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Can Detroit Go Green?

2:35 PM, January 13, 2008 | Comments (0)
This year's Detroit Auto Show, which opens to the media today, will be so overrun with green concept cars it should be renamed the Detroit Lawn and Garden Show. Hot off the wheels of its Washington Waterloo over the tough new gas-mileage regulations,...

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Posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:37 AM

Move Over, Tesla

Keith Naughton
Last year, the Hollywood crowd lined up to put down deposits for the $98,000 Tesla roadster, a warp-speed fast electric sports car powered by advanced lithium ion batteries found in laptops. The problem is, Tesla, a tiny Silicon Valley start-up, can’t seem to get its car on the road, having missed several launch deadlines. Now Tesla already has a competitor: The Fisker Karma. No, this is not another car from India. It’s a long, low-slung, four-seat sports car that also happens to be a plug-in electric hybrid, powered by those same laptop batteries.

The stylish supercar is the brainchild of former BMW and Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker and backed by some serious Silicon Valley money, including Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm that just hired Al Gore. The Karma can go 50 miles on pure electric power before a tiny 4-cylinder engine kicks in to recharge the batteries. The car can also be juiced up by plugged it into a regular household outlet for 8 hours or a 220-volt outlet (like you have for your washer and dryer) for 3 and a half hours And it is topped off by a solar roof that can cool the car’s interior or even recharge the batteries.

But this certainly is no boring, eat-your-peas hybrid. It goes from zero to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and has a top speed of 125 mph. Best of all, it looks fast standing still. “I see all these movie stars driving around in their Priuses,” says Fisker. “This car is all about making green sexy.” It is scheduled to go on sale in the fourth quarter of 2009 with a sticker price of $80,000. Hollywood, start your checkbooks.

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