Fisker Charging

In Sport Mode, it will hold your remaining Stealth miles constant -- provided you are at 26-27 or below. Above that, it will let the battery drain at about half normal rate. The car (as released from the factory) is meant to run on battery, and use the engine for keeping you at a usable battery level - but not meant to let you fully recharge the battery using the engine (as that would just make it no better than a gasoline car). We're told that the original Concept Models of the Karma had modes to recharge in place, or (nearly) fully recharge while driving. But, pressure from some gov't agencies made them retract those modes in the production versions. So, we have "Stealth" which is all battery. And, "Sport" which is "extra power with slow battery drain" above 26 (~50% full charge), and below that it is "maintain/sustain" mode. You may see the miles drop 1 or 2 below where they were when you engaged Sport, but the engine will bring it back up to that level over time.

The after market TOM module (developed by an ex-Fisker tech guru) is meant to restore those modes as well as some other bells & whistles.

Bert Yetman said:

I have to agree with Steven;"It seems to me that using an internal combustion engine to charge your car battery is very inefficient compared to a large utility power-plant. Why not just wait to plugin and not diminish your MPG?"

I recently completed a 4000 mile trip in my Karma. Electrical outlets were not commonly available at hotels/motels. At friends places I visited, of course I charged the battery. When I couldn't charge the Karma, I just cruised along on the ICE without any problem, stopping for gas when necessary. BTW, the 10 gallon tank exceeds my bladder range. Several days on the month long trip, my electrical range was zero. Overall, I averaged 31.13 mpg.

Had my Valentine One radar detector confiscated in Canada plus a $175 dollar fine for having one. Picked up a new one in NJ.

Performance may be improved with the Power Source option, but how much? Any 0-60mph times/100mph times? I don't remember any time on the trip that I needed added performance.

Click to expand...

Will try to answer some of these questions.

Driving at 0 miles would be the rough equivalent of 3kwh of stored energy in the battery pack your max power to the motors would be around 140-150kw ~200hp.

Driving at 45-50 miles you would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-18kwh your max output would be 210kw in "stealth" mode, so at a minimum roughly 80hp difference.

Here is a 0-60 run we took some time ago with 37 miles SOC in sport mode.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1opWTswzA2I

We notice a significant difference in Sport v Stealth and High SOC vs Low SOC with the Karma. Many like having the options to be able to rebuild the pack if needed on the fly and to hold SOC to save for later (as well as full performance all the time).

If you live in a hilly part of the world driving at 15% SOC (0 miles) the vehicle will likely go into reduced performance mode as the generator many times cannot replenish the pack quick enough. As a general rule of thumb it is not helpful to the pack to keep it at 0 miles for lengthy periods of time.

Porsche with their e-hybrid plug-in panamera and cayenne offer charge on the fly as well to replenish the pack as the expectations for these cars is to have the full performance available at all times. This is also an issue with vehicles like the Model S who are significantly slower at lower SOC. Our Tom unit is more geared towards the no-compromise power enthusiast who wants it all.

We had a shop car that was driven constantly at 0 electric miles (never plugged in and no Tom unit) and it took 3 weeks to balance via charger.

Will post some graphs and more technical information later.