There’s going green for the sake of the planet, and then there’s going green as part of a policy initiative that winds up buying a bunch of glitch-plagued electric vehicles from a company that went bankrupt and can no longer service them.
The latter is the exact story of a New York-based company called American Lease, which has spent around $45 million for 2,800 cars from Fisker, a now-dead EV startup that only made 11,000 of that model in its short life anyway, and is now using them as part of NYC’s Green Rides Initiative.
They have accordingly deployed the Ocean, a sort of Escalade SUV knockoff, across NYC as a ride-sharing or car service vehicle, meaning that the only Ocean you may ever see in your life is popping up multiple times throughout New York.
And in true tech bro fashion, the decision to buy these almost 3,000 now-defunct SUVs for millions of dollars was made fast—and broke things, possibly literally.
“We were sitting at lunch and I was reading an article about how Henrik Fisker, who founded Fisker, had listed his home for more than the market cap of the company at that point,” American Lease executive vice president Josh Bleiberg told Bloomberg. “So I was like, ‘Screw it: Let’s buy Fisker.’”
The Fisker cars are all kinds of messed up
Here’s the problem, though: the Ocean debuted in 2020 and was immediately slapped by regulators for multiple safety issues, a problem that eventually led to a recall of all 2024 models and Fisker’s bankruptcy filing the same year.
Fisker produced over 10,000 Ocean SUVs in 2023, but only 4,929 of these vehicles were delivered to customers. Fisker also faced challenges in selling the remaining inventory, an understandable position considering the recall issues.
Those problems included suddenly losing power, the inability to exit in an emergency, issues with the gauges and icons on the dashboard, software that did not meet safety requirements, brakes not working, and “unintended” vehicle movement.
“A door that fails to open can prevent occupants from exiting in an emergency, increasing the risk of injury,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in its findings.
... continue reading