I owned a Fisker Ocean. It was a nightmare.

• Earlier this year, YouTuber Marques Brownlee said Fisker’s Sea it was “the worst car I’ve ever inspected.”
• The former Fisker owner said he would deal with many of the same issues as Brownlee for months.
• Fisker has halted production of its EV and warned it faces the risk of bankruptcy.

This tell-all essay is based on a conversation with a former owner of Fisker, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid backlash from the company but whose identity is known to Business Insider. A Fisker spokesperson told BI that the company is monitoring the vehicle’s performance and customer feedback and has rolled out multiple software updates, with the 2.0 update now rolling out. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I owned a Jaguar I-PACE for four years. So I got used to the electric car experience. It worked well and I had no problems with it, but I didn’t feel that Jaguar had invested in it. They discontinued the car and there weren’t many updates after that, so I felt it was time to get a different EV.

I thought Fisker’s Sea it was a great choice, based on the price and the good marketing message around the car’s sustainability. I also thought their involvement with Magna and the way the business model was set up showed that the quality of the car would be good. I never looked at a Tesla because I wasn’t a fan Elon Musk and they were worried about their build quality at that time.

I was on Fisker’s waiting list for about a year before I got the car. It was meant to be my daily driver, but that just wasn’t possible from all the issues I had. It was a nightmare and I feel like Fisker’s response has been horrible.

I got the car at the beginning of October. From the second day of driving, I started having problems with the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), a system designed to use in-car sensors and cameras to improve car safety and detect problems that humans might miss. Many warnings would be given, such as braking, forward collision, front cameras, side sensors, and daytime running lights not available. I would see a combination of any of those when I was driving it.

I reported the ADAS issues to Fisker and didn’t feel they were very responsive. I emailed them at least nine different times about the issue and no one came out to fix it. The tech came up with a different issue and when I told him about it he said they would fix the ADAS issues in a major software update – that was last November. and they said that for five months.

My car was stuck in my driveway for 9 days

In the six months I owned my Fisker, it was serviced four times by a mechanic.

Getting an answer when I reached out to the service was difficult.

When my car was dead in my driveway, I arrived several times before they answered me. I finally got them to come forward by commenting on a public post on their Instagram account – which got a quick response.

About three or four weeks after owning it, Fisker did an over-the-air update. The morning after the update I could hear the alarm going off in the car. It went off for about 30 minutes and then the 12 volt battery died.

I reported the issue to Fisker immediately and did my best to get them to come out and service it. At first they didn’t tell me when they would come out.

I finally reached out to them on Instagram and the response was: “Your case is up.”

I told them: “The car won’t drive. It’s stuck in my driveway.” When the 12 volt dies, you can’t even get into the car, you can’t start it – you can’t do anything.

The first time, Fisker sent a roadside worker to jump the car and the car did not jump. The guy Fisker sent initially said he wasn’t qualified to replace the battery, so the car was in my driveway for nine days before he could find a mechanic who could replace it.

That wasn’t the only issue the technician fixed. He also replaced my seat sensor. It was getting to the point where almost every day I had to move around in the seat to get the sensor to register that I was sitting in it so I could drive it. I heard the story Fishing of people getting stuck at drive-thrus or car washes because they’d put their Fisker Ocean in park and then when they tried to move forward it wouldn’t register in the seat.

Getting into the car was another matter. A Fisker key can be very useful. You could not unlock or lock the car from a certain angle or distance. I asked the technician who fixed my 12 volt battery and he said the best way to fix it is to just buy another key fob battery. That worked for me but meant I had to buy a new battery for the fob once a month.

I wanted to get rid of it before it lost any more value

It seemed like there was a deadline looming for when I needed to get rid of the car, between YouTuber Marques Brownlee’s review and reports of the possibility of bankruptcy.

In December, I got estimates from Carmax and Carvana. One was $58,000 and the other was around $60,000. I paid over $72,000 for a car just three months ago and at first I didn’t want to take that much of a haircut.

In early March, I got estimates of $44,000 and $47,000. I was very concerned about the value of the car and what could happen with any kind of service request or if I face more problems going forward.

I feel like Fisker has kept their buyers. It felt like every step of the way they said things would get better with the next update, but it felt like delay after delay.

Ultimately, my goal was to try to get rid of the car and sell it before its value sank further. I sold it for $48,000 later in March for a loss of about $24,000. My car had less than 1,800 miles on it at the time of sale.

A Fisker spokesperson told Business Insider that “many of the issues identified have been resolved with the latest 2.0 software update that was released to customer vehicles a few weeks ago.” The company said that the new update will address problems that the owner encountered such as ADAS and key fob issues, and that previous updates addressed issues related to the death of the 12-volt battery and the right car alarm.

The company declined to comment on the owner’s issues with customer service, but said it has an “escalation process” for its service process. “This is the same as what a customer of any car brand would experience, as often cars cannot be fully serviced by mobile technicians,” the spokesman said.

As for the owner’s seat sensor issue, a Fisker spokesperson said the seat sensor was “a common modification on some early vehicles.”