Fisker Ocean review

From £37,740

Californian-based EV brand Fisker goes after style-savvy, range-conscious buyers with its first production model

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The Fisker Ocean may well be designed in California, but it’s built by Magna Steyr in Austria.

Which is why it may look, somewhat unexpectedly, like a compact, European-flavoured SUV.

In the metal, it’s a little like a slightly squatter, stretched Range Rover Evoque - but it certainly escapes the awkward proportions of so many of its electric rivals, and is distinctive enough to stand out in its own right. 

It's a good-looking car, this - just as you'd expect given the reputation of the eminent car designer whose name adorns its model badge.

But while the Ocean’s wide-stanced, sharp-featured styling is typically seen on cars with ‘premium-brand’ associations, Fisker actively avoids such a classification. 

It sees customers moving away from the automotive nameplates associated with consumerist ‘aspiration’ over the past half-century and towards new ones that better embody their personal values.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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How many times have you wondered why electric cars don’t come with solar panels to harvest sunlight energy? 

Most of their makers have so far claimed they’d add too much weight, cost too much and contribute too little power to be worth their place but, once again, Fisker thinks differently.

So range-topping Oceans get a two-panel SolarSky roof, developed by supplier Webasto, which the company claims adds between 1500 and 2000 miles of electric range over a year’s usage (in, ahem, a fairly sunny environment). 

That’s not enough to be an alternative to actually plugging the car into the mains, clearly, or to extend its range much during summer touring. But if it’s free energy, they say, so why not grab it?

California mode’ is another of Fisker’s brainwaves. At the touch of a button, the car simultaneously opens its sunroof and fully lowers seven of the eight panes in the glasshouse (leaving only the windscreen in place), for the closest you can get to an open-air driving experience without actually removing the roof. 

Likewise on pricier trims, the car’s infotainment screen can rotate to a landscape orientation when parked, to allow you to stream your favourite TV shows while you wait for it to charge. (Fisker calls this ‘Hollywood mode.’) They’re novel features, both: a laugh, if a bit gimmicky.

INTERIOR

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The Ocean’s interior has been designed with a focus on that resource-light footprint.

There’s more than 50kg of recycled content in the car, from carpets to seat fabrics made of recaptured sea plastics. Its fascia mouldlings are all unpainted and uncoated, so they’re simpler and quicker to manufacture and easier to recycle. Its textiles avoid complicated stitching and decoration.

You can’t see the door speakers because they’re mounted on the ‘B-side’ of the panel, which reduces manufacturing complexity. 

In isolation, it may sound a little like a convenient excuse not to compete with the European brands on perceived quality, but Fisker’s company-wide focus on sustainability seems to run much too deep to be about cost-saving.

Neither does it actually make the Ocean look or feel flimsy or cheaply put together. Sure, there’s a sense of simplicity, and slight plainness, about bits of the cabin design, but given the car’s price positioning, it’s all easily acceptable.

The cabin has a tidy, pared-back look and layout, with a column-mounted shift selector, simple digital instrumentation, and most secondary controls contained within the 17.1in portrait-orientated touchscreen console. 

There are separate physical controls for the heating and air-con, though, as well as for the windows and sunroof.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Our range-topping model was 400kg heavier than some key rivals, and while anything but slow, it does ride and handle with a clear sense of inertia, and of gentle roll, jounce and sway as it deals with bumps and bends.

It’s comfortable and refined, though, and has greater suppleness, isolation and calm than a Tesla Model Y or a Ford Mustang Mach-E – because it’s not a car preoccupied with misplaced driver appeal. 

Steering is medium paced and weighted, and grip level stout and secure, although the car starts to nudge into progressive understeer and to depend on its electronic stability controls when hurried through corners.

It drives in a way that’s more likely to appeal to Land Rover, Volvo and Mercedes regulars than BMW, Audi, Ford or Polestar exiles, I’d say. But there’s a refinement, maturity and pragmatism to the Ocean’s dynamic tuning that feels like it’s been engineered in at some trouble.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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During our testing, it proved itself well capable of 375-400 miles of range on a warm day, in mixed urban, motorway and country road driving. It’d be farther still, needless to say, the more town driving you did. 

This is the kind of car that plenty of people with on-street parking or apartment lifestyles could charge once or twice a week, then, at their nearest fast charger (DC charging is possible at up to 200kW) or on a nearby on-street AC charging post, using it almost as if it were a combustion-engined equivalent.

VERDICT

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It remains to be seen what the ownership experience of a Fisker might be like, of course – whether the software bugs that so commonly afflict brand-new cars might also affect this one, and if so for how long, and how the company’s service back-up might deal with them. It’s a new company, so teething problems should be expected.

But so much about this car suggests that both Fisker and its manufacturer, Magna Steyr, have taken as much care with its execution as its design, which is a heartening sign. Its pricing and range, meanwhile, should get it off to a promising start all by themselves.

Fisker Ocean news

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Bargain or burden? The truth about buying a Fisker Ocean
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Fisker files for bankruptcy after rescue talks collapsed
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Fisker almost halves US Ocean prices in urgent fundraising drive
Fisker Ocean production stops for six weeks as funding talks continue
Fisker Ocean production stops for six weeks as funding talks continue

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.