Southern California’s nascent electric carmaker Karma Automotive hits a big milestone this year, and it’s one many people probably didn’t see coming.
The Irvine-based luxury automaker is turning 10. Inside those years are some bumpy beginnings.
From a startup to bust and then reborn again (twice), the company is eking out a name in the luxury car world with three new models hitting the roadways this year and into 2026.
After two rocky years before the pandemic struck in 2020, the automaker is ready to start adding jobs again at its headquarters in Orange County and manufacturing plant in Moreno Valley.
The company today counts about 300 workers, but President Marques McCammon said Karma will eventually need to hire another 300 to 500 employees to meet production demands. To make that happen, the automaker is looking to create workforce development and training initiatives with local universities to prod students into the green transportation economy.
“We will be designing prototypes for all of our vehicles, and as that portfolio grows we’ll add more engineers and technicians, and there will also be more area suppliers,” McCammon said.
Startup days
Karma’s path has not been without challenges. Its origins in 2007 as Fisker Automotive met an early demise after its battery supplier A123 Systems went bankrupt. Wanxiang, a Chinese automotive conglomerate, bought the assets of both businesses in 2014 for $400 million and renamed the company Karma.
The company’s first EV was the Karma Revero. But on April 11, 2019, Karma issued a recall and stop-sale order on all Reveros, due to a flaw in the rollover sensors that could disable the car’s side-curtain airbags.
The resulting financial difficulties prompted the layoff of 200 employees at its Irvine headquarters in November 2019 and 60 more the following year.
To put the company back on track, several executives were let go last year. McCammon, formerly with Chrysler Corp. and then…
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