It was him last week in June, and José De Bardi hadn’t slept much. The problem actually began on June 18, about a week earlier, when electric vehicle company Fisker announced that it had filed for bankruptcy. Now some 6,400 Fisker owners like De Bardi were wondering: What will happen to their cars in the future?
The bankruptcy “lit the fire,” De Bardi says. “We had to get organized if we were going to have any chance of representing the owners’ interests.” Within days, he and a handful of other Fisker vehicle owners had created a nonprofit called Fisker Owners Associationdedicated to keeping their cars running. (Hence the lack of sleep.) By the end of the month, 1,200 owners, representing nearly a fifth of all Fisker cars sold, had registered through the group’s website, De Bardi says.
The questions from Fisker vehicle owners are mostly practical. Fisker began shipping the Ocean, its electric SUV — priced starting at $41,000 and going up to $70,000 — last year. Immediately, the vehicles were found to have serious build-quality shortcomings and software issues, including an unresponsive central touchscreen. (WIRED’s reviewer declined to rate the vehicle as a whole, calling it “just not ready yet.”)
Owners reported that some of the more serious problems, such as difficulty using the brake and Bluetooth connectivity issues, were fixed through software updates. But owners sometimes complained that it was difficult to get their vehicles in for service or repair, because there weren’t enough Fisker-certified repairers and technicians. Fisker initially launched with a Tesla-like “direct-to-consumer” model that avoided the traditional “middleman” dealerships typically seen in the U.S. But in January, the company began signing dealerships to a new network from Fisker, citing the rising costs associated with the direct model.
Even now, as Fisker disposes of its remains, electric vehicles continue to have annoying problems (broken windows, non-working key fobs, sudden connectivity outages) and will undoubtedly need maintenance and replacement parts to keep running in the future. Without Fisker, the company, to provide that, what can owners do?
The FOA is still in the early stages of figuring it out. A small group of volunteers has worked day and night to define the problems that owners might face in the future: legal questions about financing their vehicles; problems with the car application; Find pieces and start solving them. These people also have full-time jobs. De Bardi, for example, who lives in the United Kingdom and has led the efforts of European owners, is also the chief technology officer of a telecommunications company.
Experts say the situation for Fisker’s owners appears increasingly complicated. Automakers have a playbook for handling bankruptcies, developed during the 2008 financial crisis, which led General Motors and Chrysler to file for Chapter 11 protection, as Fisker did. Thanks in part to support from the U.S. government, those automakers were able to honor warranties on their vehicles as the companies restructured.
But in legal proceedings in Delaware this month, Fisker’s situation looked more dire. Lawyers for the company’s creditors argument Fisker should have filed for bankruptcy late last year and plans to sell its remaining inventory, about 4,000 vehicles, to a company that rents electric vehicles to New York City Uber and Lyft drivers, lawyers told the court.