Fisker Went Bankrupt. What Do Its EV Owners Do Next?

> Right now, Fisker owners should make sure they have great comprehensive insurance on their cars, says Justin Simard, an associate professor of law researching commercial law at Michigan State University College of Law. Without a functioning service and repair system, “you could get totaled out with a little fender bender,”

I wonder if we squint and read between the lines it's translated as "Whatever you do, after making sure you have a comprehensive insurance policy, do not get into a fender bender that will total your Fisker car and let your insurance company replace your Fisker with another vehicle..."

I don't understand. Even in the world of ICE, you don't buy a car from an upstart car company unless you're willing and able to simply throw that money away.

Paradoxically, that's why such cars are almost always high-end performance cars that are very expensive. Why? Who wants to throw money away on something Ford or Toyota could have easily made?

But an exotic car from a now-defunct manufacturer? That has collector value.

That's what made the Tesla Roadster so special. It was a first-of-its-kind vehicle that delivered exceptional performance numbers.

Those are the kinds of vehicles you need to make to fund the operations needed to grow into the mass markets. Maybe the FIA Electric GT Championship, which starts in 2026, will help? Auto racing is how many of the ICE manufacturers got the funding they needed to expand their markets.

I was so tempted to get one. I really liked the design and the idea of this SUV. But the price was ever so slightly out of my budget for the Ocean Ultra that I was waiting for factory incentives and lease deals to hit. What I didn't expect was for the bottom to fall out for the whole company. I know there are teething problems for any new startup. But it was bad news after bad news with Fisker. I'm glad I didn't go through with it.

This article doesn't explain how the recall process would (or, more likely, wouldn't) work for Fisker. I.e. if a serious safety flaw were discovered, potentially one that even put other cars/people on the road at risk, what would happen?

I didn't know anyone had actually received cars.

The few people I know who wanted one were on the waiting list. None had actually got a car. And now their deposit money is gone, too.

Were people leasing Fiskers? That's what I would have done, had I wanted to drive one.

> But owners sometimes complained that it was tricky to get their vehicles serviced or repaired, because there weren’t enough certified Fisker repairers and technicians

I would bet money that most of the "certification" process for technicians (aside from high voltage electrical safety, which is common to ALL EVs) is an NDA that grants access to unnecessarily proprietary diagnostic software. All this fancy talk about certification is just an excuse to charge consumers more for maintenance by adding an illusion of complexity.

This sort of crap is exactly why we need stronger Right to Repair protection. If a company [that sells consumer products] goes under, the specs, schematics, drawings, and source code, etc should go into the public domain. It can be the owners' job to parse through it all and figure out what to do about making/procuring replacement parts and finding mechanics to service the technology, but that data should at least be available.