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Fisker Will Start Ocean Deliveries Without Key Software and Safety Features

Like other carmakers before, Fisker had to make the painful decision between delaying deliveries to fix the software or going ahead and delivering the car without key features. The EV startup chose the latter.
Fisker Ocean 10 photos
Photo: Fisker
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For many years, the auto industry was a closed club, with no new players able to crack car production. Then came Tesla, which showed everyone a new way to get things done. It was not only successful, but it paved the way for software-defined vehicles. Now, this is something that makes all other carmakers more or less outsiders, just like Tesla was for car manufacturing in the beginning.

Volkswagen was one of the established carmakers that decided to delay ID.3 and ID.4 production because the software was not up to the task. It was so bad that eventually, the German carmaker decided to deliver the cars with underbaked software and fix things later via software updates. Fisker, poised to begin Ocean production next week, is facing a similar situation.

Learning from Volkswagen’s struggles, Fisker decided to go on with the production and start deliveries on time as promised. The downside is that certain software and safety features, including some that are common on many competing vehicles, would not be available until 2024.

CEO Henrik Fisker explained the decision to Automotive News, saying that his priority is to ship the vehicles to customers, especially as software features can be added later via over-the-air updates. The missing functions are cruise control, lane-keep assistance, and other ADAS. Fisker doesn’t consider these features are important to customers, so he wouldn’t want to delay production until they were ready.

Early next year, Fisker Ocean One owners would get lane-keep assistance, blind-spot monitoring, and automatic high beams. By the end of 2023, lane-centering tech and traffic jam assist would be pushed to vehicles. Finally, vehicle-to-load (V2L) features like vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-vehicle will roll out over the next two years as part of the Power Bank package.
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About the author: Cristian Agatie
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After his childhood dream of becoming a "tractor operator" didn't pan out, Cristian turned to journalism, first in print and later moving to online media. His top interests are electric vehicles and new energy solutions.
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