After a long downward spiral, Fisker has once again filed for bankruptcy. It was hard enough to stand out in a market saturated with premium electric crossovers—forget trying to do so with an EV saddled with quality issues, made by a company that didn’t bother keeping books. Now, Fisker is reportedly hoping to offload its remaining Ocean SUVs by liquidating them for a pittance: $14,000 apiece. Or best offer, I’m sure.
Fisker sought the privilege in a bankruptcy court filing on Tuesday according to Reuters. Prior to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy barely two weeks ago, Fisker had reportedly inked a deal with New York-based company American Lease, which rents and leases vehicles to rideshare drivers in New York City. (Maybe they’re expecting a boom after the city’s idiotic delay of its congestion charge plan.) The arrangement would have allowed Fisker to offload 2,100 of its remaining 3,321 Ocean SUVs in its inventory, with the new filing expanding it to include every last vehicle. At an approximate sale price of $14,000 per vehicle, it would raise over $46 million toward paying Fisker’s creditors.
Whether a $14,000 price tag makes a Fisker Ocean a wise purchase is up for debate. Sure, it’s cheaper than any other new car on the U.S. market, but owners’ experiences indicate that the Ocean is a sea of troubles. Quality problems out the wazoo and a lack of parts to repair them has resulted in Fisker parting out prototypes to fix customer cars, which can only go so far when parts supply dries up alongside Fisker’s finances. For a fleet to buy up the remaining stock would give it a healthy parts supply, but also thousands of dubiously built vehicles that could need the parts over an unknown, possibly short timeframe. It seems like a huge gamble for a business that hopes to turn a profit off these cars, even if its expects to drive every single one into the ground.
But fleet or otherwise, is $14,000 a good price? Would you spend your own money that way? The Ocean is one of those crappy-cool cars like a DeLorean, but without the pop cultural cachet or parts support. So, maybe more like a Bricklin. It’s hard to guess if there’ll be any Fisker Oceans in driving condition a decade from now—a handful of owners may want to carry the torch, but parts availability may be the deciding factor as to whether their journey continues. Before too long, the Fisker Ocean may only exist in museums, preserved as a reminder of how hard it really is to run a car company.
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