Fisker expands recall of plug-in hybrid Karma

Henrik Fisker, co-founder and executive chairman of electric car company Fisker Automotive, quit the company today.

DETROIT — The founder and executive chairman of Fisker Automotive Inc resigned from the cash-strapped “green car” startup on Wednesday, saying he was at odds with the automaker’s top executives over business strategy. Henrik Fisker announced his abrupt departure from the maker of the Karma plug-in hybrid in an email. He declined to describe the nature of the disagreements that prompted him to leave the company, which he founded with Barny Koehler in 2007.

Startup electric automaker Coda, which filed for bankruptcy today, managed to sell only about 100 units of its only model. That's not surprising: On top of insufficient funding and production delays, Coda made a really ugly car.

It turns out that when peddling a flaming paperweight (recall "Total Karma Recall: Fisker Pulls All Cars Due To Fire Risk", "As Another Fisker Karma Spontaneously Combusts, "Green" Dreams Go Up In Smoke" and of course "Fisker Karma Is First Car To Burn Underwater"), even if it is a very pretty

Last week, the Chinese company Wanxiang got U.S. government approval to buy bankrupt lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems.

When you have Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio driving your cars, you must be doing something right. They are among the Hollywood glitterati who have bought into the dream of Fisker Automotive and its gas-thrifty, rule-breaking Karma that kicks sand in the face of Detroit and the world's top luxury automakers.

Fisker Automotive has put its U.S. workforce on furlough this week as the troubled automaker seeks to save cash.

In 2009, Fisker Automotive was an exciting company: With Detroit in shambles and a huge loan from the federal government, the startup automaker had plans to change the industry. It was going to build 100,000 cars a year in Delaware and save or create 5,000 jobs. The Karma, its gorgeous, extremely efficient plug-in hybrid electric car, was on the way.