Fisker Karma Blowing Hot and Cold

5605 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by matrix, Feb 10, 2012

Fabulist

Discussion Starter · Feb 9, 2012

I have noticed that there is always air blowing out of the registers in the dashboard at constant speed and independent of the car speed. What is odd about it is that the air is sometimes cold and sometimes very hot. I never turn on the climate control system and my temperature is set at 75 Degrees. The cold air is a lot colder than that and the hot air is a lot warmer. I know that the A/C is used to cool off the battery but I don't understand why the cold air needs to come into the cabin. Likewise, I don't get why hot air is pumpled into the cabin.

Anyone else experience this?

-- Fab.

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Dutch

· #2 · Feb 9, 2012

Are you sure your climate control is off? That is the top right of the four 'buttons' around the circle. If the lower right 'button' is on you will get air into the cabin, depending on the speed setting of the fan. If you don't want any air coming out you have to':

- Select OFF (that top right button)
- Or put the fan on '0'
- Or manually close the vents

Why the air is sometimes hot or cold is not clear to me. I've noticed that there can be a lot of change with just a small change in the temperature indicator. When I choose MAX, which is necessary at -10 Celcius, then I get warm air (barely enough though, it's clearly a Californian and not a Finnish car). But when I turn it just a bit down to 29 or 28 it immediately gets a lot colder, a lot!

I guess warming up (or cooling) an electric car simply isn't as easy to do in a controlled manner as it is in an ICE-car. It uses the heat of the battery cooling system and there isn't always enough of that. I notice that when I put it in Sport Mode it can also use the heat from the ICE and then it's already much easier.

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adam

· #3 · Feb 9, 2012

I live in south florida where it's still very warm and the AC is very important.

What I've noticed is that if you leave the Karma on AUTO and allow it to regulate temperature, you will get the cold air and then warm air. It's as if it can't moderately increase temperature.

So what I do which has worked perfectly for 3 days now is turn OFF the AUTO function, put the temperature to 65 degrees F and then manually control the speed of the fan. I generally put it on 4 when I first get in the car and then turn it down to 2 (during the day) or 1 (at night). The air stays cold the entire time.

Hope that helps.

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ebarneyr

· #4 · Feb 9, 2012

Adam: Has there been a warm enough day to test how the a/c cools when summer's hot temps and high humidity arrives? Hope the a/c is strong enough to handle the South's summers! Ebarneyr

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brian

· #5 · Feb 9, 2012

The Auto mode is complete crap right now, and Fisker has confirmed that it's a known problem that they're working on. There are several primary issues in Auto mode:

1. When you turn the car on it blasts cold air at you during the 10-15 seconds that it takes for the car to boot up and figure out that you didn't want it to be 30º in the car.

2. The thermostat isn't working properly, so to get it to be 72º in the car you usually have to set it to 66º.

3. When the car cools to your set temperature (or 8º above it) instead of turning down or off, it switches to heater mode and starts blowing hot air.

As for it blowing air even when it's off, that's fairly normal. All cars do that, but in the Karma it's a bit stronger. It does it when the thing is set to outside air mode. If you press the recycle air button it'll cut off that draft.

-Brian

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dennis

· #6 · Feb 9, 2012

adam said:
What I've noticed is that if you leave the Karma on AUTO and allow it to regulate temperature, you will get the cold air and then warm air. It's as if it can't moderately increase temperature.

When you select "Auto" both the Heat (bottom left button) and Air Conditioning (bottom right button) are enabled. You can tell this because the upper half of the temperature circle shows Orange and the bottom half of the circle shows Blue. My dealer recommended to use either the heater or air conditioner, but not both on as once as Auto is currently configured.

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Fabulist

Discussion Starter · #7 · Feb 9, 2012

I know how the AC is supposed to work and I am absolutely certain that it is all the way OFF. This is the ambient air flow that changes temperature. @Brian's analysis makes the most sense. Just one more item for the bug list.

-- FAB

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steveo

· #8 · Feb 9, 2012

Command centers have been around for years now many of them very capable of hundreds of options, even a new Ford focus for 20k has great features that WORK ,,,,there is little excuse for this BS the fact that this is a new car does not cut it......

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LonePalmBJ

· #9 · Feb 10, 2012

steveo said:
Command centers have been around for years now many of them very capable of hundreds of options, even a new Ford focus for 20k has great features that WORK ,,,,there is little excuse for this BS the fact that this is a new car does not cut it......

Ford is a timely but bad example. There's an article in today's USA today talking about the disaster that is the Ford MyTouch and how Ford is thoroughly revamping it and admits it has problems.

MyFord Touch article

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steveo

· #10 · Feb 10, 2012

Sorry but the article does not refer to the Focus (which is what I referenced) with "sync" and voice command, we bought our son one its works great and I would take their command center over the crap software we have in a second.

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matrix

· #11 · Feb 10, 2012

Check out this video of the new Cadillac XTS "CUE" system. Very slick! I bet it works too. Maybe Fisker could contract Cadillac to build a CUE system for the Karma.

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