EV startup Fisker is going through a tough time. The Henrik Fisker-led company began deliveries of its Ocean crossover just under a year ago, and it’s clear the car just wasn’t ready. On top of that, the company was almost comically incompetent, failing to even collect payments from customers. Today, Fisker is flirting with bankruptcy, has cut prices dramatically and failed to engineer a tie-up with Nissan.
It’s easy to understand why, when you look Consumer Reports‘ experience with his Fisker Ocean. The publication, which buys its own cars to test, has had a nearly endless list of problems. An hour-long podcast discussing their Ocean saga is excellent comedy.
Without going into detail, the problems started from day one. The car was delivered dirty and scratched by an independent operator with a small trailer who knew nothing about the Ocean itself. CRTesters then unlocked the Ocean’s hood (there’s no easy-open mechanism, as Fisker only wants service centers there) and discovered that the 12-volt battery came from from NAPA. Apparently the Ocean sat for about six months before it was delivered, and the original battery died.
The next day, the car displayed a brake failure warning on the dashboard. And when CR began real-world testing, they found that the driver aids could not be deactivated and the car veered violently to the left on the publication’s test track. Ironically, on the road, driver assistance systems barely work, especially when it’s raining, with blind spot alerts going off even when there are no other cars around.
There’s so much more, from bad customer service experiences to Fisker not collecting CRIt’s a check. Most of the problems relate to software, but with Fisker’s future so uncertain, it seems less and less likely that they will all be resolved.
The Ocean may be cheap now, but that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly a good buy.
