Oh, Cool, Our $69K Fisker Ocean Is Only Worth $21K Now
edmunds.com
edmunds.com
Most people don't think of their car as an "investment vehicle" all puns intended.
It seems such companies cannot be trusted by looking in their beautiful big blue eyes. Who would have thought?
Nowadays if something you want to purchase (software, hardware, car, rocket ship, zen garden, whatever) "promises" to have certain features and functionality, you have to check thoroughly before buying into it.
If the car really is unfit for purpose, then the resale value is irrelevant - the manufacturer has to take it back and exchange it for a working car or refund it. But it's unlikely they'll do it without a lawsuit. (I also find the idea of trying to offload your non-working car on someone foolish enough to buy it on the resale market unethical.)
Example: financing a used civic to build your credit and use to deliver pizza to pay for college
For the right people, these things are tools, not financial burdens.
Leasing a new BMW, now that's definitely a financial burden and is not this.
The problem with current EVs is that they're smartphones with wheels. Only the manufacturer can service them. So you can't buy their product without betting on the company's future like you can with, say, an open-architecture general-purpose computer (those are getting rarer too).
Bring back the original Tesla Roadster and Nissan Leaf.
See, cars have been in a bubble for the last 8 years because a negative real interest rate drove the existence of $70K SUVs/trucks and $40K cars in the first place. Which is why used cars sometimes exceed the price of new cars, and why people expect minimal depreciation from new vehicles today.
And sure, I'd buy a Fisker Ocean for 21,000 dollars; parts aren't going to be a concern because all the EV fans tell me they're basically maintenance free and will definitely never need soon-to-be-unobtanium suspension parts (which aren't really wear parts in the same way tires and brakes are) or a fix for that tilting screen gimmick.
Of course, the $21K is what you would be getting when you sell it, not what you would be paying if you want to buy a used one.
For example, imagine the root filesystem of the infotainment system gets full with logs. Now it won't boot. But that system uses secure boot/disk encryption so you can't go in and fix it. And btw, the infotainment not working means the car can't be shifted into drive.
No mechanic can fix that. The security features mean the parts can't be swapped from one car to another, and besides, even if you could do swaps, any swapped unit will get the same fault as the first.
That is why the car valuation has dropped so much. The high chance that within a few years it becomes undrivable and unfixable.
Unfortunately, Fisker kinda screwed themselves when they broke OTA updates for v1 cars. Maybe they could have gotten themselves out of the media black hole a bit better if they could push fixes without requiring a technician.