Forbidden Fruit?

One of the most engaging and somewhat amusing auto stories from the last couple weeks has been Consumer Reports’ experience with their brand new Fisker Karma. A $100,000+ cutting edge car of tomorrow being hauled away on a flatbed after a few days of ownership!

This made me question – how do other auto makers and models fare when it comes to their new generation cars. These are machines with over 20,000 moving parts; when you fully redesign and rebuild them ground-up, shouldn’t we expect there will be problems? And are we being too tough on Fisker for this fiasco?

In this infographic, I’m taking a closer look at several new generation launches in 2011 and 2012, and evaluating how many recalls they have faced in the months since.

Based on this analysis, my final question for you all – would you still consider buying a new generation car in its first 6-12 months of launch?

Data for this analysis sourced from – CarPredictor.com, Recalls.gov

280SE - 3/22/2012 1:44:04 PM

+2 Boost

Sure you make a fair point that recalls are bound to happen on all cars given all the new moving parts but the stories coming from Fisker experiences are different. None of the recalls in your graphic required an owner to flatbed their car to a dealership.

All of those cars in the graphic were performing their intended function of transportation. The cars required tweaks, part replacements, etc. to reduce risks of bad things happening that were already low probability. Fisker however stinks of a rush job.

And I am surprised there isn't more traction of resistance toward the fact that our taxes are guaranteeing loans to a company that produces cars that 0.5% of our population could afford and 0.0005% of our population could ever actually get their hands on even if they had the money. On top of all that, it seems, the cars don't drive.

meetbhagde - 3/23/2012 9:49:44 AM

+1 Boost

These are good points. I just think, moving forward, as software starts to play a bigger role in cars, there will be more chances of them being bricked when bugs appear. Fisker has screwed up, but this could be a sign of things to come from other automakers as well.