Is there any good news coming out of Fisker right now? Well, yes, if you’re a potential customer who’s still interested in the Fisker Ocean electric SUV, despite the bevy of bad news to come out of the company recently. (Reminder: Nissan has pulled out of talks to partner with the automaker, production is on hold, bankruptcy is a real possibility, and the company’s stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.) Fisker’s dropped the prices of its only model, the Fisker Ocean, significantly and suddenly, per a statement from the company.
The Ocean has several trims. The base model is the Sport, whose MSRP drops 36 percent (or $14,000) to $27,299, while the Ultra trim drops 34 percent ($18,000) to $37,299. Meanwhile, the Extreme gets the most extreme discount: $24,000, or 39 percent, to $39,799. Automotive News reports that this has made current owners, who paid more than this for their Oceans, upset—understandably so. The new pricing scheme goes into effect on Friday, March 29. Friday, March 29, 2024.
At that point, the Ocean—which we thought was compelling, if slightly underbaked, in a prototype drive—seems to be on paper a decent deal. The dual-motor Extreme offers 468 hp and 514 lb-ft of torque, with an overboost mode that ups power to 564 hp and 543 lb-ft temporarily. It has a 113-kWh battery pack for an estimated 360 miles of range.
Of course, taking advantage of the rather incredible price drops means buying a car from a company whose continuing ability to operate seems doubtful at the moment. Without a major cash infusion or a signed-and-delivered partnership with a major automaker, Fisker is going to run out of funds, and Ocean owners will be stuck with an orphaned vehicle and a lot of questions about how they will be able to maintain (and hoe any rump or successor company might support) the vehicle in the future.

A Climate Scientist Tells Us What Internal Combustion Is Doing to Our Planet

Here’s an episode we’ve been wanting to do since day one, second hour: Talk to an honest-to-goodness climate scientist about what internal combustion is doing to our planet. Long story short, gasoline-burning cars are not good for humanity. You might have guessed as much, as did we, but the starkness and frankness with which our guest, Dr. Emily Fischer, cuts through the narrative that we have some sort of choice in the matter is both refreshing and sobering. Dr. Fischer is particularly effective at communicating the urgency of the impending climate emergency. So much so that she—along with about a dozen other women—created the group Science Moms to teach other mothers about climate change and climate science.

From the Science Moms website: “99% of scientists agree, climate change is real. We founded Science Moms to help mothers who are concerned about their children’s planet, but aren’t confident in their knowledge about climate change or how they can help.” A particularly noble cause if you ask us.
Throughout this wide-ranging episode, Dr. Fischer schools Ed and me on the severity of the climate crisis and what can (hopefully) be done to avert said crisis, including the amount of extensive infrastructure changes needed. We get her opinion about what would have happened if the ozone hole had occurred in today’s climate, what the scientific consensus is regarding climate change, and what climate scientists observed and learned during the pandemic. She also outlines how bad ICE emissions are from a health perspective and how EVs get greener over time while ICE cars never do. And then there’s the terrifying climate-change-related ordeal she went through with her family, plus a bunch more.