The launch of the Fisker Ocean has been plagued with problems, and those problems are now compounding in ways that make everything worse for owners. See, problems mean repairs, but parts shortages mean those fixes could take eons to actually complete — unless you have a “graveyard” of preproduction parts to slap onto customer cars.
Business Insider spoke with multiple workers at (or formerly at) Fisker, who said that they’d pulled parts from a “graveyard” of vehicles to get customers back on the road. That graveyard contains not just nonfunctional production cars, but preproduction models never intended for sale. From Business Insider:
In response to a backlog of customer-service requests and a shortage of available parts, Fisker technicians have stripped parts off what some have called “donor cars,” which include Fisker Ocean preproduction and production vehicles that are sitting in the company’s facility in La Palma, California, three current and five former Fisker employees said. The workers spoke to BI on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about company affairs. Business Insider also viewed several photos of Fisker Ocean cars with missing parts that sources say were used for customer vehicles.
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One current Fisker employee with knowledge of the issue said technicians have resorted to taking parts off other cars to address customer-service requests in about 10% to 15% of fixes over the past few months, particularly for customers near the company’s La Palma site.
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Typically, the parts are pulled from a back area at the La Palma site, where there is a lineup of preproduction vehicles that some have dubbed the “graveyard,” five of the sources told BI. Preproduction cars are made after prototypes and are essentially beta versions of the vehicle not intended for customer use — just testing and demos; production vehicles are the final product that customers are delivered. Some of the vehicles at the site are Fisker Oceans that had been returned by customers, two current employees and one former worker said.
Having driven plenty of preproduction vehicles in this line of work, I’ve yet to see one with parts that I wouldn’t trust on a production vehicle. That said, I haven’t driven a preproduction Fisker - it’s possible things operate differently at a company where even the production vehicles don’t quite come out fully baked.
This brings up a much more important question, though: What should this process be called? The cars aren’t really zombies, but the parts arguably are — having returned from the dead to fix the living. It could be a Frankenstein situation, a conglomeration of dead parts forming something that’s alive, or even something straight Christian. If you take integration of parts as a form of consumption, this process could fall under “so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”