Oops! $100,000 electric car flunks track test

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.

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.

The sudden resignation on Wednesday of Henrik Fisker, co-founder and executive chairman of hybrid electric automaker Fisker, puts the company's already uncertain future on even shakier ground.

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

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.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber will have to take their megabucks cars back to the shop after luxury hybrid maker Fisker Automotive announced a recall.