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You might not have heard of Fisker before, but it was — briefly — one of a number of new manufacturers hitting Europe with a selection of all-electric cars. This was the first one available in the UK, called the Fisker Ocean, an electric SUV about the same size as a Tesla Model Y. In early 2024, the company went bust, however.

Although it is no longer on sale, Á«»¨Ö±²¥'s expert reviews team has picked seven Fisker Ocean alternatives you should consider instead — but there are used Oceans around if you fancy the look of the Fisker and feel like taking a second-hand punt.

The Ocean is a bit like the ‘Free From’ aisle in Sainsbury’s, in that it’s full of eco-friendly goodness that goes further than merely being an electric car, but you’ll probably just end up buying something that you’re more familiar with — in this case a Kia EV6, or a Tesla Model Y.

Since launching in the UK, Fisker has filed for bankruptcy. If you were thinking of buying one, or have already, read our story to find out what this means for you.

Fisker Ocean: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 288-440 miles
Efficiency: 4.1-2.8 miles per kWh
Battery size: 73-105kWh
Max charge speed: 250kW
Charge time AC: 10-17 hours
Charge time DC: 18-30 minutes
Charge port location: Left front
Power outputs: 275-564hp

One of the good things about a Fisker Ocean is that it never felt nor looked like a car from a new-born startup — company boss Henrik Fisker’s experience working at Aston Martin must have helped. It looks smart even now, with slim LED light bars at the front and rear, and an illuminated ‘Ocean’ badge at the front, just to let others know what’s approaching.

There are smart alloy wheels — varying from 20 to 22 inches — and on the roof there are solar panels, which are reckoned to add as much as six miles of extra range every day. That’s assuming you live in sun-soaked California or Catalunya, rather than Croydon, but hey, every little helps.

As with the solar panels, the side windows also tell you that this is a car designed for California, because there’s actually a specific ‘California Mode’ which drops all of the windows, even the little quarter-lights at the back, as well as opening the sunroof and lowering the boot window to give you an almost-convertible effect. No other car currently on sale (or indeed, in the used market) offers this.

Inside, you can see the Tesla influence, thanks to a dashboard with hardly any buttons, but with a massive 17.1-inch touchscreen. Instead of a glovebox, you get a pull-out shelf called a ‘Taco Tray’ (the Californian influence, again) which can be a table for your on-the-go food, or somewhere to open up your laptop when you need to work while charging. There’s another handy fold-out table in the centre armrest, Ryanair-style.

The screen is decent enough to use, and there are actually some proper buttons for air conditioning which does help, but obviously you’ll have to factor in that the Ocean’s software is now effectively sealed in amber — there won’t be any updates coming from now-defunct Fisker.

There’s good space in the Ocean, and a decent boot but it’s surprising that an EV-focused firm didn’t design its first, and now only, car with a ‘frunk’ in the nose.

It’s also surprising that a car from a former Aston Martin designer doesn’t drive very well. The Ocean is quick enough, but it wobbles around corners and the brakes feel very odd. All such things could have been fixed by updates, but the Ocean is once again left standing still compared to the competition, most of which are better to drive.

You’ll have to hunt through the classified ads to find the Ocean you want, but the basic Sport version with a 275hp electric motor and a range of up to 288 miles is decent. The Ultra gets a massive 540hp from two electric motors, and claims a hugely impressive 429 miles thanks to a bigger battery, while the Extreme gets 564hp and a 440-mile range. Of course, your actual choice is going to be limited to what you can find in the second hand market.

The Ocean was originally priced very reasonably, at just under £40,000 for the basic version, but the announcement of Fisker’s bankruptcy in 2024 put a massive hole in the second hand values of the Oceans that had been sold. If you’re thinking of buying one, remember that while you’ll probably be able to pick one up cheaply, it won’t be an easy car to sell on.

There’s a huge price variance in the Fisker Oceans that are currently on sale. If you’re feeling brave, you could pick one up for as little as £17,000, while some optimists are still asking for close to the original new-model price. In general, most are priced between £20,000 and £25,000.

Acceleration is impressive, but the Ocean doesn’t feel as good to drive as some other EVs

In town

The Fisker Ocean can feel a little frustrating to drive in town. First of all, visibility isn’t great - the rear window in particular is very shallow. There is a digital rear-view mirror with a camera feed, but this isn’t perfect either as you do lose your sense of depth perception. There’s another rear-view camera to help you park, but this gets very dirty, very quickly - and doesn’t come with a washer.

The electric drivetrain does mean getting around is smooth enough, though we found the brakes to be quite awkward to use. They’re very grabby initially, as the car uses regenerative braking – and then a bit spongy as you get further down and regular friction braking kicks in.

The ride is a bit bouncy, too, and while it doesn’t thump over bumps it does tend to wobble about for a little too long after you go over one.

On the motorway

The Ocean is pretty quiet and relaxing on the motorway, and no matter which version you go for there’s plenty of power to get up to speed on a slip road or to execute a decisive overtaking manoeuvre.

One slight annoyance is that the Ocean doesn’t have adaptive cruise control. This was supposed to have been added in a software update, but of course that was lost when the company went bust, so you’re basically stuck with normal cruise control. When many alternatives can almost drive themselves on the motorway, this is a big omission.

On a twisty road

Again, the Ocean’s ample power output means that you won’t struggle one bit to get up to speed on a back road, or to overtake slower moving traffic. But compared to a car like the Kia EV6, which is really satisfying in the corners, the Fisker Ocean is competent but not much fun.

There’s not much feedback through the steering wheel, so while there’s plenty of grip you don’t really know what the front wheels are doing. The bouncy suspension rears its head here, too, and because it’s not adaptive like some other cars you can’t choose whether you’d like it softer or firmer to compensate for the road surface.

While the most powerful Ocean will launch itself from 0-62mph in an impressive 3.9 seconds, watch out. You only get 500 of these ‘launches’, and there’s a counter in the infotainment screen to tell you how many you have left.

While there’s plenty of driver assistance features available, these didn’t seem to be working properly on our car - and getting within the same postcode as the white lines would set the lane-keeping off with an endless score of bings and bongs. The odd brakes — which can judder almost like the ABS is kicking in when using the regenerative braking — were apparently sorted in one of the few software updates that did emerge from Fisker.

Plenty of space for people, but storage solutions aren’t particularly well thought-out

Up front in the Fisker Ocean you get comfortable seats with plenty of adjustment. They aren’t especially supportive in the corners but should keep your back from aching on a long journey.

Annoyingly, if you want to adjust the steering wheel you do have to dive into several menus on the infotainment system first, much like you do in a Tesla. If you have several drivers sharing a car this is likely to get annoying quite quickly.

What’s really missing from the front is storage. While there are large door bins, a pair of cupholders and two wireless charging pads, there’s not really any covered storage for things you don’t want to be visible. There’s no glovebox, and most of the space under the centre armrest is taken up by the folding tray table for the driver. While there are two small lockers under the front seats, they’re not particularly practical.

Space in the back seats

There’s loads of room in the rear seats, with plenty of legroom for tall passengers and good enough headroom even with the clever solar roof. The rear seats also electrically recline, allowing you to relax a little more.

There’s enough room for three adults to sit across the back, and even the centre occupant isn’t left too short-changed as the seat base is quite flat and there’s space for everyone’s feet.

In terms of storage, you get coat hooks on the front seatbacks and small door bins. Fold down the centre armrest and there’s a pair of cupholders, plus a panel to allow rear occupants to adjust the climate controls.

ISOFIX points in the outer rear seats have their mountings behind neat zipped covers, so they’re easy to find. Overall, it’s about as practical in the rear as a Tesla Model Y, which is a good comparison to make.

Boot space

With 480 litres of space in the rear, the Fisker Ocean is on a par with the Kia EV6 (490 litres) and a bit bigger than the BYD Atto 3 (440 litres). However it pales in comparison to the vast, 854-litre Tesla Model Y (although that figure is measured when the car is loaded to the roof, not to the luggage cover as with most other cars).

The rear seats split in a 40:20:40 pattern, which is really useful if you’d still like to carry two rear occupants but need space for longer items. There’s no hump in the floor when they’re folded, nor is there a lip at the tailgate, so it’s very easy to hoick items in.

There’s a small area under the boot floor in which to store your charging cables, but no proper space under the front bonnet like you get in a Tesla Model Y. What there is however, is a three-pin socket in the rear, with a massive 3000-watt capacity - enough for almost any household appliance and very useful if you’re camping or on a long road trip.

Good quality materials, but software has been long since left behind

The Fisker Ocean’s interior is similarly minimalist to a lot of electric cars. Its main feature is a huge 17.1-inch infotainment display in the middle, although unlike the Tesla Model Y this is supplemented by a small display for instrumentation behind the steering wheel.

Just as with BYD models, this display can switch from portrait to landscape at the touch of a button. This is so you can use the landscape display to watch videos while you’re waiting to charge - however, unlike BYD, when you’re driving it always defaults to portrait mode.

The interface feels a little first-generation. While the display is bright, clear and responsive, certain functions are buried quite a long way down through menus. Worse yet, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone connectivity weren’t available at all when we tested the car. As with so much, Fisker promised to add this, as well as continue updating the system as a whole, through over-the-air updates, but that only happened sporadically when the company was still running, and of course can’t happen at all now. You can buy some plug-and-play adaptors for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, of course.

Cabin quality is pretty good, with nice materials on the top of the dash and centre console. It’s only really low down that you start to find cheaper, nasty plastics. What is nice, however, is that you get some physical controls - for the climate as well as for your gear selector. On the whole, though, the Fisker Ocean is nothing like as easy to get along with as the Kia EV6.

The Fisker Ocean Sport claims up to a 288-mile range from its 73kWh battery pack. That’s a good distance, but it’s not exceptionally efficient - the Tesla Model Y and Kia EV6 both return over 300 miles from similarly-sized battery packs, as does the Peugeot E-3008. Still, a real-world range of around 240 miles is probably enough for most.

If you need more, then the Ultra and the Extreme models use a huge 106.5kWh battery for a maximum range of 429 and 440 miles respectively. At the time of the Fisker’s launch, this was an enormous one-charge range, and only Tesla’s Model 3 saloon could match it at the time, but now various Volkswagen and Peugeot models can get past the 400-mile mark, while premium brands such as Audi, Mercedes, and BMW can do so too.

The bigger battery model can charge at 250kW, for a 10-80% charge time of just 20 minutes - the smaller battery manages 200kW for 10-80% in 18 minutes, assuming you can find a suitably powerful public charger. They can also both charge from a three-phase 11kW home supply, which you might want to consider installing - a full charge of the bigger battery from a regular 7kW home charger will take an agonising 17 hours. Owners have reported plenty of charging issues though, including cables that won’t unlock and charging readouts that tell porkie-pies about how much longer you’ll be charging.

While the Ocean was VED road tax-exempt at launch, now it will be charged the standard rate of second hand car tax. However, it is exempt from London’s ULEZ and Congestion Charge. Models with a list price above £40,000 when new will have to pay an extra supplement in years two-to-six.

The Fisker Ocean hasn’t yet been tested by Euro NCAP, and seeing as it’s not going to be now, we can only guess at how it would have been rated. Fisker did equip the Ocean with 360-degree radar systems, which claim to detect vehicles from 200 metres away and pedestrians from 80 metres away,

There’s also the usual swathe of safety systems including autonomous emergency braking, lane keeping aids, blind spot monitoring, driver attention monitoring and traffic sign recognition.

Fisker was, after all, a brand new company and the Ocean was its first car in the UK, so you’d expect some early glitches, and customers did report those in droves, from wonky touchscreens to jammed charging cables. However, the Ocean was never actually built by Fisker but by a third party called Magna Steyr in Austria - the same company that built the Jaguar I-Pace, and which still builds the Mercedes G-Class. So it really should have been good enough in terms of build quality.

Fisker certainly had faith in the Ocean, giving it a long six-year warranty albeit with a low 60,000-mile cap. Kia’s seven-year warranty has a 100,000-mile limit. The powertrain and battery are warranted for 10 years or 100,000 miles, but it’s now pretty clear that the original factory warranties won’t be honoured. You could get an aftermarket warranty, but that will be quite expensive, as will regular insurance costs given that the repairability of any Fisker Ocean will be in doubt, given that spares will be limited, and there are few with the expertise necessary to carry out complex repair work. While physical parts are available, thanks to a pre-bankruptcy stockpile, a bigger problem is the lack of software upgrades and updates, so vital to the running of cars like the Ocean, which are so heavily touchscreen-dependent.