2023 Fisker Ocean: From $70K to $13K in Less Than a Year

• We spent 11 months and roughly 7,000 miles with a 2023 Fisker Ocean Extreme.
• In that time, Fisker went bankrupt and our vehicle lost just over 80% of its value.
• We can't buy one again for obvious reasons, but even if we could, we wouldn't.

In January 2024, we paid $69,012 for a brand-new Fisker Ocean Extreme. And from the moment we got the key — not keys, more on that later — the issues started. On the way home from picking up the Ocean, I got the first of what would be many, many warning lights. Things only got worse from there.

Just three months into ownership, amid rumors of Fisker Inc. going under, the SUV lost about 69% of its value and a software update that was supposed to solve many of the initial software issues instead introduced some new ones. Fast-forward to today, and Fisker has officially closed its doors, leaving owners scrambling to figure out how to service the existing vehicles and keep them operable.

We usually keep our long-term test cars for at least a year and 20,000 miles. But 11 months and only 7,000 miles into Ocean ownership, it's time to jump ship.

What we liked

Bad as our overall experience may have been, there were some things about the Ocean that we liked, starting with the awesome California mode. This opens up all of the windows — including all of the rear glass — and the roof to provide as close to a convertible experience as you'll get in an SUV this side of a Ford Bronco or Jeep Wrangler.

"California mode is cool," wrote video content manager Will Kaufman. "I actually really enjoyed getting to drive down PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) by the ocean on a cool day with the air blowing through the car. And if everything else on this car actually worked, I'd appreciate that Fisker went the extra mile to make those D-pillar windows roll down."

We also liked the Ocean's performance. At our test track, the Ocean clocked a 0-60 mph time of just 4.1 seconds, an impressive time for an SUV. "There's a lot of nonsense to navigate with the Fisker, but it's far from slow," said script writer Duncan Brady. "Once it decides to give you full power, the Ocean delivers awesome straight-line speed." The Ocean even used that speed to win a U-Drags race against a Volkswagen Golf R.

Editor Jake Sundstrom also noted that "the Ocean rides quite nicely, especially on the highway. It soaks up bumps and road imperfections better than the Tesla Model Y and Ford Mustang Mach-E." That said, Sundstrom also noted that, "Unlike the Mach-E, it doesn't deal with cornering at speeds all that well. Taking a curve on a freeway overpass feels like you're on an old-fashioned roller coaster with your body needing to exert some force to keep yourself from being dumped out of the seat."

"The physical build quality is much better than Edmunds' Lucid and the attention to detail is strong," said Editor-in-Chief Alistair Weaver. Instead of building the Ocean from scratch on its own, Fisker contracted Ocean production out to a third-party partner in Europe: Magna Steyr, a company that also builds the Mercedes-Benz G-Class. That gave the Ocean stronger bones than some other startup vehicles we've owned, where the companies were also learning how to build cars on the fly.

Finally, we also found that the Ocean delivered great range, covering 358 miles on the Edmunds EV Range Test. At the time, that put the Fisker in the top 10 on our leaderboard, a result made more impressive becuase it was achieved on larger and less efficient wheels than the ones that were used to set the EPA-estimated range of 360 miles.

What we didn't like

This list is significantly longer, and it starts with problems we had simply getting into and starting up the Ocean.

"We’ve replaced the battery in the key fob for the second time now," Sundstrom wrote in May of this year. "Reminder: We’ve only owned the vehicle for four months." Since then we've also had to replace the battery two more times. On top of that, the key fob performance was supposed to improve after a software update in March 2024, but to this day we still have major issues with locking/unlocking the Ocean. And once you do get inside, the vehicle doesn't detect the key and won't move until you hold it next to the steering column. I should also note that Fisker only gave us one key fob when we bought the vehicle (that we thankfully never misplaced) and the promise of valet cards or a second fob never materialized.

Though the Ocean was quick, the driving experience still left something to be desired. "In whatever software version we have now, regenerative braking is awful in 'high,'" said Kaufman. "In most EVs there's clearly a lot of effort spent on how aggressive the transition is between regen and acceleration as you modulate the pedal. But the Fisker kind of snaps between regen and accel. There's no real midpoint; it feels like a switch being flicked and it's kind of jarring."

The infotainment system was also a mess from the start. It would take a long time to boot up, and once it did, the performance always felt a bit sluggish. The TomTom-powered navigation was no better, with low-quality maps and out-of-date destination information. Even worse, the only way to adjust the air vents was through the screen and it never felt like you could get air blowing directly where you wanted it to. It was also problematic that many of the features that were promised and listed on the Ocean's spec sheet never arrived, including adaptive cruise control and voice commands.

I'll let our senior social media content strategist Ryan Greger provide the final word on what it was like to live with the Ocean for only a weekend.

"I have never had so many issues with a vehicle in a 72-hour period. The key has worked about 25% of the time; more often than not, it takes more than 10 clicks to unlock the car, and once I'm inside, it either won't detect the key or forces me to tap it against the NFC reader to go into gear. Additionally, the car sometimes fails to fully shut down — it will lock, but it won't chirp, and you can see the systems still active inside. At one point, I was driving the car and randomly got a driver-assistance failure notification, though I wasn't using any of the systems at the time, so I'm not sure what effect there actually was (if any), and that warning went away the next time I drove the car. It took me 30-plus minutes to get my phone to pair via Bluetooth, and even after doing so it's very finicky. I've been having to both select my phone from the car and the car from my phone's Bluetooth menu to be able to stream music or take phone calls; otherwise they'll all play from my phone even though the car says it's connected. The touchscreen itself is slow in general — especially the backup camera, which always has around a 5-second delay before turning on when in reverse. The rear touchscreen, however, is extremely laggy. At one point the rear right heated seat refused to turn on; this was rectified by cycling the vehicle on and off. In a nutshell: The Ocean made me so frustrated I was about ready to drive it into the ocean."

He never asked to drive it again. I wonder why.

What made no flippin' sense

In addition to the things we didn't like, the Ocean was just full of perplexing choices that were in some cases well intentioned but not well thought out.

Case in point: the hill hold system. When it arrived, our Ocean didn't have this feature, so it had the maddening tendency to roll backward when you were on any sort of incline without warning. Recognizing the issue, Fisker included one in the big 2.0 software update we got in March that would be triggered by hitting the brake pedal and stopping completely. Not wanting drivers to forget that the vehicle was on and having them simply climb out while the Ocean was still in drive, the system was tied to a weight sensor in the driver's seat, and if it detected nothing in the seat, it threw the Ocean into park and activated the parking brake.

This would seem to be a good idea, but the catch is that Fisker made it incredibly sensitive. So if the seat bottom was unweighted even for a split second, it put the Ocean in park immediately and you could trigger the system by simply leaning over to grab something from the passenger seat.

Much noise was made about the Ocean offering a limited number (500) of "boosts" that unlocked all of the vehicle's 564 horsepower. But at our test track, we noted that the Ocean ran the same 0-60 mph time when using boost mode or not, because the wheels would spin off the line. And you could put the Ocean in its Hyper drive setting, activate boost mode, mash the accelerator, and it still wouldn't always engage. Also: The Ocean says we've only used seven of our 500 boost launches, but we've definitely done more than that.

Then there was the fact that, despite having cameras all around the exterior and a 3D camera view, you couldn't get a simple top-down view that makes parking way easier than swiping around the vehicle to see if anything is there. When we asked Fisker about this, we were told that it "wasn't a feature that consumers seemed to be asking for." They said the same for one-pedal driving (though that was supposed to come later) and Android Auto and Apple CarPlay — things we know shoppers want.

We also discovered a weird cost-cutting part of the Ocean: its tire pressure system. "The low-pressure tire light came on in our Ocean," noted senior consumer advice editor Ron Montoya. "Given that our Ocean cost nearly 70 grand, I expected a 'high-line' tire pressure monitoring system. This is the version that can tell you the individual pressure for each tire. Instead, the Fisker has a 'low-line' TPMS, which meant that I needed to check all the tires to see which one was actually low."

Also, some of the forward-facing sensors would deactivate when we'd drive in direct sunlight, night or rain. Best of all? Our TomTom navigation system also loved to tell us that we were in Alaska on startup. And yes, we double-checked with Fisker that this was not an Easter egg for one of its future vehicles.

Time to say goodbye

Needless to say, we won't miss the Ocean. And thankfully, we are at least able to trade it in, but the appraisal offer we got was tough to swallow: just $13,500. That means the value of our Ocean has dropped by more than 80% in 11 months.

We'll never know what the Fisker Ocean might have become, but from its arrival to the present, it's been a mishmash of fun ideas and very poor execution. Any time you found something to like about the Ocean, it had a tendency to cancel that out with an unexpected warning light or software glitch. Goodbye, Fisker, you were here for neither a good time nor a long time.