claim so therefore we should do nothing is, in my view, foolish.