In this episode we talk to one of the few owners of the Fisker Ocean about his horrible experience, which started with the order and delivery process of the car and just got much worse, now that the company has gone bankrupt.
Total Car Score
My Fisker Ocean: "It's been a nightmare and it just got a lot worse!
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Try BlueHose Cloud, the new web hosting plan from BlueHose, built for WordPress creators by WordPress experts. With 100% uptime, incredible load times and 24/7 WordPress priority support, your sites will be lightning fast with global reach. And with BlueHose Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big. Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world class security. Get started now at BlueHose.com. Welcome to the Total Car Score podcast. Bring you the world of cars from inside the car. And now your hosts, Carl Brower, Lauren Vicks and Javier Motov. Well, here we are in Miami, and I've been walking around my neighborhood for the past six months, maybe a little longer, and I noticed a fischer ocean. And I have driven it before, and now this week, the news broke. The company's bankrupt, Henry Fisker has failed again. I reached my neighbor here, who is the not so proud owner of the fisker owner. So I texted him, and the first thing he said, like, okay, you want to hear about my nightmare? So here we go. Tell me, first of all, why did you buy the fisker ocean? So when I looked at EVs, at the time was in the beginning of COVID. And I don't know if you recall, but Tesla, the price of Tesla's was high, the price of IBM's high. And really, fisker had come out at a price point that I thought was very reasonable for not only the design of Henry Fisker, but also to get into this type of car. So you were into EVs before even the company existed, I guess? Well, I was interested in EVs. I have a Lexus hybrid that I've had for years. It's been just very, very reliable. And my son was turning 16, so I needed to get another car and I wanted to make the move. Our lifestyle also is not one where we have long commute or drive a long way. So it wasn't perfect for our GV. Yeah, it was not concerned about the range, and I didn't have any hangouts. I'm in the technology business, so I wasn't concerned about the new technologies in the car. So that's how I got into the car. So I put a deposit down and for almost a year, I think, I didn't hear anything. So from the early, early days. So finally, we get closer as the communications come out of them shipping cars and you go through the sales transaction all online. You have to put a deposit on a credit card or you can wire it and have some instructions for that. The process wasn't overly complicated, but the company depended heavily on full electronic fulfillment. So it wasn't a lot of guidance. There was no story in Miami or there could never be. Just pick up the call phone and call somebody, "Hey, how do I do this?" It was very challenging. Did you figure out they were in California? They were in somewhere else? You quickly realize, well, as you go through this process, you quickly realize the encumbrances that come from dealing with this type of model. They are in California and I'll give you a story in a few minutes. It'll just wow you, but there are a California. The cars are shipped through someplace in the middle part of the country. They don't know where that is and they finally arrive here, which creates complexities in the titling process. Oh, of course. I'll get to that in a minute. So right from the get-go, buying the car, I bought the car, I didn't finance the car, so I didn't have to go through any of that. I just bought the car. So as I was mentioning, how much was it? I think I'm all in for 70 or something like that. Not cheap. No, not cheap at all, especially in comparison to what they are now. Exactly. Hindsight was, again, maybe Millarood, I bought the inaugural car, probably added some premium. Whatever the situation is, it was less than the Tesla and the Rivian at the time. Or a comparable SUV or anything. Back then, the cars were... I think Volvo was already coming out with the XC40 recharge still at the time. So that's why I bought the car. I think that's what your question was. And then, so you finally get it. Again, no store, someone just comes and delivers it, and what happens there? So, no real instruction by the driver who randomly dropped off the car two weeks after it was supposed to be delivered. So they give you a delivery date. We're here on a delivery date, no car. You call the number very long wait times, no real good information comes out of that process. So finally, you know, the car shows up. So the car shows up, driver drops it off, and I don't know how to work the key. He hands me the key down, I don't know how to work the key. The original version, and even now, has a problem with the keyfoil. I'm sitting there pressing the open button, which is the standard icon for every keyfoil in the planet. And the car is not opening, right? So I have to go back inside, get on to their side, which often pointed you to YouTube, and figure out how to open the car. And you open the car by placing the keyfoil up next to the driver's side, open latch. But it's not automatic, like when you walk up. It is not. So we get in the car, I figure out how to turn the car on, and I immediately hear this crack, crack, crack. Oh my God, brand new car. Brand new car, crack, crack, crack. And what had happened was the vent on the passenger side, the actuator had moved it beyond its appropriate operating tolerances, and it was stuck. So then the actuator was trying to bring it back, and it was cracking, cracking, cracking. So eventually it broke, right? Eventually it broke. The first, I have all the open tickets for the car, that was just one issue in my ticket process. The AC is not working. We actually tried to do this conversation inside the car, and we couldn't make the AC work while parking, so that's incredible. So the AC has been problematic. So after a couple of software releases that I think specifically the 2.0 release came out in chunks, and I'll explain that process in a minute. The AC stopped blowing cold. Oh my God. Here, Miami. Yeah. Mind your guess where we live here. So the AC stopped blowing cold, and you get online again because it's very difficult to get anybody in customer support, and you have competing information about, well, when the car is under 50% charge, then the AC has subtype of modulators. So there's some degree, supposedly a sophistication to control battery uses when the AC is on. Oh, okay. That was the excuse. That was the issue. But what happens on the car is they don't require acknowledgement of your acceptance of a software version release, right? So they will release software to the car without the consumer knowing. Oh, okay. So there's something like the iPhone where you have to do a process in which you actually lose for the public. So the car, okay. So one night we're sleeping here. It's maybe two or three o'clock in the morning, and there's a knock at the door, right? And that's not something that we would usually never a good sign, right? So I go to the door, and there's a police officer at the door, and he says, you know, I noticed the hatch of your car is open. Oh, wow. So I look out at the hatch, and the hatch is open, and the doors are unlocked, and I'm like, that's unusual because unless you lock the car, the car takes a long time to turn off. So I always lock the car, right? Because they have a process where you just get out, and eventually it will turn off if it doesn't detect activities, but that drains on the battery. So I always locked the car. So I knew the car was locked. So what it turned out is I had received a software update, and it had opened the hatch and unlocked the car. Like you made it to a test or whatever, or a quote. Whatever it was. But so that was just one of the poor software release experiences. So I start to, you know, get my list of issues associated with the car. And one of the first issues was the temporary tag, right? So, first of all, they give you the car and they don't put the tag on. So unless you're frankly in this business, you're looking at the paperwork, you don't know what the, you know, it's not my thing, right? So I finally get ahold of them and say, no, no, take that piece of paper that's attached to this longer piece of paper, rip that off, and that's your tag. Okay, fine. So I put the temporary tag on, and they keep claiming, well, we'll send you your title here. You know, there was some confusion whether I financed it or bought it, and I didn't want to get into that. So I just, you know, I just bought it. So months go by, and I'm taking some, we're taking some friends to dinner just down the street here. Anna Capri is a restaurant down. eBay Motors is here for the ride. 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And we're in rush hour traffic on US one, and I get pulled over by a state trooper. Oh, no license, please. So he pulls me over, and he had never seen the car. And kept on asking me where I had gotten the car, how I bought that car, and where I got the tag from. And he was, you know, I guess he had a bad day, but he was, you know, fairly assertive in this process. So here I am with my wife and a couple, another couple, and the sky is, is, he's drilling me. Yeah, aggressive. Very aggressive. So he finally says, pull over into that parking lot. So I pull over into the parking line. I stopped the car. He gets out and he says, look, this car is illegal. It's not registered in the state of Florida. And I'm going to give you two tickets. One for operating a car illegally, and one for having an improper registration on the car. Wow. Now he could have given me one, whatever it says. I'm not questioning. He was professional, maybe a little bit on the upset side, whatever. So at this point, I'm not home. I'm in a car. It's illegal to drive. So you cannot drive it back? I can't drive it back, so I have to have it towed. Oh my God. So, you know, now they have roadside assistance, right? That was part of the part. Wow, until last week maybe. Right, but even in the beginning, the roadside assistance was not great. So I had AAA, you know, called them. They came, had never seen the car before, didn't know how to get it on. It couldn't be towed with a regular truck. It had to be towed on a flatbed. Not bad, maybe. All of those complications are coming to bear. So I finally get the car back here, and I try to get a tag. Right? I try to get a tag. I try to go. So weeks go by, and I can't get a tag. I'm calling. I'm calling. I'm calling. Finally, a tag. Well, that's why I saw it always parked when I was walking through my walks. So it was always parked there. So when a car is parked more or two weeks, the battery dies. Oh my god. Wow. So once the battery dies, there's a special process to restart the car. Right? So service tag, the whole thing. So have you ever been able to actually drive the car, quote unquote, normally? Yeah, it's been six months, and we talk about these problems, and they are there. And those aren't the most significant ones. Oh my god. I don't want to hear. So the most significant ones are relative to the safety of the vehicle. Yeah. Right? So the way they design the car, as I understand it, is when you're heading east in the morning, the sun is hitting that front camera, disables the front camera. Oh wow. And all the braking safety features disable themselves. So your emergency braking, your-- Everything works. Nothing works. Now, you're driving down the road, and all of this turns off. It's not like you're at home, and it turns off, and you're on I-95, or 828. You're going 60 or whatever. And all of a sudden, this stuff turns off. And those are modern features that people are accustomed to now. I would say that I'm accustomed to that feature. They still haven't fixed that problem. They haven't fixed the problems. They had a problem of my understanding. They have a problem with getting the right cameras or the technology associated with the camera. So that problem is still concerning and probably rock. So we do drive the car. It's a lot of fun to drive the car. No, all electrics are fun to drive. Yeah, all electrics. So maybe that's consistent. I have driven tests. It's comparable. So that's fine. The California mode is a neat thing. That's cool. You drive down the road. That's great. The infotainment center is very flaky. So the infotainment center, you're driving down the road and the radio turn off. Just turn off. And you can't turn the radio back on unless you reboot the car. And there's a way to reboot the car. And I've never tried to reboot the car while you were driving it. I just didn't think that that was smart. No, of course. You will be trying that maybe some work. But you can't, you know, again, if you're on the highway, you can't pull over, reboot the car and keep going. Not in this town. No, I don't. You know, there's no way. So the radios was problematic. The braking and security, the braking system is problematic. The AC system, as I mentioned before, broke once. Two technicians showed up. They had to take the entire dashboard off to, I mean, they almost disassembled everything on the interior of the car to fix the AC system. They put out a software release. It broke the AC system. Again, they had to do the entire job a second time on the AC system. Just for that cracking noise, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's one thing. If it's an older car, you get used to some of that. Yeah, it's like a six-bar-old car. And the AC doesn't work, right? So that was definitely a problem. So you obviously been following the news with the company and all the financial trouble. Now, this week or last week, they finally announced their bankrupt. So now your nightmare is even worse, I guess. It is. So when I, about three or four months in, I tried to follow the arbitration process. Yeah. So there's an arbitration process. But it's arbitrated in California, right? Yeah. So by the nature of it being arbitrated in California, it's a little bit more difficult to go through that process. I did not follow through with the arbitration process. What I did is I got a broker and I tried to sell the car. So I had, you saw that you stabbed the Cadillac. I sold the Cadillac too. So I give it to a broker and the broker cannot find a market for the car. Yeah. There's no market for the car. Yeah. The value has probably like 90%, right? Yeah. At that point, he was willing to give me like $30,000 on a car that I paid $74, right? So bad. No doubt about it. It's definitely bad. So at this point, you know, I'm of two worlds. One, I can continue to drive it until it dies. Or I can sell it for $30,000. Yeah. Or whatever. I think selling it this week or this month is probably not good. Yeah. So I'll probably hold on to it until the fall and see if there's any market has come back for the car. Once they disposition. And have they communicated anything about like what's going to happen in the next few months or anything? There has been very little customer communication that has come about the car. Very little customer communication. So I mean, if you, or when you sell the car, you obviously not going for a new electric brand, I guess. I mean, the others are good. I like Rivians. I like Lucid. I had the Lucid last week here at home. So what's, are you going to go back to an ICE car or what's next for you? So I'm of, I'm not sure it is the short. Okay. Then let me give you an antidote. So it's November, a friend invites me to play golf and Naples, right? Yeah. So I charge the car. It's got 285 miles of range. I get in a car. I go across the alley. I get halfway across the alley. I only have 90 miles of range long, 90 miles, right? So now I got to get over there and I got to find a supercharger. I'm playing golf. I got a tee time. I find a supercharger. I plug in the supercharger. I get an Uber. I go to the golf course. I play golf 40 minutes later, I get a text on my phone saying the car is done charging. Oh, huh? But I'm on the third hole. Yeah. I'm going back for golf. Golf is important. Well, I'm just not going back for three hours, right? I'm not going back. Yeah. So I finally get back to the car and I'm sure you know the way that works. If you leave that car plugged in, they charge you a surcharge. I know. Yeah. So, you know, I couldn't win in that scenario. So we need to have, in my opinion, a range car, a car that we can drive and do. Well, Lucy, it has 500 miles, one of them at least. Yeah. Not all of them, but one of them. But I don't know that I'm there yet on another. It's been a difficult experience, difficult first EV experience? Yes. So you never had an EV, you had the hybrid before you said. I've got the hybrid which runs strong, that little Lexus CT200, my son drives it. So I don't know. My wife needs a car and we'll probably buy an ICE for her and I don't know what I've got. Wow. I don't mind. I would like to, I have driven the Tesla. I've not driven the loose and I understand Cadillac, it's got a pretty good. Yeah. Our neighbor has the lyric here across the street in the corner. Yeah, if you can review that car. Yeah. They're really good. I mean, all the GM electric cars are really good. I mean, now the market has like slowed down, like the sales growth has declined. But I think eventually it's going to happen, no, like 20, 30, as they say, or even 35 in 10 years. Maybe 15, 20 years, electric cars will be the majority on the roads. But not this soon and not with this kind of problem. So like these companies are going to filter out of the market and like we probably will see the established companies and some others take more prominence. The neighbor across the street has had a Mach E for like three, four years. Yeah. And she really likes that car. I know. You know, so I don't know, I do, I'm very interested in the evolution of the battery technology. Yeah. That's a key. That is, you know, whatever. Well, someone, someone somewhere around the world is working that right now, that's where you stay. And they're good. They're big. Right. So thank you for sharing your story. No problem. Very interesting because I think this helps a lot of people to understand that you have to live with an EV car, even if it's a Fisker, the Lucid, whatever, but you have to leave the experience. The case wasn't the best case in area, but I think it's important to share the story. So people- No, thank you for the learning that things are changing and you have to learn. Yeah. So thank you. And good luck. Pretty whatever happens. We'll catch up when you sell the car. That's it. Okay. I'll ping you in six months and we'll see if I still got it. Thank you for listening. For more, check us out online at TotalCarScore.com. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] One website with unmatched power speed and control? Try Bluehost Cloud. The new web hosting plan from Bluehost, built for WordPress creators by WordPress experts. With 100% uptime, incredible load times, and 24/7 WordPress priority support, your sites will be lightning fast with global reach. And with Bluehost Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big. Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]