Back in 2007, we cautiously admired the choice by Henrik Fisker and longtime business partner Bernhard Koehler to completely change their business model. Instead of rebuilding BMW and Mercedes convertibles through Fisker Coachbuild, the partners instead dove headfirst into the eyebrow-raising Fisker Automotive, a company that would be dedicated to building electric cars of its own design.
After the usual ups and downs of an automotive startup, Fisker showed up at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show with its eye-popping
Karma sedan concept. Now, three years later, we're in Southern California to drive the first pre-production examples of what will be the 2012 Fisker Karma EVer (i.e. electric vehicle extended range).
Eco, Eco, Eco...
The Fisker Karma grabbed the "Eco" label early and ran with it. It's a big reason why the company was able to attract a substantial amount of private investment, not to mention a cool $529 million from the Department of Energy. Much of the latter was earmarked to fund Fisker's purchase of GM's former Delaware plant that built the Kappa-architecture roadsters and will, by the end of 2011, be building units of the lower-priced Fisker Nina.

Every single supplier and associate Fisker Automotive deals with is, in one way or many, a green-obsessed company. These include the free-range sustainable Scottish leathers used in the EcoSport to the wood trims sourced from existing sunken and fallen Michigan timber to the optional metal-flake metallic paints that get their sparkle from recycled material.