2012 Fisker Karma - Jay Leno's Garage

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments
Captions
welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage today we're going to talk about a car and meet the man who designed it this is a car it's the first one I've seen in person it's a car everybody has an opinion on whether they've seen it or not you know they everybody's got something to say about this car and I love people that have one person's vision of what a car should be and they put their name on the car this is called the Fisker and Henrik Fisker come on in your I've known you for a long day Jay you were the designer of Aston Martin he designed all those beautiful Aston Martins that you see and my favorite BMW the z8 that's just right that yours as well and this is your latest latest creation there beautiful beautiful car four-door and it's a hybrid tell us about it well it's kind of a difference of a hybrid because this is the first kind of world we can switch between pure electric and gas hmm so you can actually decide to go about 50 miles on pure electric but let's say after 20 miles you are after one mile whatever you want you can actually switch on the shifter pedal into gasoline mode which basically means there's an engine turning a generator create an electricity while you drive so the gasoline is not connected to the wheels right it only turns a generator to create electricity and either put back into the battery or back to two electric motors at the rear is it very similar to the Chevy Volt type of system it's different because the Volt actually has a connection to the wheels the gasoline engine also has a gearbox ours only have a one speed gearbox and has two electric motors of the rear it has the same torque as a Bugatti Veyron Wow what is the tour eleven hundred pound foot 1,100 Wow okay but there's only one speed so you have to divide all that over one speed so obviously you don't have the speed of a Bugatti but you have a speed of a thing a v8 and and you have instant power so it's almost like you're always on the right gear right which is like an electric current right right so basically is it a correct to call it a hybrid we call an electric vehicle with extended range okay and the reason is that it always is electric driven a hybrid you know you you have the possibility like a Prius where it drives on gasoline but unlike a pure electric you can't get stuck in this car because it you could just revert to gasoline that's it I drove it up to Pebble Beach and after 50 miles it just drove it pure gasoline I filled up a gas station because there's a 250 mile range and on pure gasoline here's something I've always wondered why more electric car manufacturers don't do this you've integrated an electric panel into the roof here and actually looks kind of cool it actually looks like a design element yeah as well as being something functional these are these photoelectric cells yeah okay and you know that was the whole point I didn't want to make it look dorky it's all about making an electric or environmentally friendly car look cool it's a little bit about yes there's a future for cool environmental friendly cars so we made a special design one of the cool thing about this is this is the first solar panel in the world X is curved in two directions okay so we had to develop a new way because you cannot bend these solar panels I say so it's two glass panels with a gel between them yeah so it actually looks like that they're round but they're actually lying flat but we get that cool curvature and it's not translucent you know it's not it's not translucent that's the next generation over so this is always obviously when it's sunny and you park the car this is is it putting its putting energy back into the battery actually what it really is is helping out the auxiliaries like first the radio air conditioning also program the vents so basically they run when you're gone from the cart just vehicles you leave this car on a 100 degree day in a parking lot it'll keep the fans going keep it circular that's why air conditioning just fan that's right the fans yeah that's interesting so if you have a pet or something in the car right you crack the window and employ I think that's interesting this reminds me the Mercedes SLR yeah the exhaust is right here right yeah okay and why why there the reason is we didn't want to run it under the battery you know whether you know what the heat and all that stuff so we wanted under this but it was very complicated we have to make a whole new resonator that actually we ended up internally calling the pizza bot box it look like a pizza box yeah yeah and it's so it's really like running like a snake I need to get the lengths of it I say yeah but it actually works really well and what does this say here evie er which is ever which means electric vehicle extend the range I say all right good well why it's a great looking car and you can see your influence I have seen enough of your designs to know your style right great looking caught you don't see many good-looking four-door cars you know and everything really does look great would you ever make a two-door I think we're working a two-door yes a little thing about doing a two-door yeah but the four-door makes it fun because it's not a sports car right it is a grand touring car that's and top speed is 120 125 years no okay no it's just how often do you really go on in 25 I should me but for the most part and a lot of this car recycle isn't it would and the dashboard you told me is from the California fire that's right and I'm nothing to do with those by the rating file well we know they happen every year you know by themselves so we have enough wood why 22 inch wheels because I've always told and this is primarily a luxury touring car it is yeah and with 22 inch wheels it gives you a little harder ride why not go with the 19 so you get a softer more compliant but but that see if you think about some of the cars you have had they had huge wheels but they also did was that huge tires so what we did was these 22 inch wheels have very big tires be good Goodyear here in the US to make special high profile tires kinda like on the rolls-royce or the Bentley's right so these tires if you look at them they actually a very high profile so the ride on this as you will see when you drive it actually as comfortable as I would say a BMW or Mercedes and obviously automotive design is what you do first right and across design the Aston Martin z8 one of the cars that we know that well I designed a small German car and nobody knows about called the arteaga GT yeah designed that one and then some show cars for Ford as well default you program in birdie at gr one right all right so then you left designing cars which is a pretty cushy job and a fun job to start your own business and build your own cars and it's a it's hard it does run a crazy ride and you know they actually get it done you know every day I hear from that every day but often I hear from people and they're gonna build this car they're going to do this and gonna do that well he came to my garage about 16 years ago drove my Bentley broke it it broke the shifter off I didn't see him you saw embarrassed he said I'm gonna build a car and he actually he actually built it this is a production vehicle that's done you can buy you're not waiting for certification right stop you can it's over you know so many people say we're going to do this we're just waiting for the government in the cars that doesn't pass the crash test or doesn't pass emissions this car obviously is ready to go what is the power plant who makes it well the we have a two liter four-cylinder engine that we buy from General Motors they make especially for us now it used to be in a Pontiac right and then we have own electric motors that we have designed developed as two and they have together foreigner horse problem and then we have of course lithium-ion battery from here made in the US by a 1-2-3 systems and then we have of course a whole bunch of other things inverters is made by Magna here in the US what is the body matter it's all aluminum body a momen about aluminum body and it's an aluminum space frame okay so most of the aluminum of course like you know the rocker panels and the bumpers and all those carbon fibers just too expensive yeah it's too expensive at this point at least for us we felt the aluminum was better also because of you know for surface quality and and everything else repair and so on we felt that the aluminum was best you know when you think about this car it's kind of built like an Aston Martin Rapide right but this car is only a hundred thousand dollars and I'm saying only because you actually get quite a lot for your money we wanted to create a car that wasn't priced above what you would expect this car to be example the Tesla Roadster I think the last generation of this low roadster with you know the full package is one hundred and eighty thousand dollars and this is 100 thousand a hundred thousand dollars is not cheap finding extent but in that way to Sadie's Benz class in this class of car I think your horse a Panamera you know those type of cars they're all about a hundred grand okay now the interior also no animal skins of any kind of news well you can ordered with leather yeah and you have some some cows from Scotland Eze around to roam free and they call them happy cows until they eventually get killed obviously but you can order this car without any leather in it yeah and that's exactly this car has suede and you know other type of mature girls inside the car visitor they all custom-built are you just know 400 grand you know it is built kind of like a Porsche if you want you know but what we do versus a lot of the German manufacturer we actually put all the options in right away yeah so it has all the options in it and you know you just kind of like to trim to trim levels really and then there's really only a couple of things like you can order a special paint you can order tritone leather interior but that's about it it's pretty much fold with everything in the traction control labia traction control abs all that stuff's in there yeah is there a plug in feature as well yeah actually what you do is on one side of the car you actually plug it in and then that's the same opening on the other side but that's what you fill up with gas you either plug it in or fill it up you're free to do what you want okay and how long is your charge time well depending well hundred and ten volt it takes you about 12 to 14 hours so overnight if you install it to 20 charges about five hours you have an iPhone that's what we have here with our Chevy Volt we have our 20 and it's nothing complicated it's the same fitting that you have for a refrigerator or washer/dryer any electrician can install in about 45 minutes and you have a plug and then it becomes practical let's see what the trunk looks like oh but yeah just open the trunk you know now you see in here behind us two inverters that's the type of stuff that we need to work on next generation to get those down so in our next generation powertrain we're trying to make everything smaller and you get you obligatory golf bag goes yeah yeah you get a girlfriend there we go oh you can play miniature golf it's not a huge I'm gonna say but Oh like you say there's certainly as much leg room as there is in the Aston Martin Rapide and I think that goes for two 250 250 something like that yeah very nice yeah yeah very nicely could we open the hood to it yeah the end of the hood there is something on the interesting part of this car is actually underneath the hrickos the two electric motors lying over the rear axle to get the weight we have a we actually have a really good weight distribution in this car it's 53 on the rear 47 in front which is very unusual so but we'll open the hood so under the hood okay there you go I see I don't know why I thought it would be transverse but it's interesting no the reason the reason it's like this is because when you look here behind it's very hard to see because obviously there's a lot of stuff in here but actually the generator is hooked directly on bolted on to the engine so when the engine turns this why there's no transmission Bay just turns a generator and creates electricity and everything else of course is just you know everything else you have in a car today with electronic boxes we have we have 31 ECU's with these electronic boxes in here and if you think about just twenty years ago there's only about five years you use in the car so everything is turned almost into a computer we even have a computerized sound on this car sounds a bit like from the Batman movies right we actually hired the guy that worked on that and the reason is for pedestrian safety so you can actually hear when they come right right okay and normally you just hear the pedestrian screaming after you hit him but that's a little one of it some amazing how light this hood is yeah lightweight solar way it is a very heavy card ways it weighs up you just have to push on each side huh that's it yeah yeah so it weighs about 5,000 pounds it does it's a batteries the battery is very I mean if you look inside you can actually see the battery running through the IC down the center oh and it's a 20 kilowatt hour battery Wow and then we of course have two electric motors and we have a de generator in front so you really have three electric motors in the car all right cool let's take it for a ride you know I'm so used to sitting on leather seats you forget how comfortable cloth seats can be now that is this cloth or some kind of recycled material is actually recycled some of it is microfiber like it's sort of like a suede material other than some wool and then there's some recycled as well actually quite comfortable and let's say electric dustman here on the seat goes back actually this is one of the few cars I have long legs and the seco back goes back further than I actually need so they bring it up a bit and the steering is adjustable steering yeah this should be a little bit so I think they are in and out as well very good and just are we ready to go ready to go just deep that's it just press D right here that's it that's it Cameron full electric mode see how she goes Wow you know the electric muff has really got a lot of torque in a pulse quite nicely you know since the discovery of the automobile most engineers even Ferdinand Porsche originally thought electricity was the best way to power car because you have instant torque and you have hardly any maintenance at all with an electric motor especially compared to a gas motor back around the turn of the century this combines both you have a gas engine and electric engine I'm not a fan of pure electric cars because to me it's that reigns anxiety thing sooner or later you're gonna want to do two things get a pizza go out to eat and then go to the hospital I'm an electric car you're not going to be able to do one of those because you don't have enough power in fact we recently had the power ground here in Los Angeles for a week friends of mine that electric cars couldn't drive them they couldn't leave their houses and they couldn't stay in the houses because there was no electricity whereas this would use up the electricity it switches to gas and using up electricity is fun watch you know it's fun to see an electric car an electric extended range car that looks exciting you know most cars that have electric power tend to be overly practical looking they sort of have four doors as this one does and they're a bit boxy looking because they're not made to do anything other than just would be environmentally friendly I think this is a great looking car very exciting looking fun and quite practical as all kinds of in it as I said I don't need to have the seat all the way back and there's still plenty of legroom and it's wide and it's comfortable and that feels pretty tight that was pretty good like many electric cars this has regenerative braking so as if you're going down a hill you just take your foot off the gas and let the electric engine turn on its own and put put more electricity back in so I go back just into one drive that gives you more freewheeling because I want exactly it just doesn't have as much yeah you know regen braking right let's take it up on the freeway and see how quiet it is as I said we're now in fully electric mode the engine is what 1.4 liter turbo takes a two liter o to Lisa 2 liter liter turbocharged overturn it out it's funny when you're in an electric car like this it's so quiet you do start to hear all the noises to hear the thumping of the tires you hear the road stuff you wouldn't normally hear now you have the engine on if you flip the sport you go back to electric well you see you barely hear different game well I couldn't tell when the gas engine kicked in now by your current score and now back now back to fully electric again yes amazing here you got you got navigation system like you normally will have you have you can actually look at the average miles per gallon you can you have this is all that touchscreen everything is touchscreen the phone you got the radio which is kind of a cool design a little bit different just as like an iPad you can just move the radio stations quite just pressing on it and then you got here here you got the air condition which is not on right now we'll put it on put air-conditioned on and it just works like again like basically a touchscreen then you got fossil leaves in the glass you can see the kind of like seeing that the the battery under knees obviously is a design you know and you saw that green lightning bolt being put on so the whole thing is kind of getting to that sort of futuristic space car look you know but in an exciting way you know we're I don't think we should we should feel that it's gonna be a gloom and doom future because we have to drive up many other cars the nice thing about it is if you're not a car person and you don't care about cars you have no idea that you're in anything special or different it's very impressive he's come a long way since breakin my gear pretty cool I think I've seen the future looks good I'm excited a thanks it pretty shaken up Oh what is your website its fisk automotive comm Fisker Automotive comm check it out it's really worth checking out it's a very impressive automobile I'm really impressed and you know besides the usual known celebrities that kind of buy eco-friendly cars he's actually so how many of our out there now well we about two hundred twenty-nine so he's got 229 cars out there and it's been on the road for what about six months a year no about a couple of months a couple of months just a couple of months so that's good this isn't the one-off this is one of these deals where there's only ten of them out there they're in production then they're being made and you get a chance to see one in person go check it out see you next week you
Info
Channel: Jay Leno's Garage
Views: 631,149
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, 2012 fisker karma, henrik fisker, electric car
Id: 7SeaIDDJEdM
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)
Published: Tue Dec 11 2012
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.