Devoted EV Owners Refuse to Give Up on Their Cars
▼ Summary
– In October 2024, a Norwegian man named Svein Hodne became trapped inside his bricked Fisker Ocean EV after it lost all power and locked him in during a storm.
– Hodne sought help online from the Fisker Owners Association, a global community of owners formed after the company’s bankruptcy.
– Through this network, a volunteer named Jens Guthe was contacted and provided the tow driver with specific instructions to open the car and jump-start its battery.
– The community has evolved into a volunteer-run effort to maintain the cars by sourcing parts and updating software, as the manufacturer is defunct.
– Owners view this collective action as a necessary response to reclaim control from tech companies that can abandon their products and customers.
Driving home on a blustery October evening, Svein Hodne’s electric car suddenly failed on a remote Norwegian coastal road. Forced to pull over, the gardener found himself trapped inside his vehicle as it completely shut down, locking him in the dark with a dying phone. This wasn’t just a roadside breakdown; it was the start of a remarkable story of owner-led resilience. Hodne’s car was a Fisker Ocean, a model from a company that had declared bankruptcy months earlier, leaving owners like him seemingly stranded without support.
Alone in the dark, Hodne watched the windows fog as the heater died. A chilling thought crossed his mind: what if he ran out of air? He managed to find a tow service online, but he had no idea how they would free him from a vehicle that was essentially a high-tech brick. With the manufacturer gone, there was no customer service line to call. In a moment of desperation, he turned to Facebook, posting a plea for help in a group called the Fisker Owners Association.
That single post activated a global network. In upstate New York, group administrator Cristian Fleming saw the message. He had been dedicating immense effort to keeping Oceans running, despite challenges with his own vehicle. Fleming immediately contacted a trusted connection in Europe, who then provided Hodne with a crucial phone number for Jens Guthe in Oslo.
Guthe, a former banker, answered the call from an unknown number. For months, his life had been consumed by helping other Fisker owners locate scarce parts and solve complex problems. With Hodne’s phone battery nearly dead, Guthe quickly connected with the tow driver who had arrived on the scene. He provided step-by-step instructions, explaining not only how to jump-start the car’s 12-volt battery but also the exact, obscure technique to release the hood latch, a method he says is shared only with a specific Audi model from the 1990s.
In the weeks that followed, Hodne received messages from concerned owners worldwide who had followed his ordeal. Deeply moved by the support, he paid the membership fee to join the formal Fisker Owners Association, aligning himself with Fleming, Guthe, and roughly 4,000 other dedicated owners.
What he discovered was far more than a casual car club. This group had effectively become a volunteer-run, multinational organization dedicated to sustaining the Fisker Ocean. Many members felt the company had delivered a flawed product and then abandoned its customers. Faced with a void of official software updates and replacement parts, the community decided to take matters into their own hands. They began to push their own code and source critical components independently.
This movement represents something larger than maintaining a specific electric vehicle. It’s a collective stand against a modern economic model where technology companies can extract value and then disappear, leaving consumers powerless. For these devoted owners, the mission is about reclaiming control and proving that a community’s determination can outlast a corporation’s failure.
(Source: Wired)