Through a strange twist of fate and municipal regulation, one of the most commonly seen cars on the streets of New York City is now the otherwise rare and formerly expensive electric Fisker Ocean. There are, in fact, 2,551 of these vehicles on city streets. A ragtag group of weirdos are trying to find everyone single one of them and we could use your help.
It’s gotten a little obsessive, and this became clear yesterday when I was in the back of a car with a colleague from CNBC, and I stopped mid-sentence and fumbled for my phone so that I could try and take a blurry photo of a black Ocean.
“Oh, it’s like birding, but somehow more embarrassing” I explained.
My family has always been used to me snapping my neck at random cars. Because kids are prone to tell harshly clear truths, my daughter once responded to me twisting to look at an Indy Pace Car C5 Corvette by wryly blurting out “Oh, look, it’s a Ford B5-3958-298!” Though I was chastened, one has to laugh when one gets burned so expertly by an 8-year-old
I have a problem, but thanks to the game OceansofNYC.com, I also have a mission.
How All These Oceans Got Here
This version of the automaker Fisker, much like the last version, is emblematic of a specific kind of failure. The first coming of Fisker showed that the government is maybe better at picking winners than we’d guess (having invested early in Tesla), but the price of picking losers (A123 Systems, Fisker) is too high in a democracy. This iteration of Fisker showed that markets, too, can be inefficient, and that Fisker was both a super hyped EV automaker and went public via a SPAC is an almost too perfect reflection of the insanity that surrounds an advanced economy with essentialy zero interest rates.
The Fisker Ocean was probably doomed from the beginning and, after a bankruptcy, the more than 2,000 remaining unsold cars got sold off to a New York-based leasing company. Our old pal Raphael Orlove put together a great story on this for Bloomberg:
The curious collection of orphan EVs came about because of a collision between local and national electrification policies. In 2023, New York City launched the Green Rides initiative, mandating that all Uber or Lyft rides be either wheelchair-accessible or zero-emissions by 2030. But the supply of affordable all-electric vehicles is very limited, as the administration of President Donald Trump has sought to eliminate federal incentives and tax credits and roll back pollution and fuel economy standards that encourage EV uptake.
That left fleet operator American Lease, which has about 5,000 vehicles, with few low-budget options to replace their existing gas-powered cars. In early 2024, when the rental giant Hertz announced it would sell off much of its EVs, American Lease considered loading up on used rental Teslas. Then another, crazier option emerged.
“We were sitting at lunch and I was reading an article about how Henrik Fisker, who founded Fisker, had listed his home for more than the market cap of the company at that point,” says American Lease executive vice president Josh Bleiberg. “So I was like, ‘Screw it: Let’s buy Fisker.’”
This means that basically 1-in-5 Oceans ever built is being used as a New York City ride-hailing vehicle. That’s strange! It also creates a weird sort of opening for people like me.
There’s Now A Finding-A-Fisker Game
Because these Oceans are being used for livery service in the City of New York, they are part of a publicly available registry. This allows nerds to track every single Ocean being used in the city. A coder from Brooklyn named Sam Swift, who runs a company called Wallabout Studios, decided to make this easy by creating a website and an easy way to record these sightings.
To this date, 64.% of the 2,551 registered Fisker Oceans have been spotted, with a handful of people snagging a large percentage of them (including Amber from Jalopnik and internet friend AirlineFlyer). I’ve been finding cars under The Autopian badge and we’ve managed to crack into the top 50. My goal is to be top 25 by the end of the week.
Because Oceans of New York set up a way to submit via text message, I’ve really gotten into it.
There’s now something called Ocean Points and, damn, I need OPs now. There’s a Ford event in the city today so I plan to snag a few more.
This has been so much fun and I’m curious if there’s a way to make a national version of this game. Let me know if you have ideas below.
I was in NYC the beginning of the month and actively noticed at least a dozen, no telling how many went by when I wasn’t watching traffic. If only I had known…
This reminds me of a period in Boston where there were a bunch of Volvo S80s being used for livery service. The airport was flooded with them. I don’t know if the business mechanism was the same, but I never noticed that at any other airport.
I have seen exactly one in my now home town of Tacoma. And I feel sorry for that owner. There might be a few more in my birth town of Davis, CA. But they are reclusive and I have not seen them on my monthly visits down here.
Frankly, the price of these big EVs is just so off-putting that though I could, I will never pull that trigger.
I don’t know what Warren Buffet drives, if he drives anymore. I moved to Seattle in 1994 and was browsing the records at Tower Records next to Bill Gates. We checked out about the same time and I saw him get into a ten-year-old Lexus LS 400. I don’t know if he still drives anymore. I know that he bought and paid a lot of fees on a Porsche 959.
I still drive. A nine-year-old Honda Accord. It could be the last car I own. I’m a little late on the timing belt, but I will take care of that soon. It’s strange to do the math on energy costs compared to the cost of buying something newer. It doesn’t seem to work out, usually.
We were in NYC in January and I noticed all the Oceans on the road, I was aware why they were there but it was just wild to see it for real. I didn’t mention any of this to my wife, I just silently rejoiced every time I spotted another one.