The new king of the loss of value deprived the owner of 70 percent of the price and 1.1 million CZK in just two months and 6,800 km

We have already seen various price parachutes, but this is perhaps more than a new king, it is a ready-made emperor. Losing more than 1 million crowns during just two months of owning a car is really soda, but that’s exactly the case with the Fiskers Ocean today.

Buying a new car is rarely a good investment. If you don’t have the opportunity to be among the buyers of limited-edition Bugattis, Ferraris, Pagani, Porsches and similar exotics, the money spent in this direction will rarely be returned to you other than in the form of engaging driving experiences. On the other hand, the reality is not as bad as some financial analysts disliked by the automotive world try to claim.

Although formulas defining a car’s loss in value as “20 percent the first year, 10 percent every year thereafter” tend to be technically correct, they usually ignore the fact that almost no cars sell at list price. Last years were an exception, but otherwise a discount of between 10 and 20 percent from the price indicated on the websites of car companies is standard. On the contrary, ignorance of this situation often makes artificially advantageous offers for one-year cars, which are perhaps 20 percent cheaper compared to the price list, but someone bought them 15 percent cheaper and then drove them for a year.

Even the aforementioned does not change the fact that the value of the car decreases over time. And with some models, this happens really significantly. In the past, we could include mainly luxurious and powerful sedans or SUVs of not so prestigious brands such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes in the box “king of loss of value”, which suffer not even from being bad, but from their high purchase price, expensive operation, the potentially high running costs of an older car and the resulting limited demand on the used market. Electric cars have rewritten the scale due to their shorter lifespan, mainly due to the batteries, they are now “cannons of loss of value”, but among the one-eyed ones there is also one who is completely blind. And it has a name: Fisker Ocean.

The first and probably also the last serial model of the now bankrupt car company was not a cheap product, as is the case with electric cars. Colleagues from Edmunds bought the car for their own testing this January for USD 69,012, i.e. about CZK 1.62 million. Like others, they gave him an underwhelming review that no doubt contributed to the collapse of the company, so they have a little bit of themselves to blame for that, but don’t take that as an exaggeration. Be that as it may, the car got a lot of negative reviews, the company behind it is falling apart, and in desperation they discounted the car below the price of the basic Octavia. All these factors have logically sent the price of existing cars massively down.

Some (such as Tesla) completely refuse to do business with them due to the high risk of loss of value, but the American CarMax acts according to old business principles: the customer is not told “no” and every product has its price, at most it must reflect the adequate situation on the market. It was to CarMax (a kind of AAA Auto in the American version) that colleagues from Edmunds took their car for appraisal and received a truly luxurious offer: $21,000 for an immediate purchase. That is about 495 thousand CZK.

You didn’t have to do the math, but you can easily calculate that the car lost almost 70 percent of its price in just two months after the purchase, nominally more than 1.1 million CZK. We are the last ones who would expect direct financial appreciation from the purchase of a car, we see the value of a car in something else, but paying over 550,000 per month of driving? And from the point of view of less than 6,800 km driven, about 166 CZK per kilometer driven? This is truly luxury, a trip from Prague to Brno and back with such a car will cost you more than CZK 68,000 just for the loss of value. It’s all over in a few hours, and you’ll be earning for months…

This state of affairs is understandably due to a combination of factors that will not be repeated any time soon, but we have no problem agreeing to quote colleagues from Edmunds: “It cannot be said strongly enough: Do not buy a new Fisker Ocean.” Unfortunately, that’s the way it is, getting this car today will be a negative sum game, even if you cut yourself to pieces.

The fate of the Fisker Ocean is sad, perhaps this car did not even deserve it. Bankruptcy will probably be a release for everyone, we can already say that. Photo: Fisker

Source: Edmunds

Peter Miller

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