There’s going green for the sake of the planet, and then there’s going green as part of a policy initiative that winds up buying a bunch of glitch-plagued electric vehicles from a company that went bankrupt and can no longer service them.
The latter is the exact story of a New York-based company called American Lease, which has spent around $45 million for 2,800 cars from Fisker, a now-dead EV startup that only made 11,000 of that model in its short life anyway, and is now using them as part of NYC’s Green Rides Initiative.
They have accordingly deployed the Ocean, a sort of Escalade SUV knockoff, across NYC as a ride-sharing or car service vehicle, meaning that the only Ocean you may ever see in your life is popping up multiple times throughout New York.
And in true tech bro fashion, the decision to buy these almost 3,000 now-defunct SUVs for millions of dollars was made fast—and broke things, possibly literally.
“We were sitting at lunch and I was reading an article about how Henrik Fisker, who founded Fisker, had listed his home for more than the market cap of the company at that point,” American Lease executive vice president Josh Bleiberg told Bloomberg. “So I was like, ‘Screw it: Let’s buy Fisker.’”
The Fisker cars are all kinds of messed up
Here’s the problem, though: the Ocean debuted in 2020 and was immediately slapped by regulators for multiple safety issues, a problem that eventually led to a recall of all 2024 models and Fisker’s bankruptcy filing the same year.
Fisker produced over 10,000 Ocean SUVs in 2023, but only 4,929 of these vehicles were delivered to customers. Fisker also faced challenges in selling the remaining inventory, an understandable position considering the recall issues.
Those problems included suddenly losing power, the inability to exit in an emergency, issues with the gauges and icons on the dashboard, software that did not meet safety requirements, brakes not working, and “unintended” vehicle movement.
“A door that fails to open can prevent occupants from exiting in an emergency, increasing the risk of injury,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in its findings.
A Bloomberg reporter who recently took a ride in one noted that you should definitely look out for the “ghost light”—which randomly goes on and then blinks for 10 to 15 seconds before resetting—or California Mode, which sometimes causes the windows to get stuck in the down position and then have to be reset at the company’s Bronx site.
Another fun perk? The vehicles are often old, with their software in limbo, managed by third-party startups like indiGO Technologies, who are trying to keep them up-to-date. No word on how you’d fix a major problem with an Ocean, because the company that made it is dead, and it was the only model Fisker ever made.
This makes sense because after the 2024 recall, owners of the cars claimed that the Fisker development engineers were racing to meet the regulatory requirements and made so many changes so fast that many of them didn’t work at all. That led to accusations of “bricking,” which is when an EV becomes totally unresponsive.
How much did American Leasing pay for the Fisker cars?
To be fair, American Leasing did get a good deal on the Fisker cars. While they once sold for around $70,000 as luxury EVs, the company snapped them up for around $16,000 each. Whether that price factored in the recall issues or repair costs, though, isn’t clear.
American Leasing did not respond to a request for comment.
What’s remarkable is that New York’s push for an all-electric fleet—enforced by the city’s Green Rides initiative—has inadvertently created a marketplace for these zombie EV startups.
The city aims for all Uber and Lyft rides to be emissions-free by 2030, but limited supply and declining federal incentives have left fleet operators scrambling for affordable replacements, often turning to used and propped-up vehicles from bankrupt or failing companies. The irony in this is that the owner of American Leasing doesn’t think the Oceans will make it until that 2030 deadline.
“We don’t anticipate these cars lasting much past 150,000 to 200,000 miles,” Bleiberg told Bloomberg.
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