Goodbye Karma

Well, my Karma has gone.
It was good Karma, to the end, but with the uncertain future I decided to trade.

I loved this car.  It had fantastic styling.  The cabin was beautiful - like sitting in your own private jet.
However, there were things that made it still seem a little 'rough around the edges' and of course with Fisker going belly up, despite of the promise of the new owner, the remaining owners were really just in a holding pattern to discover if we were ever going to get further upgrades.

I waited, in fact, until the new owners made their March 2015 announcement (http://thenewfisker.com).  I was hoping to see a service centre in Vancouver right away - I knew they had sold a (relatively) large number of cars here.  However, while the announcement when it came did have much good news, including service credits and an upgrade programme for existing owners, it markedly only had one service centre in Canada - in Montreal!

It's likely that a Vancouver centre will be forthcoming at some point - after all Canada is a huge country and they will absolutely need something on the west coast here and of course Vancouver is where that's at naturally.  However, holding on the Karma represented continued risk for me:
- The tyres needed replacing
- The engine had not been serviced for a long time
- I was starting to get a 12v battery not charging indicator in some conditions (winter)
- An issue could arise at any time needing service or parts

On the roughness front, the onboard software was clearly going to need further updates when Fisker shutdown:
- Entering sport mode when you were in hill mode would result in an 'engine error'
- The startup sequence would sometimes fail to complete correctly, leaving the screen unusable until the car was reset
- The screen would often be slow to react to user input
- The solar panel history screen never worked as intended
- Playing music from the USB was not a refined experience and the entertainment system would often switch to USB when the car was started and you were happily listening to another source... but the generation of the USB catalogue was completed minutes later!

One other issue was that the man-made suede substitute covering on the steering wheel was beginning to wear bold in the spots where I normally held the wheel.  That's just normal wear and tear, but at some point I would have looked into replacing the wheel.

I hope Fisker go from strength to strength under their new ownership.  It sounds like there's going to be a follow-up with a new model, as well as Karma upgrades.

However, the Starship Red Karmelian is now gone... replaced with a new electric vehicle - a Tesla Model S.  I may start a blog on Model S ownership.

The Model S has had the advantage of longer time now to consolidate quality and features, having not had a bankruptcy and development hiatus like Fisker.   Elon Musk's company is impressive - being very focused on a great product.  That product is also capable of continuous improvement too - via the firmware updates that appear regularly.  The quality, sitting in the contemporary Model S is obvious.  The car may not have (IMHO) the gorgeous lines of the Karma, but it's still a great looking car and unlike the Karma in many ways, it oozes quality.

So... I had good karma for a while.  Hopefully the Tesla S has some other kind of awesome positive cosmic essence :)

Back from the mother ship

...well at least the dealer-ship.

So, the Starship Red Carmeleon had another trip to see its friends at Fisker of Vancouver (a.k.a. The BWM Store).  As usual, the reception and customer care was top-notch, consolidating my view that this is the best after-sales service I've ever experienced from a brand car dealership/franchise.  

I opted for a loaner car this time rather than using their shuttle service, the latter being typically great after drop-off but not necessarily so good at the end of the day when it can be difficult to coordinate where/when to get collected in my experience.  Nevertheless, I'll probably not bother with a 'loaner' next time due to it frankly being a bit of a faff - though I admit that to be a very subjective thing:

First you line up to see the loan controller, then they want the insurance documents out of your car (cue having to cross the dealership to get them), then they take your driver details and check your home address, then they print a contract and have you sign it, then they charge you $500 deposit, then you go to inspect the car (in this case a nice new 3 series BMW).  I was anticipating an classic 'courtesy car' situation where they might check your license and then you drive off.  This was basically a rental car with a $0 rate.  Maybe there's a reason for this (tax code, accounting write-offs...?), but it's certainly not as friendly as a courtesy vehicle fleet.  So, probably back to shuttles next time.

Anyway, prior to this visit I had made a small list of things to be checked/fixed:

• The infamous Check Engine Light had made a brief appearance in a new flashing form when the periodic ICE conditioning run had occurred recently.  The engine probable hadn't been started for a good month so I put it down to it operating slightly outside of normal parameters as it 'blew out the cobwebs'.  After having sat in the garage overnight, it behaved fine when I attempted to manually start it the next day (Sports mode), so this was clearly a transient issue, but obviously something to get checked.
• The passenger-side windscreen washer was not functioning.  No fluid was dispensed when the washer pump was run (though plenty of fluid came out on the driver's side).
• The front wheels had started making a ticking noise when traveling at low speed under steering.  This was most noticeable in a parking garage while negotiating the ramps.  I had noticed other owners posting that this was a known issue and easily rectified.
• The front grill seemed a little loose (easily displaced backward into the body with finger) on one side.
• The trunk lid had been bugging me for a while though it being possible to physically close it perfectly satisfactorily only to find the 'trunk open' warning light lit when you entered the cabin and turned on the ignition.

I also knew there was a firmware patch available, so fully anticipated an upgrade.

All these items were dealt with and the patch was performed according to the service report, which was informative and interesting to read as usual.   I noticed the firmware upgrade right away as this update has replaced the analogue clock in the centre of the dash with a digital speedometer.  I like the speedometer, which was previously only available in Sport mode, though to be honest I would really have like a simple way to toggle between these displays.  I'm not sure if there's a way to bring back the clock if you want it - but I'll spend a bit of time looking.  

A couple of the other fixes will need some time to verify: the clicking wheels are apparently fixed with a different torque setting (of something... the wheel nuts?), while the trunk latching mechanism was adjusted/realigned, so we'll see if the sensor now agrees with the latch as to the physical state of the lid!

The windscreen washer problem was apparently due to a kinked hose under the windscreen cowl (actually that cowl was replaced in a prior visit, so maybe it was then that it got kinked, although it had worked fine for some time after that). 

The front grill had apparently needed some fastening clips replacing on that one side.  I'm not sure whether these were missing, were loose/fatigued or had broken, but in any case it supposedly now has new ones.

  

So once again, everything is (star)ship-shaped and Bristol fashion.

The car was also washed and polished up nicely, though to be honest it had only been a week since it had had a full clean and work-up so there wasn't a great deal of cleaning to do.

 

Actually, the only slight grumble I would have about the service this time was the very obvious oily hand print on the inside door handle when I got back in the vehicle to drive away.  Unfortunately the cabin appointments in the Karma are a light taupe suede (the "Earth" style) which is all too easy to visibly soil. I can imagine the mechanic, while making adjustments to the trunk latching mechanism, would have returned to the cabin a few times to press the trunk release button... but never mind, no real harm done.

Wheel clicking

The Red Carmeleon continues to run well and be a pleasure to drive.

Recently however, I have noticed a clicking sound if the wheel is turned a fair amount and the car is in motion.  This occurs daily as I negotiate the turns in the parkade close to the office.  It isn't really audible inside the car because the Karma cabin is wonderfully insulated from external noise, but if the window is open then it's quite apparent.

I was just thinking that I'd mention this when the car is in for its next checkup, but I've just read that others have been experiencing a similar issue.  Apparently the problem is easy to redress.  So, if the next week isn't looking too busy I might see about getting it in for a correction.

iPhone app for the Karma

Sorry, I don't have one... but wouldn't that be cool?

Along the same lines as my experiments with the Raspberry Pi, there are lot of interesting data you could get from the car (and indeed the attached charger, assuming it doesn't also send data to the car while charging, which would be even cooler).

Ignoring the really geeky low level metrics, some of the obvious things that would be fun to know are:

• How many different routes (beginning and ending location pairs) have I travelled in the car?
• Metrics for each route... average, min, max of: distance, time, cost (electric + gas), electric usage, regenerative braking, temperature, ICE usage, fuel burned. 
• Charge-to-charge stats (as above, but all activity between charges)

I'm sure Fisker have more pressing issues to deal with, but supporting common devices with apps would be very cool.  Even cooler though, would be to provide an API for developers to access a wealth of information over the USB and bluetooth.  Then developers could go nuts and provide a variety of different tools and user experiences for accessing and using this sort of information.

One of the trendy things happening in consumer computing these days is "gamification".  This is the provision of certain metrics with goals and rewards designed to incent the user to improve some performance.  It is used in fitness, budgeting and finance and other areas where users want to set themselves objectives and measure their improvement.  Gamification taps into some basic psychology - apparently we are quite motivated to beat targets and enjoy some kind of reward for doing so... even it seems when these rewards are exceptionally abstract, even entirely virtual!

Some of the new EVs reaching the market have a very simple in-dash gamification using some simple graphic to indicate how economically the car is being driven.  So far these have included a green 'eco ball' that most be floated up and maintained at a particular level by driving economically (gentle acceleration and braking, basically) and in another vehicle some animated butterflies that appear when the drive is similarly efficient.   Frankly, I'm not a big fan of such in-dash frippery - I really like the modern, elegant styling of the Karma dash and instrumentation (though a few display options would be nice).  However, if the vehicle's operating metrics are available for application developers to access, then we can have a range of analysis tools and gamification options available.

I notice that the Ford Motor Company seems to have embraced "the car as a platform" in just this way.  This seems both useful and exciting, though I don't have any first hand experience with the features they are promoting.  Hopefully the experience is as good as their marketing suggests, and not just gimmicky.

If my plans for extracting Karma data (such as it is available via the OBD-2 port) come to fruition, then I'll probably have a bash at writing an iPhone/iPad app myself, being fairly versant in such things.  One step at a time though...

A piece of homemade raspberry pi

Hurrah!  My (first) Raspberry Pi system-on-a-chip little computer is here.

These things are selling like hot cakes (half a million sold so far, as I understand it).  They have practically been 'unobtainium' due to the demand and the distributors have had to limit orders through a system of registration and invitation.  This isn't the first little 'full featured' ARM-based computer, and there are more new designs and products popping up now to compete, but the Raspberry Pi somehow managed to go 'viral' (as viral as such a geeky thing will ever get) because of three things I think:

• The people behind it and their stated vision
• The really small size, but completeness of the hardware spec
• The really low price

The Raspberry Pi foundation was created to somehow get back to those simpler days of computing when kids could catch the computer bug and experiment with both hardware and software, learning how to program and how to make computers do interesting things like controlling equipment, lights, heaters, making sounds and music, reacting to noises and speech etc.  The Raspberry Pi in fact is supposed to be a similar low-cost, adaptable, platform for experimentation that my generation had in the eighties though the amazing genesis and evolution of 8-bit home computers.   Moreover, the Raspberry Pi hearkens back to a particular British 8-bit microcomputer wonder called the BBC Micro that was specified, designed purposefully for the BBC's computer literacy project in the early eighties and built by a company called Acorn.  This computer was delivered in "Model A" and "Model B" variants, which is exactly what the makers of the Raspberry Pi have also chosen to name their two versions (Model A being slightly simpler and cheaper).

The BBC Micro was truly a breathtaking product in its day.  The geniuses that specified what this computer would be, were so focused on creating a general, highly-adaptable and extensible system that they created a legend.  The only problem with the high-spec of the machine was that it was relatively expensive.  I remember lusting after it, but my allowance (we called it "pocket money") was nowhere near enough to afford the £399 (if I remember right) that was the asking price for a "B".  I had to make do with the £129 Sinclair Spectrum (marketed as a "Timex" over here, and not very effectively by all accounts, given the stiff competition).

The Spectrum was an everyman's machine and probably had the success it did precisely because of my demographic and our lack of disposable income!  While it was a great little machine, the BBC towered over it in sophistication and sheer potential.  These days, I have a BBC Master (the 'version 2' of the BBC Model B) on a desk, not far from where I'm writing this... just for nostalgia really, but also because it's STILL an experimentor's dream.  No other computer I've ever seen has had so many simple hardware interfaces and such great system software to access them.  The Raspberry Pi is indeed an attempt to recreate this in modern times. 

One other little factoid that connects the Raspberry Pi (and that phone you own, and your iPad if you have one, and probably your TV, car and a myriad other devices in your life) is that the Raspberry Pi uses the ARM processor.  Most people know that their PCs use Intel processors.  These chips started out simple enough in the early 70s, but Intel has basically been adding layer after layer of complexity ever since.  While these CPUs give our desktop computers sheer brute force processing power, they consume a vast amount of power to do this and they generate massive amounts of waste heat.  The ARM processor started out with a vision of power with simplicity and has stayed very true to this vision ever since.  Besides being technically able to deliver adequate processing power for less power and heat, which make the chip far more appropriate for small electronic devices, ARM also has a completely different business model: they don't make the chips themselves, but rather they license their designs to companies that make chips.  This combination has created an explosive growth of the technology - it's in practically every device other than desktop computers.  Intel have had major attempts to disrupt this pattern, but so far have not succeeded.

What many people do not know is that ARM started life as a proprietary CPU for a next-generation BBC Micro.  ARM actually stood for "Acorn RISC Machine" (RISC itself being the acronym of "Reduced Instruction Set Computer", the technical approach for limiting the design complexity of a processor).  ARM was a major investment and amazingly visionary for what was still a small household computer manufacturer.  Eventually, Acorn built an amazing new computer around it called the Acorn Archimedes.  Unfortunately, as it so often the case with grand product designs, the computer made it to market too late to dominate, and some highly capable 16-bit machines were appearing from the American market (the Atari ST and Amiga 500).  So, the Archimedes gradually faded into obscurity, along with Acorn the computer maker... but ARM was spun off and did kinda take over the world.  That's also a familiar business story... sometimes the biggest visions win, but not for their original founders.

The BBC Master in my office has gone full circle.  The sheer flexibility of these machines has meant that many have been discovered in the new millennium, still controlling pumping stations or collecting and sending data to other computers.  My computer now sports a completely modern solid state disk, which its 1980's disk operating system handles with aplomb.  However, the other major upgrade inside the case is loaded with gravitas.  The BBC was always designed to support plug-in alternative CPUs.  Back in the day, there were products to add Z80s and even Intel chips as additional processors (the native 6502 process was amazingly designed to retreat into the background as an I/O coprocessor in this eventuality!).  Today, my BBC Master proudly incorporates a modern ARM daughter card.  

Of course, this is supposed to be a blog about a new kind of car.  While it's a bit of a diversion to get into computers, the connection of course is that I intend to host my Raspberry Pi in my Karma.   In a way there's another, albeit more philosophical connection.  The Karma is a BBC Micro kind of product: innovative, slightly ahead of its time, erudite.  It's a risk by some brilliant people on a brand new, flexible, technical platform.  For me, it certainly feels avant garde - exciting to own and be a part of.  Hopefully though the Karma will succeed on its own merits, as its unlikely there's anything like the equivalent of Fisker's "ARM" lurking in the mix.

So, I've assembled all the major components I need to start building out my little in-car data processor.  The internet connectivity is already in place, thanks to the Rogers LTE adapter.  I now have the main pieces to access vehicle data and run software:

The last essential piece will be an 802.11 wifi adapter so the Raspberry Pi can join the OBD Key's ad hoc wifi network to obtain vehicle telemetry (while also connecting to the WAN via LTE).

I have just started playing with the card, by booting it up (the SD card shown has been loaded with one of the available Linux builds specialised for the Raspberry Pi).  Lots of fun to be had in the near future as I learn and experiment more.

Scratches, splashes and crowds

This weekend was a beauty here in Vancouver, BC.

We finally got some summer.  Hopefully it has arrived for 'good' now.  It's horribly late, even by Vancouver standards, or perhaps more accurately I should say that we had no spring this year, so seeing any sun at all is horribly late.  In a way we seem to have leaped from winter to summer almost overnight.  That means I'm completely white still, but suddenly accosted with a UV index over 8!

Summer has resulted in the impetus to clean the car so she looks her best, and also the need to use the windscreen washer to clear the inevitable bug splattage.  Both of these activities have resulted in discoveries.

First, I discovered scratches on the hood.  These weren't bad and clearly hadn't stood out egregiously, but they were definite scratches through the clear coat and into the paint proper.  They are localized and by their number, orientation and distribution you can see exactly how they were caused.  Someone at the dealership who was tasked with cleaning the vehicle, while it was on display at the dealership, clearly picked up a rag that had been used for rather less genteel purposes, or dropped their wash rag on the ground.  They then took a few good strokes at 'cleaning' or 'polishing' the hood, nicely rubbing some grit into the paintwork in the process.

Of course, once you've spotted these things, you can't take your eye off them (well at least while your vehicle is under a few years old!).  Consequently, I had to find some way to affect a fix.  With some trepidation I bought a couple of scratch repair kits from a local automotive products outlet.  It's quite clear that most of these products are based on the principle of fine abrasives to dull scratches... though some also provide a clear coat touch-up compound too.  I decided to start with the simpler system, which is basically a tube of toothpaste-like material (and of course performs much the same function).  Working this into the scratches did make a noticeable difference to the definition and visibility of the actual scratches, which was encouraging, so I continued until I thought I'd achieved a sufficient effect.   You then remove the residual paste, and it was then that you could see the unintended consequences for the larger areas over which I had been applying my "circular motions".  This whole area had a noticeably duller appearance and appeared to have a whitish sheen.  It was quite noticeable in sunlight and the area reflected direct light quite differently.

Naturally, one fears the worst on such occasions, but I had figured that there was at least a chance that this effect was mostly down to product residue that wasn't easily removed with a cloth.  Failing this, then it might be a microscopic scoring of the clear coat from the abrasive that changed the lustre of what is an exceedingly deep metallic style paint on the Karma.  I figured that the best approach was a full-system clean and wax.  Consequently I trotted back off to the purveyor of car beauty wares and acquired Autoglym's deep cleaner, polish and waxing products.  I figured the cleaner might remove any residue (if that was the issue) and the polish, which is an even finer abrasive, could probably restore an even lustre and shine if the paint surface was the actual problem.  Wax would be the icing on the cake, so to speak.

You can't apply these products onto hot bodywork in direct sunshine, so I had to wait until late afternoon when the sun had dipped behind the mountain forest.  I then applied the cleanser and polished the whole hood after that, with particular vigour on the scratched and denatured area.  The end result is practically miraculous.  You _can_ still see the scratches, but you really do have to look hard now.  I suspect that another round or two of the Autoglym treatment after subsequent washes will continue to improve things.  In the meantime, the hood is gleaming incredibly.  That stuff does what it says on the tin.  It's tempting to do the whole car one day for an all-over effect.

Onto the windshield washer topic.  The Karma has a simple system compared to must cars I have ever owned, except maybe my Pontiac Bonneville from around 2000.  Rather than having through the hood liquid deliver to spray nozzles (which are often heated in luxury cars), the Karma has tubes to deliver washer fluid to the midpoints of the wipers.  Clearly, this system has some advantages in distributing washer fluid over the windscreen, however probably also freezes up much more readily and given the mechanical stresses of the tubes and how they have to be clipped onto the wiper blades, I wonder if the system is as robust and reliable.  Anyway, in point of fact, the right hand wiper seems to no longer be delivering any fluid today.  Given that I'm getting fluid from the left hand (drivers-side) wiper, which is of course the most important, it's not a critical issue.  I am however going to have to investigate.

I assume there's only one washer fluid pump, so there's probably a blockage or airlock preventing the fluid from reaching the right wiper.  Anyway... we'll see.

Finally, another bit of Karma people-magnet fun.  On both occasions that I have driven the Karma to the aforementioned automotive products superstore I have arrived back at the car after paying for my swag to find a small crowd of people gathered around it.  Today was no exception and had the biggest crowd yet (I'd only been in the store under 10 minutes!).  Perhaps it was the incredibly bright sunshine glinting off the sparkly bodywork, or maybe the eye-catching roof (which does seem to be a factor in grabbing initial attention).  Either way there was a crowd and they had questions as soon as it was obvious I was the owner:

• What is this vehicle?  Never heard of it.
• Does the solar roof really work?
• How far can you go?  
• Is it as fast as it looks?
• How does it accelerate with that electric motor?
• Are they selling these in Vancouver?

While we were talking more people were parking up and heading over... it was like some kind of impromptu auto show in the sun.  

Aside from the obvious issues with being found out doing this, Fisker or their dealerships should seriously pay to have people drive their cars into the middle of auto-retailers parking lots on sunny days.  The attention the car was getting all on its own was insane!

AM radio defective?

I have already commented about the AM radio being apparently defective on this blog.

I habitually listen to the local AM news radio channel on my commute to/from work and it didn't take me long to determine that the AM radio reception on this channel was far worse than in my old Audi.

This was one of the first pieces of feedback to the Fisker dealership and on the first return to the dealership for new firmware I had them check the radio.  The story was that the AM reception was as good as other vehicles they tried (including BMWs) and in any case the radio was operating as designed.

For most of my drive the AM station I listen to is adequately received, but frankly reception drops to practically nothing when I get into the downtown core.  It's definitely a continued annoyance.

Recently, a post on the FiskerBuzz forums caught my eye.  The poster was asking whether anyone else had poor AM radio reception.  Naturally, I replied in the affirmative.  Alarmingly, one other response indicated that in his case a dealer had specifically indicated that the AM radio was essentially inoperable by design when he took delivery of his vehicle.  The suggestion (at least) was that a suitable AM antenna was never installed.

That's a bit of a shocker, if true.  It could certainly explain my experience.  If the front end of the receiver is having to work with nothing more that the minimal signal from an unconnected antenna, or some minimal circuit/connector acting as an internal antenna, then I could well believe it wouldn't pick anything up that wasn't a booming direct signal.

Obviously, it begs the question as to whether there will be any remediation of this defect, whether it's by design or a manufacturing oversight.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things it's not critical, but as people have said before, when you're shelling out for an expensive luxury car you kind of expect all the basic features to work reasonably and then you'd hope for many things to exceed mere 'average'.

As I'm still enjoying the Karma as much or more than I've ever enjoyed any automobile I'm finding it fairly easy to forgive non-critical issues... and the company and dealership are still keeping me happy with the post-sales treatment in general.  I would eventually quite like a working AM radio though!