The 2018 Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid will offer all-wheel drive, scoot to 62 mph in 4.6 seconds, discharge up to 31 miles on electricity, and sticker for around $100,000. It will be the fanciest, fastest, most tech-savvy plug-in-hybrid sedan on sale, just as the outgoing S E-Hybrid has been since 2013. With that, let us introduce the 2017 Karma Revero.
It’s against that competitive backdrop that a low-volume startup automaker, resurrecting a dated chassis and hardware, will try to persuade buyers to spend more than double what the old, nearly identical Fisker cars are worth. A used 2012 Fisker Karma with just a few thousand miles?the last cars made before the company went bankrupt?can be had for $50,000 or less. The Karma Revero costs $130,000 to start, or at least $19,000 more than what the old Karma sold for when new.
The best thing going for the Revero, or the Destino for that matter, is the seductive style and exaggerated presence that haven’t aged one day since Finnish designer Henrik Fisker unveiled the concept in 2008. Everything else about the Revero, according to the spec sheet, is practically the same. A 21.4-kWh lithium-ion battery (18.2 kWh of which is available) mates to two electric motors, a single-speed gearbox, and a 2.0-liter four-cylinder sourced from General Motors. In total, the Revero musters 403 horsepower (up one) and 981 lb-ft of torque (up 22), fed through the same 4.10:1 drive ratio. Oddly, the gasoline engine, at 235 horsepower, ...