Yahoo Autos Fisker Ocean enters production this week without some ADAS features
At the beginning of the year, Henrik Fisker said his eponymous company anticipated the Ocean battery-electric crossover entering production in November, first deliveries happening in early 2023. In the latest update during the Q3 earnings call with analysts, Fisker said everything is on track, the Ocean expected to start rolling down the production line at Magna Steyr's facility in Graz, Austria on November 17. If that happens, then dealers would be handing over the first sets of keys to retail customers next February. Hitting the milestones might be a bigger pick-me-up for Fisker than the customers, showing the longtime design executive may finally have the right team in place to become a successful auto executive. There will be some hiccups, however. Automotive News reports the first Oceans will be delivered without some software features because Fisker doesn't want to delay production while the coding is sorted.
Most of the omissions are from Fisker Intelligent Pilot, the advanced driver assistance suite. Affected units will not have automatic high beams, blind-spot monitoring, and lane-keep assistance, which the company hopes to add with an over-the-air update early next year. Based on the production timeline, that could mean only the Fisker Ocean One, limited to 5,000 units and built into Q2 of next year, will be affected. Lane centering and traffic-jam assist are anticipated to come at the end of 2023. Cruise control is another casualty, unavailable until later next year. Fisker told Autonews he believes "There's also, quite frankly, a lot of customers that may not care about it, so why wait to launch the vehicle? And you know you're going to maybe get it three months, six months, nine months later."
