Production Fisker Karma Caught Testing

The Fisker Karma was no doubt an awesome concept when it made its debut back in January at the Detroit Motor Show and it drummed up a huge amount of publicity not only by its hybrid technology but also its innovative elegant design.

Publicity has dropped off since then ( apart from a lawsuit with Tesla Motors), therefore Fisker has released a few images of what appears to be a prototype of the production version to try re-ignite that public reaction and judging by these photos, should be nothing but positive.

In many cases, the production version of a concept loses the finesse which created the buzz in the first place, but this prototype appears to have kept an almost identical design with the black and white disguising doing little to hide any design elements from public view.

There is little known about the powertrain for the production version as Fisker continue to keep the technology under wraps but what we do know is the Karma will feature a new technology called Q-Drive which has been developed exclusively for Fisker by Quantum Technologies. The new technology uses a small gasoline engine that turns the generator, which charges the lithium ion battery pack - this engine is rumoured to be a 1.4-liter engine sourced from Volkswagen.

The production version of the Fisker Karma will be launched by the end of next year with a price on the region of $80,000.