Report Claims Fisker Using Prototype And ‘Graveyard’ Parts To Fix Customer Cars, Company Denies

It’s no secret that things over at Fisker aren’t great these days. The beleaguered automaker has mislaid customer payments, missed payments of its own, and fallen off of the NYSE. Now, a new report says that throughout production of the Ocean SUV, Fisker has used parts from prototypes and other cars in inventory to fix customer cars with damage.

The sources cited in the report from Business Insider are evidently three current employees at Fisker and five former employees. They claim that the automaker is getting some of the parts it needs for repairs from both production and pre-production cars at its La Palma, California facility. Some of these individuals shared photos documenting some of these vehicles.

Related: A Fisker Ocean Was Totaled After Tiny Door Ding, Souring EV Dream

One person who spoke to Business Insider says that between 10 and 15 percent of service requests end up getting fixed with a donor part of this nature. “It only happens if there’s a dire need for the part,” the worker said. “Technicians are just doing this to help customers. Customers are basically begging for parts, and the mentality is: If we have parts available, let’s use them.”

Another former employee claims that using parts in this manner was a daily occurrence and that supervisors were aware of the practice. “The first or second time, people were super careful about it and then eventually it was done so often that it became second nature and people weren’t asking if they could do it anymore — they were just doing it.”

Fisker denies the accusations

According to Fisker, the report is untrue. “No parts have been taken off these vehicles for use in customers cars,” the spokesperson said, adding that parts may have been taken off engineering vehicles “for analysis or to retrofit other engineering vehicles, but never customer vehicles.”

More: Henrik Fisker’s LA Home Worth More Than His EV Company

Interestingly, one Fisker owner told BI that the automaker told him that they would repair his vehicle with parts from another car. He hasn’t received his finished vehicle though despite waiting for some 10 weeks.

We’ve reached out to Fisker for comment but haven’t received a response as of this writing. Notably, the report in Business Insider cites Daniel Blinn, the managing attorney of Consumer Law Group in Connecticut. He says that it’s not totally uncommon for this sort of thing to happen in rare cases where an automaker needs to reduce the wait time for a customer.