Please, Mr. Champion.....allow me to fix your Understatement of the Year thusly:
""It is a f**king embarrassment and a cast iron ripoff of the American taxpayers who subsidized this P.O.S. that you pay that amount of money for a car and it lasts basically 180 miles before going wrong," David Champion, senior director for the magazine's automotive test center, told Reuters, on Thursday.
Developed by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, the Karma is the first in a planned series of offering from California start-up Fisker Motors. The goal was to develop a striking, high-performance sports car that also could lay claims to being a green machine.
But the official numbers from the EPA don’t quite support that. Balancing the car’s electric and gasoline performance in a series of simulations the feds came up with a 52 MPGe rating. And while that’s on a par with what one might expect from the decidedly slower and less stylish Toyota Prius, it’s well short of the maker’s promised 67.2 MPGe, or miles-per-gallon equivalent.
Range, meanwhile, came in at just 32 miles on battery power alone compared to Fisker’s anticipated 50 miles per charge.
And since that means the vehicle will likely be driven a lot more often on gasoline power alone the EPA’s other figure might be equally disappointing, with the car rated at just 20 miles per gallon in the combined cycle.
Well Played !