Rising from the ashes of designer Henrik Fisker's failed car company, the first units of the 2018 Karma Revero hybrid electric luxury super cars have rolled off the Moreno Valley factory floor and onto Southern California roadways.

Ten went to dealer showrooms around the US and Canada, where company officers hope they will inspire buyers.

Another 10 went to Laguna Beach, where on Monday they made their test-drive debuts before an avidly curious motoring press.

The Karma Revero is the new company's first vehicle. Built largely from the platform Fisker envisioned before his company crashed and burned after producing a 2012 model year Fisker Karma, the new car is sleek, speedy and almost silent.

Propelled by a twin-motor powertrain, the hybrid machine gets a promised 50 miles (80 kilometres) of all-electric range and a total of 300 miles of combined gas and electric range.

And it gets there in real elegance, each car a bespoke-seeming, handmade, custom creation.

The paint, presented in names like Pacific Fog, Balboa Blue and Borrego Black, is deep and rich. The leather interior, in red Palisades Sport, chocolate Canyon or tan Crystal Cove, is supple and luxurious. The massive brake calipers can be had in bright red, orange, blue or yellow, against Dune Twist or Diamond Facet wheels.

The Karma Revero hood and trunk badges are, literally, hand-painted.

What comes around, goes around ...

Karma's designers built the new car off Fisker's beloved but beleaguered Fisker Karma platform.

They did that with Chinese money. All assets of the Fisker company were purchased in 2014 by Wanxiang Group, a Chinese auto parts giant that also owns A123, the battery company that produced power packs for the Fisker cars.

The purchase included enough spare parts to finish a few Karma vehicles, plus the Fisker design for what became the Revero.

About 1200 of the original Karma cars are still known to exist, with an equal number of owners still operating the cars.

That gave the Revero engineers an opportunity to study mistakes and correct them. Looming large among the changes: silence.

The Revero's twin motors, in all-electric Stealth mode, propel the car in almost complete silence, but for a softly audible jet-engine whine.

When the gas motor kicks in to power the generator, in Sustain mode, a light rumble emerges from under the hood. When both battery and gas motor generator are working together, in Sport mode, the car makes only slightly more noise.

Handling is swift and sure, thanks in part to a self-leveling rear suspension set-up modelled on the system found in McLaren supercars. A slight inside camber to the front wheels tightens the steering, and helps the Revero hold the road.

Swinging through canyon turns east of Laguna, the car felt magnificently nimble, capable of exceeding the speed limit on even the most technical roads by a factor of two or three - though not with an amateur at the wheel.

The power, in all three modes, comes on gently but firmly.

Supercar buffs will be disappointed to know the Revero's zero to 60 mp/h rate, though a second faster than the previous Karma, is 5.4 seconds. (Top speed is electronically limited to 125 mph.)

And anyone looking for a bargain may be sad to see the price of the new car is $US130,000 ($175,300), up considerably from the $US103,000 base price for the Fisker Karma.

But what the car lacks in acceleration it gains in elegance.

"This is a GT," said Joost de Vries, Karma's vice president of sales and service. "It's not a McLaren. It's not trying to be. It's a touring car."

Karma executives suggested that the customer likely to buy a Revero may already have a McLaren, in fact - or a Ferrari, or a Porsche - capable of breaking land speed records. The Karma will be luxurious and highly unique additions to existing supercar stables, they say.

The Revero has many attributes, some not readily apparent to the eye.

• Though the frame is all aluminium, the total weight of the car, fueled, is 5400 pounds (2449 kg).
• The plug-in hybrid system will recharge to 80 per cent full in 24 minutes at a DC Fast Charging station, or 3 hours at a Level II station, or 10 hours on a home 120 volt system.
• The Revero accelerates from zero to 60 in 5.4 seconds in Sport mode, 7.2 seconds in Sustain mode and 6.9 seconds in all-electric Stealth mode.
• The gas-powered generator makes 235 horsepower; the twin electric motors make 403 horsepower.
• The rear-wheel drive energy comes from a mid-mounted lithium ion battery, part of which is actually visible through the car's centre console.
• Stopping power, through the six-piston Brembo calipers in the front and four-piston calipers in the rear, is assisted by an electric regenerative braking system, which can be tuned to three settings.

Sales and marketing challenges

What is the Revero trying to be, then? The company prospectus declares, among other things, "This is not Tesla," and identifies Karma as "an ultra-luxury brand".

But the automotive world may be dubious. Car collector and guru Jay Leno, who Karma executives said saw the Revero at a recent Beverly Hills event, dismissed it last week while being interviewed at his Burbank garage.

"It's just a Volt in a tuxedo, isn't it?" Leno joked.

At the $US130,000 price point, the likely customer is male and 55 to 60 years old, said Karma's chief revenue and marketing officer, James Taylor.

That customer already owns several other vehicles and is likely to meet his first Karma at a dealership, where the Revero shares showroom space with a Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Maserati or Aston Martin.

A certain number of early Revero buyers will be current Fisker Karma owners, Taylor said.

Some will remember the Karma legacy, and perhaps will have forgotten the company's ignominious end.

Others will be struck by the pure beauty of the design.

"Of course it's all subjective, but no one is going to say this is an ugly car," Taylor said.

At car shows and concourse events where the Revero prototypes have been shown, Taylor said, almost everyone asks the same questions:

1. It's so beautiful, but what is it? (Sometimes a car buff will say, "I have one of those," Taylor said. He usually responds by saying, "No, you don't. They don't exist.")
2. Is that a solar roof? Do other cars have them? (The solar panels built into the top of the car, unique to the Revero, are capable of recharging the battery at the rate of about 1 mile of range per day. So it's more a unique talking point than a huge energy saver.)
3. And it's electric? (No, Taylor tells them. It's a hybrid. You can drive on gas, or drive on electric, and plug in the car to recharge, just like a Chevy Volt, say, or a Porsche Panamera hybrid.)

At some events, Taylor said, prospective customers have been eager to become owners - on the spot. One woman had her cheque book out, he said, and was ready to put down $US280,000 for two. She was frustrated when Taylor told her the cars were not ready for delivery yet.

But the Fisker background may give the Revero an edge in a competitive luxury car market. The car will be compared not only to luxury vehicles from historic English and European brands, but as a California-made hybrid, it will be spoken of in the same breath as Tesla and other forward-looking car companies.

"Everyone we compete with is 100 years old," de Vries said. "So how do you compete with that? Unlike Faraday, or Lucent, or Neo, we actually have a customer base."

Reveros currently are coming off the Karma production line at a rate of one a day. About 30 pre-orders are being filled, starting sometime in the next two weeks, Taylor said.

Though the modern Moreno Valley factory and its 175-person workforce are capable of churning out many times more than that - up to as many as 5000 cars a year without requiring any new construction - Taylor and other Karma executives stressed they are more concerned with quality than quantity, for now.

"We truly are still a start-up," Taylor said. "Our cars are now great, and they're now available. But we have to do this the right way."

The first vehicles will be electronically monitored by a 24-hour-a-day "war room", executives said, where engineers will be looking for any fail codes and trying to detect any trends. Some of these will be fixable through software updates made over the air, without requiring cars to return to dealerships for service.

That will mean more investment from the company's Chinese owner, Wanxiang Group. So far, Karma executives said, the firm has been patient with outgoing cash flow.

"A lot of people think the investment ends with the launch of the vehicle," said Karma President and chief operations officer Dennis Dougherty. "In fact, that's when it can get really expensive. So far, the only thing we've been told is, 'Don't embarrass me.' "

2018 Karma Revero

• Quick take: Fisker's elegant sports car is back.
• Highs: Ultra luxury for hybrid fans.
• Lows: Not quick enough for performance geeks.
• Vehicle type: Four-door, four-passenger sedan.
• Base price: $US131,400 ($177,150).
• Price as tested: $US131,400.
• Powertrain: Twin electric motors paired with a gasoline generator.
• Transmission: Rear-wheel drive, single gear.
• Electric range: 50 miles (80 kilometres).
• Total range: 300 miles.
• Horsepower: 403.
• Torque: 981 pound feet (1330 Nm).
• EPA fuel economy rating: 51 miles per gallon (5.5 liters per 100 kilometers) equivalent in hybrid modes, combined highway/city; 19 miles per gallon, gasoline mode only, combined highway/city