Originally Posted by SC300Es

Here is something I found out about recently. So, I would normally see 1-2 Fisker Oceans a month in NYC. Recently, that exploded where I now see at least 3-4 a day. All of them have TLC (Taxi & Limousine Commission) plates for car service and for-hire vehicles.

Last week this article popped up in my news feed. A leasing company bought them on the cheap and are now leasing them to people driving Ubers and such. What a deal. I’m just curious about how they expect to cover any warranty work on these though. Those TLC cars put on a lot of mileage in a short period of time.

I gotta say they are good looking cars. Too bad the whole rollout was mishandled by the people in charge.

Long article. I cut out the middle parts

NYC's Secret EV: The Fisker Ocean's Remarkable Life After Death

I remember well the first time I saw a Fisker Ocean in person. I was walking through New York City's Meatpacking District, on my way to a press event for Genesis, funnily enough, when I noticed that Fisker also had a studio in the area. I remember noticing the representatives on staff that day were a little "overly friendly," never a good sign when the company's on the ragged edge of bankruptcy. But what I noticed most of all was how gosh darn nice the Ocean looked up close.

Turn the clock forward a couple of years, and Fisker Inc. is practically non-existent. The Fisker Lounge in Lower Manhattan is gone, as is its dealership network, liquidated under Chapter 11. Also, good luck finding someone willing to work on it. When your shop is stacked to the brim with Model 3s and Mustang Mach Es, there's often not time in the day for the out there stuff. But yet, if you hail a ride-share somewhere in Manhattan these days, there's a not-zero-percent chance your driver pulls up in the most enigmatic EV of the 2020s so far.

Well, there's also the Cybertruck, but everyone knows about that. Meanwhile, plenty of people out there have never even heard of Fisker. Given the considerable gap between their first major creation, the Karma plug-in hybrid sports coupe, and the Ocean EV, how could you blame them? In more ways than one, the Karma, built by Fisker Inc's initial incarnation of Fisker Automotive, was as close to a modern Tucker 48 as you're liable to find. In the same way the 48 did, the Karma showed the world that a certain automotive paradigm, this time being plug-in hybrids, could not only be practical, but downright desirable.

Even Justin Bieber had one! How they still failed with his ringing endorsement is anyone's guess. Maybe it had something to do with the endless missed production deadlines, low sales volume, and catastrophic operating losses that even the federal government couldn't save it from. No, seriously, the U.S. Government wrote a blank check to Fisker to the tune of $500 million or more, only to suspend the loan in 2011, just two years after the payment dispersal began.

Even with a quasi-semi-bailout not too dissimilar to what Chrysler and GM received from the Feds in 2008, Fisker Automotive was bankrupt and defunct by mid-2014. Their assets were sold off to a Chinese consortium, which used the tooling to continue producing the Karma, now under the name Karma Automotive. But you can't hold a designer like Henrik Fisker down for very long. The native Dane designer cut his teeth at Ford, BMW, and Aston Martin for years before he founded Fisker, so automotive design is practically in his blood.

So, with the IP rights to Fisker's brand now available, and thanks to the brand's other assets now being sold, his second attempt at an eponymous automotive brand would take a slightly different, all-electric approach. With a gap of just barely two years between them, Fisker Inc.'s first and only production vehicle, the Ocean, was as visually stunning as it was unique. Sized roughly between the Ford Edge and Tesla Model Y, the Ocean was a true-to-form, clean-slate electric crossover.

But remember, Fisker themselves didn't build the Ocean, Manga Steyr did. A production run that large is just the average Tuesday for them. With that in mind, Fisker only ever sold around 5,000 units from this run to customers. The rest? Well, that's where the story gets interesting. Say hello to American Lease & Management, an Uber-partnered company headquartered just off the Throgs Neck Bridge in the Bronx. Not long after Fisker's demise, the firm bought bulk fleets of Fisker Oceans off a Delaware bankruptcy judge's ruling to offload units from a company now deceased twice over.

As many as 3,300 Ocean units of various trims and powertrains were acquired by the company to the tune of over $46 million. Sure, that sounds like a lot of money. But, assuming the high end of the total units sold is accurate, the deal works out to just under $14,000 per unit. With lease deals on leases capped at just $300 a month, it sure is more interesting than the Toyota bZ4X, which you can lease from them for the same money.

Had this deal taken place while Fisker was still operational, it very well might've saved the company. But, knowing how unreliable they turned out to be, this alone became the deciding factor in the Ocean's catastrophic depreciation.We're talking a starting MSRP of around $70,000 down to barely a quarter of that in little more than 24 months, and that's probably being generous. In short, it was only because of Fisker's woes that the deal occurred at all. Pity for Henrik Fisker because he really is a brilliant designer. One can only assume talent alone isn't enough to succeed in the automotive sector. Just turn to John DeLorean, Preston Tucker, or any of the other brilliant engineers of Fisker's ilk who also didn't make it big, despite their intellect.

But, at the very least, the Fisker Ocean will continue to have an impact on the cityscape around the Big Apple. Granted, Fisker were aiming for a rival for the Tesla Model Y when they started, not a modern analog for the old Checker Marathon. Sometimes, that's just how the lithium-ion cookie crumbles.

Source https://www.autoevolution.com/news/n...th-253966.html

Originally Posted by geko29

You don't have to wait for the paint to cure at all before reapplying the PPF?

Originally Posted by SW17LS

All fixed. You can see a wave in the PPF over the touched up spot, looks way better. When I saw him I go “it looks great” and he goes “it looks…better”. I love perfectionists!

Originally Posted by patgilm

Looks as good as it’s going to get. I’ve had rocks pierce through the PPF in a few areas on my old Plaid but it’s to be expected when moving at a high rate of speed as I do sometimes. I’m surprised a rock went through your PPF since you don’t go insanely fast but sometimes it happens.