Let me state this, I was one of the first people in the USA to even lay eyes upon the Karma, and I was really charmed by its looks. I must admit I considered buying one, but after the price hikes and other short comings I decided against it. Every car has it's flaws and the flaws of the Karma contradict me and my lifestyle.
On to fisker's failures:
First and foremost was releasing the Karma with so many bugs, some of which will never be fixed. The command center is completely botched from a hardware stand point (under powered and poorly designed) and would have to be completely replaced. New cars launch with issues, but the issues weren't met with a "we are going to fix it now" attitude, but with a "it's new deal with it" attitude particularly at first(case in point that newspaper ad that said yeah we launch cars with bugs, but it's pretty). They didn't listen to the early adopters, they even had award winning software designers telling them that they would write code and fix the bugs in the command center for free.
Second is the money. Why was so much money spent on R&D to bring the Karma to market when there should have been so little R&D to do? Everything was out sourced! the drive train and all components were bought else where so no R&D there, the command center was outsourced so no R&D there. The only R&D funds I see getting spent is on the interior, exterior and the fitting of the drive train into the chassis. The chassis was newly built specifically for the Karma, but the chassis isn't revolutionary in any way, just standard affair (in the vain of inventing something new). It seems like the executives were bilking the company and the investors for money
Now for the Opinion:
The Karma should have been a SULEV to get it the Carpool lane stickers for single occupancy (like in CA and NY). people would have bought it in droves just for the stickers (particularly in CA), it also would have helped the green cred of the car. I know Fisker did something for the European buyers in this regard, but what about the rest of the world?
Fisker should have released the Surf first or at least attempted to release it. One of the major complaints was interior room and trunk space. The surf is bigger inside with extra leg room and trunk space. It would help Fisker's market share (you know the european market love their wagons) and there wasn't much more R&D to bring the Surf to market.
Fisker is in a world of hurt and it looks like no one wants to buy them. Fisker has no sort of IP of their own except for their design, which promptly resigned and walked out the door (Henrik). I don't see anything short of a miracle saving this company and sadly this will hurt the EV cause, because everyone will point to this as an example.
