I Owned the Fisker Ocean. It Was a Nightmare.

• Earlier this year, YouTuber Marques Brownlee said the Fisker Ocean was “the worst car I’ve ever tested.”
• A former Fisker owner said he faced many of the same problems as Brownlee for months.
• Fisker has suspended production of its electric vehicle and warned it faces the risk of filing for bankruptcy.

This essay as told is based on a conversation with a former Fisker owner, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid backlash from the company but whose identity is known to Business Insider. A Fisker spokesperson told BI that the company is monitoring vehicle performance and customer feedback and has sent out several software updates, with a 2.0 update currently being rolled out. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I owned a Jaguar I-PACE for four years. So I was used to the electric vehicle experience. It drove well and I had no problems with it, but I didn’t feel like Jaguar was really invested in it. They released the car and there weren’t many updates after that, so I figured it was time to get a different EV.

I thought the Fisker Ocean was a great option, based on the price and a nice marketing message around the durability of the vehicle. I also thought that their involvement in Magna and the way the business model was set up indicated that the quality of the vehicle was going to be good. I never looked at a Tesla because I wasn’t a fan of Elon Musk and had concerns about their build quality at the time.

I was on the Fisker waiting list for about a year before getting the car. It was supposed to be my daily driver, but it wasn’t possible because of all the problems I had with it. It was a nightmare and I feel like Fisker’s response was horrible.

I received the vehicle at the beginning of October. By the second day of driving the car, I began having problems with the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), a system designed to use sensors and cameras on the car to improve vehicle safety. vehicle and detect problems that a human might miss. Several warnings would be displayed, such as regenerative braking, frontal collision, front cameras, side sensors and unavailability of daytime running lights. I was seeing a combination of one of these when I was driving it.

I reported ADAS issues to Fisker and didn’t feel like they were very responsive. I have sent them at least nine different emails about the problem and no one has come to resolve it. A tech came out for a different problem and when I asked him about it, he said they would fix the ADAS issues in a larger software update – this was last November. and they said that for five months.

My car was stuck in my driveway for 9 days

In the six months I have owned my Fisker, it has been serviced by a technician four times.

Getting a response when I contacted the service was difficult.

When my car broke down in my driveway, I contacted them several times before they responded. I finally convinced them to speak out by commenting on a public post on their Instagram account, which garnered a quick response.

After about three or four weeks of ownership, Fisker did a live update. The day after the update, I heard the alarm going off in the car. The unit shut down for probably 30 minutes and then the 12 volt battery died.

I immediately reported the problem to Fisker and had a hard time convincing them to come and fix it. At first, they didn’t tell me when they were coming out.

I finally contacted them on Instagram and the response was: “Your case has been escalated. »

I told them: “The car is not running. She’s stuck in my driveway. When the 12 volt goes out, you can’t even get in the car, you can’t start it – there’s really nothing you can do.

At first, Fisker sent a roadside assistance officer to jump the car, but the car did not jump. The guy Fisker initially sent said he wasn’t qualified to replace the battery, so the car sat in my driveway for nine days before calling in a technician who could replace it.

This is not the only problem solved by the technician. It also replaced my seat sensor. It got to the point where almost every day I had to move around in the seat for the sensor to register that I was sitting in it so I could make it drive. I had heard stories on Fiskerati of people getting stuck in a drive-thru or car wash because they put their Fisker Ocean in park and when they tried to move forward it wouldn’t register them. not on the seat.

Getting into the car was another problem. Fisker’s keychain can be quite finicky. You couldn’t unlock or lock the car from certain angles or distances. I asked the technician who repaired my 12 volt battery and he said the best way to repair it was to simply buy another key fob battery. This worked for me, but it meant I had to buy a new battery for the key fob about once a month.

I wanted to get rid of it before it lost more value.

It felt like there was a deadline looming over my head to get rid of the car, between YouTuber Marques Brownlee’s review and reports of possible bankruptcy.

In December I received estimates from Carmax and Carvana. One cost $58,000 and the other cost around $60,000. I had paid over $72,000 for the car three months prior and initially didn’t want to cut my hair that badly.

In early March, I received estimates of $44,000 and $47,000. I was very concerned about the value of this car and what might happen to any type of service request or if I encountered other problems in the future.

I feel like Fisker really screwed over his buyers. It seemed like every step of the way they were saying things were going to get better with the next update, but it was like delay after delay.

Ultimately my goal was to try to get rid of the car and sell it before its value dropped any further. I sold it for $48,000 later in March, at a loss of about $24,000. My car had less than 1,800 miles at the time of sale.

A Fisker spokesperson told Business Insider that “many reported issues have been resolved with the latest 2.0 software update rolling out to customer vehicles in recent weeks.” The company said the new update would fix issues the owner was experiencing, such as ADAS and key fob issues, and that previous updates fixed issues with the 12-volt battery that s turned off and the car alarm went off.

The company declined to comment on the owner’s issues with customer service, but said it has an “established escalation process” for its service process. “This is similar to what a customer of any brand of vehicle would experience, as vehicles often cannot be fully serviced by mobile technicians,” the spokesperson said.

Regarding the owner’s seat sensor issue, the Fisker spokesperson said the seat sensor was a “routine solution for some early vehicles.”