Go to Karma Automotive’s website and click on “products,” and you find one vehicle — the plug-in-hybrid electric GS-6. That won’t stand for long, though, as the company will launch a full battery-electric as soon as next year. This November, the company will introduce three new vehicles, including the company's first "super-car."
The future of the Karma brand, which has had a bumpy journey since being acquired almost a decade ago out of bankruptcy, is being led by new CEO Marques McCammon who took over the reigns last April.
Despite the growth of the BEV market, and plans by brands like Fisker, Lucid and other new brands to play in some of the volume segments well below $100,000, McCammon says he will not follow that business model, preferring to stay in the exotic super-luxe category. In fact, the current GS-6 transacts for around $145,000, and that is the neighborhood he envisions for the brand.
“I think the momentum of Tesla has made everyone think they have to drive BEVs down market...the Tesla Model 3, and now the Lucid Air,” says McCammon. “That’s not who we are and what we are as a business. We are going to live at the upper end of the market.”
And for the foreseeable future, Karma is also going to stay in the sports sedan space, and not be tempted by the allure of crossovers or SUVs, even though there seems to be a lot of demand for that vehicle package. “We need to establish what we are from a design standpoint, so people have a distinct idea what we are before we start building the brand language out into other segments,” says McCammon.
The Karma brand has its roots in the company co-founded by Henrik Fisker back in 2007. In 2014, Chinese auto parts company Wanxiang Group bought the assets of Fisker Automotive for about $150 million in a bankruptcy auction. Those assets included designs, a plug-in hybrid powertrain and a Wilmington, DE, assembly plant. Fisker Automotive struggled to make it passed the economic meltdown that followed, but the crushing blow was when Fisker's sole battery supplier, A123 filed for bankruptcy after two recalls. Wanxiang bought the assets of the battery concern as well.
The sale to Wanxiang excluded the Fisker brand, and founder Henrik Fisker has built up a new company under his name.
Despite Karma’s Chinese ownership, McCammon, a self-described apostle of former Chrysler and General Motors product leader Bob Lutz, calls Karma a “thoroughly American luxury brand.” That’s because, he says, all the engineering and design work is done at the company’s office in Irvine, CA. The CEO’s only contact with his Chinese owners is “telling them how much money we are making or losing.”
The GS-6 still carries the original Fisker design of the Karma sports sedan, but the company, under Wanxiang ownership, has steadily made quality improvements. Still, says McCammon, improving quality at the company's California assembly plant remains a focus of his for the next vehicles.
The GS-6 is a range-extended, plug-in hybrid vehicle capable of traveling up to 330 miles (530 km) with combined electric and combustion engine power. The GS-6 has a 400-kW, 2-motor propulsion system that produces 536 hp and 550 lb.-ft. (745 Nm) of torque.
McCammon says he will lay out a product roadmap later this year but he has already given us plenty of clues — staying with EV sports sedans for now.
To sell them, Karma has about 30 dealerships for now, some factory owned. Over the last 10 years, he says the company has put about 1,000 vehicles on the road and in customers' hands. But his vision, shared by the owner, is to grow the company to a 5,000-10,000-unit per year luxury brand. That puts it below what, say, Bentley is selling today, but potentially more than Aston Martin, which sold more than 6,000 vehicles last year.
Karma has dealer points in the U.S., Europe, United Arab Emirates — where the super-rich live and want to blow money on their fourth, fifth or sixth car. "There is a greater number of wealthy people in the world on multiple continents, and we believe we can capture our share of them as customers if we create a brand and experience that is out of the ordinary and unique."
Prior to McCammon's arrival, the previous leadership introduced two concept cars: the SC1 Vision, a roofless scissor-doored fully electric sports car concept, at the 2019 Shanghai auto show, and a second iteration, the SC2 Concept introduced at the 2019 Los Angeles auto show. McCammon says to stay tuned for his coming out party later this year in which he will take stakeholders through a new product plan and cadence.
Software is King
Karma, like every other carmaker, is now playing in the software-based BEV era. The BEV “skateboard” on which the next vehicles will be based has been developed in Irvine. And while all the industry is talking about autonomous-driving technology stacks being part of the BEV future, McCammon says Karma does not plan to develop a Level 4 or Level 5 autonomous version of the cars.
“The reality is that a lot of companies seem to be putting tech into their cars for the sake of the tech, and not the driver's experience,” says McCammon. “The novelty of having that (autonomous driving capability) in the cars seems to have become more important than the vehicle.”
Tech is certainly part of the luxury experience, the newly minted CEO says, "but with limits."
McCammon, a former global managing director for auto tech supplier Ricardo and a powertrain engineer at Chysler where he worked on the SRT performance marque after the Daimler-Chrysler merger, says "semi-autonomous" or Level 3 autonomy is probably his ceiling with Karma. The GS-6 is equipped with the capability of hands-free driving on highways.
“Our focus is going to be on the car knowing the driver as much as is useful and desired by the customer,” says McCammon. “I want the car to know who is about to sit in the car, making adjustments for audio, seat settings, navigation, etcetera.” The luxury experience of owning a Karma, he says, “is actually driving it and feeling the unique experience.”
Quoting Bob Lutz, he says “If you aren’t careful, you are going to turn the car into an appliance…and that is not what we want, and it’s not what our customers want.”
