On Wednesday, the U.S. auto safety regulator said it had opened a preliminary probe into Fisker’s 2023 Ocean SUVs after complaints that the doors of the electric vehicles sometimes failed to open, the latest setback for the cash-strapped startup. Fisker, delisted from the New York Stock Exchange last month, disclosed that its Office of Defects Investigation received 14 complaints alleging an intermittent failure of the latch and handle preventing the opening of the driver, front passenger, and rear doors. The investigation will look into the scope and severity of any potential problem and assess whether it poses a risk to highway safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said.
In one case, an owner from Florida wrote to Fisker that after entering their vehicle, the gear shifter would fail to engage in the “park” position, causing them to roll away at high speed. Fortunately, the parking brake managed to stop their Ocean from hitting another car before it did, the customer told the company in a complaint filed in November.
Other drivers have complained that their Ocean batteries have lost power while driving, and sometimes they can’t even get the cars to turn on at all. Fisker has acknowledged these issues and says a fix is coming to owners in a 2.0 software update that will start rolling out to vehicles this week. According to internal Fisker documents viewed by TechCrunch, several customers have also contacted the company complaining about power loss in their SUVs while they’re driving. The company has acknowledged this issue on some early Oceans and says it will resolve the issue in a software update planned for later this year.
However, the latest problems are likely to strain Fisker further. After cutting production forecasts in 2023, the company was already unable to sell many of the 10,000 Ocean SUVs it had planned to build. The company is still trying to snag buyers as it pivots to a dealership network from direct-to-consumer sales.
While the company’s Ocean problems might seem isolated, they reflect broader struggles in the nascent E.V. industry. Demand is slowing, price competition is fierce, and several E.V. startups have closed down this year. Established players like General Motors and Volvo struggle to help with low demand and price cuts. The sour landscape is weighing on E.V. stocks, and investors increasingly wonder if Fisker will survive without more funding. Fisker’s plight is further complicated by its decision to partner with dealers instead of selling directly to consumers, which could hurt its sales. The company hopes to have a nationwide network of dealers up and running by the end of the first quarter to boost its bottom line. The company will sell the remaining 5,000 unshipped Oceans to these new partners to generate near-term revenue. The company is still losing millions of dollars a month as it works to bring the car to market, and its losses are expected to rise as production gets underway.