You know you've made an impact when one of your plug-in hybrid sedans turns up on Ellen DeGeneres' daytime talk show being presented as an 18th birthday present to teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.
Such was the case last week when the Beeb received the surprise gift: the new Fisker Karma. The singing sensation is now just of the latest of one of the Hollywood elite who are reportedly tooling around in a $102,000 Karma, joining the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio.
The Karma is the first product of a start-up car company, an attempt to unite the latest in luxury car style — the slope-backed auto resembles a Jaguar or an Audi A7 — with plug-in hybrid economy. With a name like Karma, you know it's oh-so-Hollywood: It even has an animal-products-free (no leather) edition.
The Karma is rated as being capable of going 33 miles or more on electric power alone before its gas engine kicks in. It can be recharged overnight in a garage from a standard electrical outlet.
The car is the brainchild of a Danish-born auto designer named Henrik Fisker, who is best known for his designs at BMW. In nursing the dream of bringing style to electric cars, his timing couldn't have been better:
He appeared with a mockup of the car at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit just a year before a new Democratic administration was looking to fund promising alternative-energy endeavors.
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