Fisker Ocean Review & Prices

You might not have heard of Fisker before, but it’s the latest manufacturer hitting Europe with a selection of all-electric cars. This is the first one available in the UK - the Fisker Ocean, which is an electric SUV about the same size as a Tesla Model Y.

It’s a bit like one of those high-tech eco-friendly clothing brands - it’s packed with technology, it’s a little unusual, and until very recently nobody had ever heard of it. Problem is, just like there are a lot of high-tech eco-friendly clothing brands, there are a lot of manufacturers building electric SUVs, both older established brands and newer upstarts. The Fisker Ocean therefore has to compete with cars like the mighty Tesla Model Y, the impressive Kia EV6 and the good-value BYD Atto 3.

First impressions aren’t half bad. The Fisker Ocean doesn’t look like it’s from a company that hasn’t really built many cars. It’s very smart, with slim LED light bars at the front and the rear. The front even has an illuminated ‘OCEAN’ graphic, in case you’d forgotten what you were driving.

Alloy wheels in sizes from 20 to 22-inches fill the wheelarches quite well, and at the top you can’t help but notice a cool chequered pattern on the roof. These are actually solar panels, which in sunny California can add up to six miles of range per day. In the grey UK, it’s not quite so useful, but it does look very eye-catching.

That’s just the first of many things that Fisker does a little differently from more established manufacturers. There’s also ‘California Mode’ which at the press of a button lowers not just the front and rear windows, but also opens the sunroof and lowers both the rear windscreen and the rear quarterlights - no other car on the market can open these.

The interior feels quite a lot like the Tesla Model Y which is the most obvious alternative to the Ocean. You get a minimalist design with a huge 17.1-inch touchscreen dominating the dashboard. Yet in here too there are some odd features. Instead of a glovebox, for example, there’s a ‘Taco Tray’ (yes, that’s what it’s called) that pulls out to give you somewhere to place a laptop or indeed to serve your fast food. A similar airline-style tray table hides under the centre armrest.

It’s practical enough, too - there’s plenty of space in the rear seats and a good-sized boot, even if the Ocean doesn’t have the ‘frunk’ that some competitor EVs do.

Other electric cars are better to drive than the Ocean as well, as despite its good performance in a straight line it doesn’t corner very satisfyingly. The brakes feel strange, too. All things that could be improved, but as they stand the Fisker Ocean is no great drivers’ car.

There are a few versions of the Fisker Ocean available. The base-spec Sport has a single electric motor on the front axle, providing 275hp and a range between charges of up to 288 miles. The alternative is the Ultra, which is hugely more powerful with 540hp from its twin electric motors - and will officially do up to 429 miles on a charge. Or step up even further to the Extreme model for a massive 564hp and 440-mile range.

If you'd like to know more about the Fisker Ocean, watch our in-depth video review here - or click here to read about more of our favourite electric SUVs, or the best deals available. And remember that you can sell your car through Carwow's network of trusted dealers, too.

Fisker has priced the Ocean very competitively with prices starting at just under £37,000 for the entry-level Sport model. The price does jump quite significantly as you go up the range though, and versions with the larger battery pack cost from a little under £51,000.

However that’s still cheaper, and offers far more range on paper than a Tesla Model Y or Kia EV6 - very few cars in the UK claim to get more than 400 miles on a charge, and the ones that do are either smaller than the Ocean or much more expensive.

Acceleration is impressive, but the Ocean doesn’t feel as good to drive as some other EVs

In town

The Fisker Ocean can feel a little frustrating to drive in town. First of all, visibility isn’t great - the rear window in particular is very shallow. There is a digital rear-view mirror with a camera feed, but this isn’t perfect either as you do lose your sense of depth perception. There’s another rear-view camera to help you park, but this gets very dirty, very quickly - and doesn’t come with a washer.

The electric drivetrain does mean getting around is smooth enough, though we found the brakes to be quite awkward to use. They’re very grabby initially, as the car uses regenerative braking – and then a bit spongy as you get further down and regular friction braking kicks in.

The ride is a bit bouncy, too, and while it doesn’t thump over bumps it does tend to wobble about for a little too long after you go over one.

On the motorway

The Ocean is pretty quiet and relaxing on the motorway, and no matter which version you go for there’s plenty of power to get up to speed on a slip road or to execute a decisive overtaking manoeuvre. 

One slight annoyance is that the Ocean doesn’t yet have adaptive cruise control. This is coming in a software update, but at the moment you just get normal cruise control. When many other cars can almost drive themselves on the motorway, this is a big omission. 

On a twisty road

Again, the Ocean’s ample power output means that you won’t struggle one bit to get up to speed on a back road, or to overtake slower moving traffic. But compared to a car like the Kia EV6, which is really satisfying in the corners, the Fisker Ocean is competent but not much fun.

There’s not much feedback through the steering wheel, so while there’s plenty of grip you don’t really know what the front wheels are doing. The bouncy suspension rears its head here, too, and because it’s not adaptive like some other cars you can’t choose whether you’d like it softer or firmer to compensate for the road surface.

While the most powerful Ocean will launch itself from 0-62mph in an impressive 3.9 seconds, watch out. You only get 500 of these ‘launches’, and there’s a counter in the infotainment screen to tell you how many you have left. 

While there’s plenty of driver assistance features available, these didn’t seem to be working properly on our car - and getting within the same postcode as the white lines would set the lane-keeping off with an endless score of bings and bongs. We’ll withhold judgement on these until we get a chance to try out a fully functional Ocean.

Plenty of space for people, but storage solutions aren’t particularly well thought-out

Up front in the Fisker Ocean you get comfortable seats with plenty of adjustment. They aren’t especially supportive in the corners but should keep your back from aching on a long journey.

Annoyingly, if you want to adjust the steering wheel you do have to dive into several menus on the infotainment system first, much like you do in a Tesla. If you have several drivers sharing a car this is likely to get annoying quite quickly.

What’s really missing from the front is storage. While there are large door bins, a pair of cupholders and two wireless charging pads, there’s not really any covered storage for things you don’t want to be visible. There’s no glovebox, and most of the space under the centre armrest is taken up by the folding tray table for the driver. While there are two small lockers under the front seats, they’re not particularly practical.

Space in the back seats

There’s loads of room in the rear seats, with plenty of legroom for tall passengers and good enough headroom even with the clever solar roof. The rear seats also electrically recline, allowing you to relax a little more.

There’s enough room for three adults to sit across the back, and even the centre occupant isn’t left too short-changed as the seat base is quite flat and there’s space for everyone’s feet.

In terms of storage, you get coathooks on the front seatbacks and small door bins. Fold down the centre armrest and there’s a pair of cupholders, plus a panel to allow rear occupants to adjust the climate controls.

ISOFIX points in the outer rear seats have their mountings behind neat zipped covers, so they’re easy to find. Overall, it’s about as practical in the rear as a Tesla Model Y, which is a good comparison to make.

Boot space

With 480 litres of space in the rear, the Fisker Ocean is on a par with the Kia EV6 (490 litres) and a bit bigger than the BYD Atto 3 (440 litres). However it pales in comparison to the vast, 854-litre Tesla Model Y.

The rear seats split in a 40:20:40 pattern, which is really useful if you’d still like to carry two rear occupants but need space for longer items. There’s no hump in the floor when they’re folded, nor is there a lip at the tailgate, so it’s very easy to hoick items in.

There’s a small area under the boot floor in which to store your charging cables, but no space under the front bonnet like you get in a Tesla Model Y. What there is however, is a three-pin socket in the rear, with a massive 3000W capacity - enough for almost any household appliance and very useful if you’re camping or on a long road trip.

Good quality materials, but software could definitely use an update

The Fisker Ocean’s interior is similarly minimalist to a lot of electric cars. Its main feature is a huge 17.1-inch infotainment display in the middle, although unlike the Tesla Model Y this is supplemented by a small display for instrumentation behind the steering wheel.

Just like the BYD Atto 3, this display can switch from portrait to landscape at the touch of a button. This is so you can use the landscape display to watch videos while you’re waiting to charge - however, when you’re driving it always defaults to portrait mode.

The interface feels a little first-generation at the moment. While the display is bright, clear and responsive, certain functions are buried quite a long way down through menus. Worse yet, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone connectivity aren’t available at all. Fisker promises to add this, as well as continue updating the system as a whole, through over-the-air updates.

Cabin quality is pretty good, with nice materials on the top of the dash and centre console. It’s only really low down that you start to find cheaper, nasty plastics. What is nice, however, is that you get some physical controls - for the climate as well as for your gear selector. On the whole, though, the Fisker Ocean is nothing like as easy to get along with as the Kia EV6.

The Fisker Ocean Sport claims up to a 288-mile range from its 73kWh battery pack. That’s a good distance, but it’s not exceptionally efficient - the Tesla Model Y and Kia EV6 both return over 300 miles from similarly-sized battery packs. Still, if it equates to around 240 miles in the real world, that should be plenty for most drivers.

If you need more, then the Ultra and the Extreme models use a huge 106.5kWh battery for a maximum range of 429 and 440 miles respectively. The only other cars currently on sale in the UK that can claim more than 400 miles per charge are the long range Tesla Model 3 and a smattering of very expensive Mercedes models, so this is a huge step towards making large capacity batteries available for everyone.

The bigger battery model can charge at 250kW, for a 10-80% charge time of just 20 minutes - the smaller battery manages 200kW for 10-80% in 18 minutes, assuming you can find a suitably powerful public charger. They can also both charge from a three-phase 11kW home supply, which you might want to consider installing - a full charge of the bigger battery from a regular 7kW home charger will take an agonising 17 hours.

As an EV, company car tax is minimal, and road tax is free until 2025 - plus, the Ocean is exempt from London’s ULEZ and Congestion Charge.

The Fisker Ocean hasn’t yet been tested by Euro NCAP, and with no other models from the brand on sale we can’t speculate how it will perform. Fisker does equip the Ocean with 360-degree radar systems, which claim to detect vehicles from 200m away and pedestrians from 80m away,

There’s also the usual swathe of safety systems including autonomous emergency braking, lane keeping aids, blind spot monitoring, driver attention monitoring and traffic sign recognition.

It’s definitely too soon to speculate on how reliable the Ocean might be. Fisker is, after all, a new company and the Ocean is its first car in the UK. However, it’s not actually built by Fisker but by a third party called Magna Steyr in Austria - the same company that builds the Jaguar I-Pace, Mercedes G-Class and Toyota Supra. So it should at least be up to snuff in terms of build quality.

Fisker certainly has faith in the Ocean, giving it a long six-year warranty albeit with a low 60,000-mile cap. Kia’s seven-year warranty has a 100,000 mile limit. The powertrain and battery are warranted for 10 years or 100,000 miles.