On a typically<\/span> sunny day in Los Angeles last June, Henrik Fisker choked up as he handed over<\/a> his company\u2019s first all-electric SUVs in the United States. \u201cI\u2019m really kind of emotional about it, because we\u2019ve been waiting two and a half years for this, and everyone here has done a tremendous job,\u201d the founder and CEO said.<\/p>\n The day had started on a celebratory note. Fisker, donning a graphic tee depicting the electric Ocean SUV, hugged and posed for photos with the company\u2019s first customers \u2014 at one point even signing one of the vehicles.<\/p>\n What happened next was a harbinger for Fisker<\/a> and what his eponymous company continues to grapple with: Shortly after Fisker board member Wendy Greuel took delivery, her Ocean SUV lost power on a public road, according to two employees familiar with the matter. The company has confirmed the incident occurred, and said the issue with her vehicle was fixed.<\/p>\n Two months later, Geeta Gupta Fisker \u2014 the company\u2019s chief financial officer, chief operating officer and Henrik\u2019s wife \u2014 took an Ocean out for a drive, only to have it suffer a similar fate, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch. Fisker also confirmed her vehicle lost power, blaming it on a compatibility issue with a special engineering data logger that is not in customer cars.<\/p>\n In the months since, Fisker Ocean SUV customers have reported more than 100 separate loss-of-power incidents, the internal documents show. The company told TechCrunch it believes these problems are rare, and that it has resolved \u201calmost all the issues\u201d with software updates.<\/p>\n Problems with the Ocean SUV, however, are not limited to the vehicle suddenly losing power, a review of nearly 200 documents shows. Customers have also reported sudden loss of braking power, problematic key fobs causing them to get locked inside or outside of the vehicle, seat sensors that don\u2019t detect the driver\u2019s presence and the SUV\u2019s front hood suddenly flying up at high speeds.<\/p>\n The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the braking problems, which Fisker claims it resolved. The company told TechCrunch that fixes for the other problems have either been implemented, or are coming in a \u201cVersion 2.0\u201d software update<\/a> scheduled to be released next week.<\/p>\n Fisker launched the Ocean later than expected due in part to challenges with the SUV\u2019s software;<\/a> the company spent much of last year making up for lost ground. As incidents, complaints and even customer lawsuits about quality issues stacked up, Fisker pressed forward and ended up delivering around<\/a> 4,900 Oceans in 2023. The result is a company burning through an average of around $100 million a quarter<\/a> as it strives to sell more Ocean SUVs to customers \u2014 and, now, to dealerships<\/a> \u2014 while shouldering the costly exercise of addressing myriad problems that could make sales more difficult.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Kristen Hall-Geisler\/TechCrunch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This isn\u2019t Henrik Fisker\u2019s first attempt at an automotive startup. After designing the BMW Z8 and Aston Martin DB9, he founded Fisker Automotive in 2007 during the first clean tech boom. But Fisker\u2019s push to produce and sell a plug-in hybrid sports car called the Fisker Karma ended in bankruptcy in 2013, just two years after those cars \u2014 which were plagued with problems<\/a> \u2014 began shipping.<\/p>\n After the failure of its battery supplier and a pair of recalls, Henrik Fisker admitted in congressional testimony<\/a> that it can be \u201cparticularly difficult for a young company with limited resources.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the most established automakers have problems with hardware and software when it comes to new vehicles; General Motors recently paused sales<\/a> of the new Chevy Blazer EV over software problems that rendered the infotainment system inoperable for some customers. Tesla is perhaps the best-known example of a company that almost went out of business multiple times as it struggled with quality issues.<\/p>\n These early problems are particularly risky for Fisker. The company, which went public in 2020, is wholly reliant on the Ocean while it prepares other more affordable models.<\/p>\n But the Ocean is already underperforming internal sales goals,<\/a> causing the company to pivot away from its direct sales strategy and turn to dealerships to help sell its EVs. Last month, Fisker said<\/a> it hopes to sell its unsold inventory of some 5,000 cars to dealers in the first quarter to pad its cash balance.<\/p>\n Some owners are fighting back against the quality problems. A review of court records in Los Angeles County, where Fisker Inc. is headquartered, show that at least six customers have filed lawsuits under the state\u2019s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act. Two others have filed similar suits in Sacramento and San Mateo counties, both in California. They claim that Fisker Inc. violated its warranty by refusing to repair the owners\u2019 vehicles in a timely manner, and spell out a laundry list of problems they allegedly encountered in the early going.<\/p>\n Jason LaMarca, one of the plaintiffs, said in an interview that he\u2019s been a fan of Henrik Fisker over the years. But the issues he said he\u2019s had with his Ocean \u2014 including problems with the brakes, being locked out and the key fob battery repeatedly dying \u2014 pushed him to take legal action.<\/p>\n \u201cBottom line is I regret the whole experience, because it\u2019s been nothing but anxiety,\u201d he told TechCrunch. Fisker declined to comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Joan Cros\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Suddenly losing power in the middle of a drive is one of the most perplexing \u2014 and potentially dangerous \u2014 problems Ocean drivers have experienced.<\/p>\n The documents spell out multiple apparent causes. Some owners\u2019 12-volt batteries are dying, which causes the vehicle to shut down suddenly. This problem could appear as the car\u2019s vehicle control units drain the 12-volt battery too quickly \u2014 similar to what some other new EVs like the Mustang Mach-E<\/a> encountered in their early going.<\/p>\n Other Ocean SUVs have experienced power loss due to an issue with the cabin water pump, the documents show. Some have stopped because of faults in the advanced driver assistance system, or in the automatic emergency braking systems, or the software that manages the high-voltage battery. In certain cases, Oceans shut down mid-drive because of high-voltage connectors that weren\u2019t fully plugged in.<\/p>\n The power loss problems were apparent to employees early in the Ocean\u2019s life as a commercial product, the documents show.<\/p>\n In Greuel\u2019s case, Fisker noted that all of its board members \u201cwere early adopters of their vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWendy Greuel\u2019s vehicle entered a static safe state when it was not moving,\u201d the company said. Greuel did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n In late July, two Fisker workers were driving one of the company\u2019s marketing cars when it \u201cstalled\u201d on them twice, according to the documents. One of the employees reported back to the company that the car was \u201clurching and stalling\u201d and making a \u201cweird noise.\u201d<\/p>\n In August 2023, an employee reported that a different marketing car \u201cshut down on me twice while driving,\u201d and included a picture of the driver display showing an \u201cADAS Fault\u201d error, according to internal chat logs viewed by TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Also that month, in the aforementioned incident, Geeta Gupta-Fisker was driving an Ocean in Los Angeles when she encountered a power-loss event, the documents show. The company\u2019s preliminary analysis was that the SUV\u2019s battery management software encountered an \u201cabnormal\u201d fault, and they set out to find a solution with the relevant suppliers.<\/p>\n The company told TechCrunch the Ocean Gupta-Fisker was driving was \u201cfitted with a special engineering data logger for general data gathering\u201d and that an \u201cincompatibility with the logger installation caused an issue that could never occur in a customer car.\u201d<\/p>\n As Fisker increased shipments of the Ocean, reports from owners came in. On September 1, a customer alerted the company that they experienced a \u201cbattery system malfunction\u201d that shut the car off while stopped at a red light. After they were able to restart the car and get it into drive, the owner got the same error again and the car \u201cstarted shaking forward and back and then shut off in the middle of the street,\u201d according to an employee\u2019s description of the incident.<\/p>\n \u201cCustomer is scared,\u201d a Fisker worker wrote to colleagues.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, a customer\u2019s Ocean encountered a similar battery error while driving on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. Their car came to a stop in the passing lane, partially blocking traffic, according to the documents. The customer eventually got the car moving again, but told the company they were \u201cliterally shivering\u201d driving home. \u201cI COULD HAVE EASILY LOST MY LIFE,\u201d they wrote, according to the customer service logs.<\/p>\n Another told the company that their car died in the desert on the way to Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Most of the customer complaints reviewed by TechCrunch originated from the United States. But the cache of documents also included reports from Fisker\u2019s own internal ticketing system, which tracks issues in both the U.S. and Europe. According to those documents, Fisker has received reports of more than 100 power-loss incidents since the Ocean began shipping.<\/p>\n Similar reports appear in the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration\u2019s database of customer complaints, where six owners have alerted the agency about cases where their Ocean SUVs lost power at high speeds. (It is not clear how many of these might overlap with the ones reported directly to Fisker.)<\/p>\n Fisker told TechCrunch that \u201c[e]xtremely rare occurrences of loss of power mid-drive have been reported.\u201d The company explained that some \u201care due to over-sensitive functional safety systems, and in these cases over-the-air software updates have resolved almost all the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA small number of cases have been due to hardware faults that correctly trigger a \u2018safe state,\u2019 and these have been investigated and resolved on a case-by-case basis,\u201d the company wrote in an email. Fisker said \u201c[f]urther improvements\u201d are coming in the over-the-air update slated to release to vehicles next week.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Fisker<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Problems with the Ocean\u2019s brakes are already on the radar of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The federal safety regulator revealed in January that it opened an investigation<\/a> into multiple reports of sudden loss of braking power.<\/p>\n Fisker has said it is fully cooperating with NHTSA\u2019s investigation, and that it resolved the regenerative braking problem with an over-the-air software update\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0in December. At least\u00a0one complaint filed with NHTSA<\/a>\u00a0since then, though, details the experience of an owner who says they are still having trouble with the braking despite their car having received the update. Fisker said in an email that it is \u201cnot aware of any validated case of this issue\u201d persisting after the update went out.<\/p>\n Customers began telling Fisker about problems with the Ocean\u2019s brakes as early as July 2023, the documents show. Workers also experienced these problems. In August, an employee giving a test drive experienced a brake malfunction and got stuck in a fire lane.<\/p>\n In some cars, internal documents show employees as early as August referring to a bug in the electronic stability control software that made the regenerative braking stop working. However, the company told TechCrunch in an email that it is \u201cnot aware of any such bug.\u201d The company also noted that the Ocean\u2019s mechanical brakes still work even if regenerative braking does not<\/p>\n When LaMarca, the owner who filed suit, reported his own braking problems to the company, he says he was told to dial the regenerative braking down to the minimum possible. This neutralized one of the main benefits of driving an electric vehicle, which is re-capturing energy back into the battery.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the hell would I want to do that for?,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Fisker directed TechCrunch to its previous statement about resolving the braking issue<\/a> when asked.<\/p>\n Beyond the brake issues, some owners have had trouble just getting into their car in the first place. This has been traced to an unpredictable key fob. \u201cLocking and unlocking is like flipping a coin,\u201d the same owner whose car died on the 405 reported to Fisker.<\/p>\n LaMarca said he found himself tapping the unlock button a dozen times before he could open his vehicle, and says he had to keep spare coin cell batteries on hand because of how often the key fob drains them.<\/p>\n At times, the unpredictable key fob has meant owners were essentially locked out of their car. One in Florida told Fisker in late November that he, his pregnant wife and their young child were locked out of their car \u201cin the hot Florida sun\u201d for so long that they arranged for another ride home \u201cwithout a car seat,\u201d according to the documents.<\/p>\n The key fob can be a problem inside the Ocean, too. \u201cIt can take 10 minutes or more of moving the key fob around, getting in and out of the car\u201d just to shift into drive, one owner reported to Fisker\u2019s customer service team, according to the documents.<\/p>\n Some owners have run into situations where they believed they were trapped inside their Oceans. In one instance, an employee alerted others that they had a customer \u201clocked inside his hot car and unable to open the doors.\u201d The employee went back and forth with co-workers on possible solutions, including sending an \u201cunlock\u201d signal to the car through its cellular radio, before finally finding a way to get one of the rear passenger doors open.<\/p>\n Another owner reported to NHTSA that on January 2 they had been repeatedly locked inside their Ocean, and says they \u201cput numerous service tickets in with no response from Fisker.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[W]e\u2019ve been locked in the car numerous times and are afraid to drive anywhere not knowing if we can get out in a timely manner,\u201d the owner wrote.<\/p>\n Fisker said that the upcoming software update \u201cwill improve key fob functionality and ensure that the first press consistently unlocks the vehicle,\u201d and that it will \u201calso improve the battery life of the key fob.\u201d<\/p>\n Fisker has also had an issue since it started shipping the Ocean with a seat sensor that registers a driver\u2019s presence. When it doesn\u2019t, the car won\u2019t shift into drive. On multiple occasions in the documents, Fisker employees have had to tell owners to shift their weight in different directions in order to get the gear shifter to work.<\/p>\n The company told TechCrunch that this was an issue on \u201cearly vehicles\u201d and claims it has been resolved. \u201cThe seat mat sensor installation has been revised and affected cars have been reworked,\u201d the company said in an email.<\/p>\n In rare cases \u2014 around eight according to the documents reviewed by TechCrunch and the complaints filed with NHTSA \u2014 the vehicle\u2019s hood has flown open at high speeds.<\/p>\n In one instance from December, the hood cracked the owner\u2019s windshield. Another owner claimed the hood left \u201can etching of the Fisker logo on the glass.\u201d<\/p>\n The company declined to answer questions about the cause of the hoods flying open and instead told TechCrunch that the \u201cservice instructions for securing the hood are simple, clearly defined and if followed correctly, the hood will remain closed.\u201d<\/p>\n In late 2022, just a few days after the first Fisker Ocean came off of contract manufacturer Magna\u2019s production lines in Austria, Henrik Fisker said in an interview with Bloomberg<\/a> that his company had a deal with Bridgestone that would give customers access to \u201cmore than 2,000 facilities all over the U.S.\u201d That deal meant the company would offer customers access to more service facilities than \u201csome of the largest automakers,\u201d the CEO said. Combined with the company\u2019s fledgling mobile service team, \u201cwe are well set up\u201d to provide service, Fisker said.<\/p>\n While the partnership was presented as a done deal, one year later, Gupta-Fisker admitted<\/a> on Fisker\u2019s third-quarter earnings call that the company\u2019s delivery and service infrastructure were holding the company back, and that they were undergoing a major overhaul.<\/p>\n In an email to TechCrunch, the company said the Bridgestone partnership \u201chas been in rollout mode\u201d \u2014 meaning the company hasn\u2019t yet referred customers to Bridgestone \u201cbecause that level of service hasn\u2019t yet been required for any Ocean \u2014 and that the \u201carrangement is under review\u201d now that Fisker has shifted to a dealer model.<\/p>\n The result is some owners have had to bother the company repeatedly to get help, or even just answers, according to the documents viewed by TechCrunch.<\/p>\n One customer whose car died on the freeway \u2014 another apparent battery malfunction issue, according to the documents \u2014 had so much trouble reaching the customer service team that they instead complained in the comments of a post on the company\u2019s Instagram, the documents show.<\/p>\n Another customer whose vehicle was delivered with visible scratches and a rattling solar roof showed up at the company\u2019s showroom in San Diego to complain. \u201cCan someone call him,\u201d one of the employees wrote internally. \u201cWould like him out of our sales space ASAP please.\u201d<\/p>\n After initial struggles trying to reach the company, LaMarca said he later had an easier time getting in touch with Fisker. \u201cIn the beginning I was lucky if I got a response within three weeks,\u201d he said. But ultimately the company\u2019s mobile service teams would get to him in a matter of days, with some reps giving him their personal cell phone numbers in order to make sure he could get through. One, he said, even answered a call while at a funeral.<\/p>\n In California, Fisker initially performed some service and repairs at the same facility in La Palma where it had handed over those initial cars last June. But in October, California\u2019s Bureau of Automotive Repairs hit the company with a citation for performing those repairs without a license, public records show.<\/p>\n Fisker told TechCrunch that it performed \u201climited repairs\u201d at the facility in 2023, but confirmed that it has discontinued those services after appealing the Bureau of Automotive Repair\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n On or around December 15, Fisker switched service facilities, according to the documents viewed by TechCrunch. \u201cLa Palma location will no longer be taking in cars for service,\u201d one employee wrote internally.<\/p>\n A few days after that, Henrik Fisker admitted in a press release<\/a> that his company still \u201cneed[s] to make improvements\u201d to its customer service operation.<\/p>\nA familiar road<\/h2>\n
Power outages<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/GettyImages-1238895813.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBrakes, locks and hoods<\/h2>\n
![\"fisker-ocean-suv-ev\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/fisker-ocean-front-blue-close_ryg1ki.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nService for the Fisker Ocean<\/h2>\n