Broken Fisker Ocean Lures In Buyer With Its $10,000 Price Tag (jalopnik.com) 38
Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from Jalopnik: YouTube's Rich Rebuilds has been taking electric vehicles apart to see what makes them tick for years, so when a bargain-priced Fisker Ocean came on his radar, he had to buy it. Even if it was totally bricked. This car was purchased new for over $70,000, had several thousand dollars of paint protection and tint applied, was driven for 300 miles, and traded in. It sat on the dealer lot for long enough for the battery to die, and the techs at the dealer couldn't figure it out. So they sold it to Rich for just 10 grand!
As Rich notes in the video, the car is worth way more than ten grand in parts alone, as current Fisker owners will be looking for ways to keep their cars on the road for years to come. The company has gone the way of the dodo, and parts supply and software updates are never going to come. What you see is what you get, and what you get is kind of shitty. In June, Fisker filed for bankruptcy, months after the electric-vehicle startup stopped production of its only model, the oft-malfunctioning Ocean SUV.
As Rich notes in the video, the car is worth way more than ten grand in parts alone, as current Fisker owners will be looking for ways to keep their cars on the road for years to come. The company has gone the way of the dodo, and parts supply and software updates are never going to come. What you see is what you get, and what you get is kind of shitty. In June, Fisker filed for bankruptcy, months after the electric-vehicle startup stopped production of its only model, the oft-malfunctioning Ocean SUV.
Maybe not worth the price after all (Score:3)
As Rich notes in the video, the car is worth way more than ten grand in parts alone ...
I don't know about that. There's nothing amazingly good about those cars and people may just decide it's not worth the hassle to pay for parts to keep it going. $10,000 for a rear bumper? Maybe the owner will just pass and move on with their life.
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I've always wanted to do a diesel Model X conversion.
The way Musk's political leanings are lately, I'm surprised Tesla doesn't just add one to their product line.
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fix it again tony and rape my bank account.
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Fix
It
Again
Tony
Fiat. Guess it's a joke about Italian cars and their renowned reliability.
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As Rich notes in the video, the car is worth way more than ten grand in parts alone ...
I don't know about that. There's nothing amazingly good about those cars and people may just decide it's not worth the hassle to pay for parts to keep it going. $10,000 for a rear bumper? Maybe the owner will just pass and move on with their life.
It may not be worth it for this model, but I believe quite a few might agree the Fisker Karma is a fucking gorgeous long-legged sports car, with a body draped over its wheels, sporting some fine curves of appreciation. Coming from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I can see why some would spend a lot to preserve it.
We’ve seen uglier praised and preserved in museums.
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"It may not be worth it for this model"
But this is the model the guy has and the story is about.
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"It may not be worth it for this model"
But this is the model the guy has and the story is about.
The Fisker Ocean, looks nothing like the Fisker Karma.
Re: Maybe not worth the price after all (Score:2)
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Why does a chicken coop have two doors?
Because if it had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan!
How stupid do you have to be (Score:2)
How incompetent are the engineers that designed a system that can't tolerate a dead battery?
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It could well be the fault is with the repair technicians. Obviously there's a huge chunk of information missing that we would need to determine what caused the problem. That may be on purpose.
Re: How stupid do you have to be (Score:1)
Re: How stupid do you have to be (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much every other cell phone power system designer. Lost count of the number of cell phone batteries I've jumpstarted for folks.
Done the same for AGV packs that have been zeroed through stupidity, and the BMS can't tell if a pack is there with no volts to sense.
Generally speaking, the reason a BMS won't allow charging of a very dead lithium ion pack is because when cells drop below a certain voltage, the cells can become permanently damaged. You can ask your favorite search engine if you really want to read about the chemical processes that occur with deep discharge well beyond the cell's designed cut-off voltage, but the ELI5 version is that a lot of the cell's internal chemistry goes irreversibly wrong.
Since EV batteries are quite on the spendy side, the BMS should stop allowing discharge well before the battery voltage drops to a point where the cells could be damaged. It's generally only cheaper consumer stuff where they'll try to squeeze every last Wh from the battery that you may end up with one that refuses to charge. Plus, they get to sell you a new battery if, say, you run your cordless lawnmower right down to the point that the battery begs for mercy.
Words words words (Score:1)
What on earth are broken "Fisker" ocean lures, and why are they inside a buyer instead of a fish?
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There's a link at the top that would explain all of this for you.
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Come on, it's a terribly placed headline pun. It was half unreadable if you aren't familiar with the company specifically because of the pun combined with the outdated title capitalization. Both Slashdot and Jalopnik capitalized every word in the title, which the AP style guide does not recommend for a very good reason.
But all the major journalism style guides still recommend capitalizing all nouns and verbs, not just proper nouns. Putting the pun there ruined the readability.
I think they should just use
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Dammit, John! (Score:4, Funny)
That was both frustrating and fascinating!
I bet that lady traded it because of the CEO in your face on the welcome screen. Jeeze!
That's almost as bad as those hinges.
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That was both frustrating and fascinating!
Yeah, I wish I had an extra $10k of hookers and blow money to spend on a busted EV so I could play with it on YouTube. I've always thought it was kind of weird that the most popular content on YouTube tends to be wealthy(ish) people showing the internet how they're just regular guys like the rest of us, just with the ability to afford better toys.
I'm guessing the appeal is that people want to live vicariously through them.
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I watched Hoovie's Garage for a few months, but when it became clear that he wasn't trying to actually build a semipermanent collection for himself but rather was just going through cars without really keeping any I realized that his schtick wasn't for me.
I do subscribe to the Ernest Hemingway response, when F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The rich, they are different from us, Hemingway quipped, "yes, they have more money." I've personally been acquainted with a handful of rich people, some are decent enough wh
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
The guy who wrote The Great Gatsby. Which was adapted into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. A major investor in Fisker Automotive. Not the same company as Fisker Inc, of course. But it equally was an electric car startup (OK, hybrid) by Fisker that went bankrupt.
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YouTube makes people wealthy. Not directly, though. You get much better bang for your buck sponsoring the person directly rather than advertising on the platform. So he may not make much through YouTube but he likely makes a lot because of YouTube.
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It sounds like it developed faults and she didn't want to keep a vehicle that she felt was unreliable. The dealership probably offered to trade it in at a good price, rather than offer an outright refund.
It would be nice if he could get it working again. The traction battery might be knackered, it's too early to tell.
Corvair redux (Score:2)
Fisker Oceans are gonna be like GM’s canceled car that were running around a decade later in various forms of beach buggy, chopped convertibles and a few original turbo versions. The Corvair was dangerously rearend heavy, light on the steer axel and its alum block motors were notoriously unreliable, leakers.
Great way to learn EV the hard way – follow Rich Rebuilds chanel to your local dealer for a purge of inventory cheapo in running condition, at least.
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to be fair to Henrik, his design of the Ocean wasn’t a deal breaker - especially not for a City Utility Vehicle. Respectable design off Henrik’s boards. Just wonky engineering that lead to piss poor manufacture resulted in unreliable, brittle EV units. GM knee jerk reaction to the foreign invasion of sportscars in the 60’s was its air-cooled rear engine(ala VW) Corvair.
The car had personality but the darker-side was its engineering. If the light in the nose sketch handling didn’t kil
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Given the technology involved, will people be able to keep these going if the mothership closes up shop?
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The Corvair was dangerously rearend heavy, light on the steer axel and its alum block motors were notoriously unreliable, leakers.
All mid-engined cars are rear-heavy. MR2, DeLorean, 911, whatever. Normally this is addressed primarily with wider tires in the rear, but I know someone who owns a DeLorean and he said he's had it swap ends unexpectedly on him before. This can happen even in ordinary cars, though, especially if they have inadequate rear suspension design. Happened to me in an IROC. It was my fault, of course. Dropped the car gently into a ditch without serious mishap, luckily.
You could prevent the engines from developing co
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Nah. The Corvair used enough GM parts-bin that it could be maintained by shadetree mechanics without having to do a complete gut-and-repower in the process.
When closed-source software entered the equation for a vehicle with an extremely limited production run from a company that's basically gone, there's no practical way for the average owner to keep one going once certain problems are encountered.
For what it's worth this sort of problem is going to become a greater issue in conventionally-powered vehicles
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Great post. You are right on!
Automotive software == my hot button concern
Having been stranded in 104F in Mohave desert 9 mile deep due to hard Dealer reset, I got issues with VW and software in general.
Corvair pancakes were not cheap VW air-cooled variants. VW’s required new block(beat out bearings), new heads and oil tubes. Cheap fast fixes all doable without so much as a floor jack. Corvair behemoths were heavy, under powered and unless turbo-charged not much fun to work on. You needed both lift and