Fisker Issues Second Recall of Electric Car (initiates voluntary recall of Karmas)

Yahoo! News ^ | 8/20/12 | Randy Kreider | ABC News

[NormsRevenge]

After the second of two mysterious fires in a Karma sedan, the government-backed electric car-maker Fisker has initiated a voluntary recall of its luxury vehicles.

In a statement, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher said that Fisker engineers and an independent fire expert had "identified the root cause" of a fire that swept through a Karma parked outside a Woodside, California grocery store on August 10.

"The investigation located the ignition source to the left front of the Karma, forward of the wheel, where the low-temperature cooling fan is located," said the statement. "The final conclusion was that this sealed component had an internal fault that caused it to fail, overheat and start a slow burning fire."

Fisker announced a voluntary recall "with respect to this cooling fan unit" and said it had already contacted its retailers.

As first reported by Jalopnik.com, the owner found the vehicle burning in the parking lot when he returned from shopping. At the time, the Woodside Fire Department said the immediate cause of the blaze appeared to be "heat from powered equipment," and firefighters cut the car's battery cable after putting out the fire. Woodside Fire Chief Dan Ghiorso told ABC News that the origin of the fire appeared to be inside the engine compartment, though Fisker said in a statement that it was determined to be outside the compartment in an area "forward of the driver's side front tire."

[MasterGunner01]

The Fisker Karma, at nearly $200,000 each, is perfect for rich folks who want to show the rest of the peasants who cares for the environment: they self-destruct. The lottery is you don't know when your Karma will immolate itself. It might be at one mile or 100,000 or somewhere in between. Ka-ching!

[John S Mosby]

Hey Fisker: Your Karma ran over your Dogma, call PETA!!

[John S Mosby]

“Come on Baby, release my Chakra!!” or was that “Karma”

[ZOOKER]

...People driving them begged to buy them when they were told GM was going to demolish them.

Perhaps it was a liability or product support issue. Only a limited number were built; if GM sold them they would be obligated to warranty them, offer parts and service. If someone were injured due to a design defect, GM could be liable. Beechcraft bought all of their "Starship" aircraft back and shredded them for the same reason(s).

[ROCKLOBSTER]

the origin of the fire appeared to be inside the engine compartment,

Really!!!

What's an electric car doing with an engine compartment?

[Right Wing Assault]

Too bad they couldn’t have called it the Kindle.

[TangoLimaSierra]

Too bad they couldn’t have called it the Kindle.

Ha

[lacrew]

“That isn’t why the EV-1’s were taken back. They were not recalled. The people who wnet into that program never actually owned them, they were loaned to them with the expectation GM would take them back. People driving them begged to buy them when they were told GM was going to demolish them.”

None of this is news to me...and why I referred to them as a ‘lease fleet’.

On to my hypothesis that GM crushed them all, before they caught fire...from wikipedia: “On March 2, 2000, GM issued a recall for 450 Gen I EV1s. The automaker had determined that a faulty charge port cable could eventually build up enough heat to catch on fire. Sixteen “thermal incidents” and at least one fire occurred as a result of the defect, destroying a car leased by Ron Brauer and Ruth Bygness as it was charging.”....seems to support my hypothesis, no matter what type of battery they had.

BTW, around a third of the EV-1’s did have nickel hydride batteries.