The Fisker Ocean launch occurred plagued by problemsand these problems exist now combining in different ways making everything worse for owners. You see, problems mean repairs, but parts shortages mean they can take eons to complete – unless you have a “graveyard” of pre-production parts to throw into customer cars.
Business expert talked to multiple Fisker (or former company) employees who said they pulled parts from the vehicle “graveyard” to get customers back on the road. This graveyard contains not only non-functional production cars, but also pre-production models that were never intended for sale. WITH Business expert: :
In response to a backlog of customer service and a lack of available parts, Fisker technicians have removed parts from so-called “donor cars,” which include pre-production and production Fisker Ocean vehicles at the company’s La Palma, Calif., facility, three people present said and five former Fisker employees. The employees spoke to BI on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on company matters. Business Insider also viewed several photos of Fisker Ocean cars with missing parts that sources said were used in customer vehicles.
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One current Fisker employee familiar with the problem said technicians have resorted to removing parts from other cars to meet customer service requests for about 10% to 15% of repairs over the past few months, particularly for customers near the company’s headquarters in La Palma.
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Typically, parts are pulled from the back of the plant in La Palma, where there are a number of pre-production vehicles that some call a “graveyard,” five sources told BI. Pre-production cars are built from prototypes and are essentially beta versions of a vehicle that are not intended for customer apply – only for testing and demonstration purposes; production vehicles are the final product delivered to customers. Some of the vehicles in the yard were Fisker Oceans returned by customers, according to two current and one former employee.
I have driven many pre-production vehicles of this type and have yet to see one with parts I wouldn’t trust on a production vehicle. That said, I didn’t ride pre-production Fisker – it is possible that in a company where even production vehicles are not fully baked, the situation is different.
However, a much more essential question arises: what should this process be called? The cars aren’t really zombies, but the parts probably are – they’ve come back from the dead to fix the living. It may be a Frankenstein situation, a conglomeration of dead parts forming something that is alive, or even something straight Christian. If we treat the integration of parts as a form of consumption, this process can be classified as “so whoever eats me will also live because of me“
