No second chances (unless your giving away beta versions of free software).
What Killed the New Electric Car
Excerpt:
But focussing on the political aspect of the Fisker story obscures the real lessons of the company’s failure, which have to do with privileging design over performance, and the perils of bringing a new product to market before it’s actually ready. The initial excitement over Fisker was understandable. The technology behind the Karma, which relied primarily on electricity but also had a gas engine to extend the vehicle’s range, promised much better gas mileage than existing hybrids but also, because of the gas engine, greater ease of use than purely electric cars. And the Karma was also exceptionally stylish—its distinctive, eye-catching design promised to make hybrids not merely sensible and responsible but cool. The problem was that the Karma’s insides did not live up to its gorgeous outside.
Its interior design was, to begin with, not all that functional—Consumer Reports lamented its “poor dash controls, limited visibility, a cramped interior, awkward access into and out of the seats, …and a small backseat and trunk,” while the auto blog Jalopnik said the Karma had “an interior the size of a Geo Metro [and] build quality that has a real Pyongyang sort of charm.” The Karma was also surprisingly noisy, especially when the gas engine kicked in, and its engine lacked, in Consumer Reports’ words, “the oomph you would expect.” It was a “sports car” that performed more like an ordinary sedan.
On top of this, and perhaps even more importantly, the first Karmas rolled off the assembly line full of bugs. The first Karma that Consumer Reports tested simply died, and early Karma owners reported a host of problems ranging from a car shutting itself off while in motion to trouble with the electronic dashboard controls to, in two separate cases, cars catching fire…
Full article: What Killed the New Electric Car : The New Yorker.
Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty
