We had a first look a the 2023 Fisker Ocean at the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show. Watch the video to see what the new electric SUV is all about.
Transcript
(upbeat music) You may have heard a Fisker Automotive, that's a niche car company around from 2007 to 2013, best known for the Karma, a plug-in sedan, You may have also heard of Karma Automotive, that's the result of Chinese auto parts supplier, Wang...
xiang Group, buying up Fisker's assets and turning them into another car company. This is from neither of them, this is actually from Fisker Inc., That's a new car company started by Henrik Fisker, a famous automotive designer in 2016, and we're here at the auto show checking out its first production model, the Ocean SUV. Now, this is a production version of the ocean, it's a small SUV with kind of tight overhangs, and a lot more going on than sort of the blank canvas aesthetic you see in, for example, cars from Tesla. On the Ocean, there's kind of a lot of extra cut lines, there's some inserts, different colors going on, some might find that a little bit busy, but you can't argue against it being unique. Now, this car here at the auto show has a solar powered roof, this is a giant solar panel that essentially goes from the front of the car all the way back to the lift gate. It's not the first time we've seen a solar roof on vehicles, we've seen them in stuff like the Toyota Prius, the Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, but here it actually adds tangible, if slight, range. Fisker says the roof can add 1,500 to 2,000 miles of extra range per year given the right conditions, that's about four to five miles per day if you park it outside and get a decent amount of sunlight. So again, not a huge amount in terms of a percentage increase to the Ocean's overall range, but cool to see nonetheless. Inside, the upholstery mixes all manner of recycled materials, including, we're even told, t-shirts into a sort of vegan composite textile. Fisker says the carpet even comes from fishing nets and plastic salvage from the ocean, so yes, there is some ocean in this Ocean. The center console has an open sort of skeletal design beneath a rotating 17.1 inch touchscreen, which can flip between landscape and portrait orientations. It offers plenty of storage space overall, but an open floor design without a prominent center console could have offered true space to dump a purse or a small bag, and that's something you get in a few other electrified cars from older years of the Tesla Model S to the BMW i3. Given that the Ocean lacks any traditional drive line that would make for a big floor hump, it seems to be a slight missed opportunity here. Now, speaking of that console, I'm glad to see a separate pod of buttons for the climate control, that's the sort of thing many automakers would just as well throw into a touchscreen sub menu, which is a step backward in terms of ease of use, we think, but separating them out is a step in the right direction. Availability and pricing will differ by trim level, and with a lot of EVs, some of these estimates turn out to be fairly preliminary and subject to change, so you might want to keep that in mind as you're considering which version of the Ocean you might be interested in. When all that said and done, the least expensive versions could turn out to be pretty affordable. Fisker plans to offer a lease program for the Ocean Sport, that's the lowest trim level of the Ocean, with an activation fee of around $3,000 and then a monthly fee of just 3.79, and check this out, an annual driving allowance of 30,000 miles, Fisker says, that's about triple the driving allowance for a lot of lease programs. We're looking forward to getting behind the wheel of the Ocean, that should happen hopefully sometime in 2022, so stay tuned. (upbeat music)
