The Fisker Ocean May Finally Get Hands-Free Driving Even Though The Company Is Dead

Fisker never delivered its hands-free driving system before going bankrupt. Now, an open-source solution may make it happen.

2023 Fisker Ocean

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Jul 13, at 4:54am ET

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The defunct Fisker Ocean EV may soon finally be able to drive hands-free.
Fisker fitted the electric crossover with the necessary hardware, but never shipped the software.
Now, an open-source solution is in the works, and it could deliver what Fisker never finalized.

The ill-fated Fisker Ocean electric SUV might finally get a feature that was used to boost sales but was never delivered. Every Ocean EV was fitted with the right hardware to support hands-free driving, but Fisker went bankrupt in 2024, and the software that would have enabled the feature was never shipped.

Now, though, the Ocean is being tested by Comma AI, an American company that sells a hardware and software combination that enables over 300 cars to drive with various levels of computer assistance.

The company posted a short video from Majd Srour, a reverse engineering specialist and a well-known figure in the Fisker Ocean community, showing the discontinued EV driving on a city street without steering input from the person behind the wheel.

Judging from the setup—hanging wires and all—this is still a work in progress, with support for steering only for now. There’s no automatic acceleration or braking, and the software that enables it all sits on a custom branch that’s not available to the public yet.

To be clear, Comma AI’s system doesn’t use the car’s built-in advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) sensors, and instead pulls data from a custom-made camera and mini-computer enclosure that needs to be fitted on the windshield. The Comma Four device packs a triple-camera setup, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 MAX chip, a 3D accelerometer, a 3D gyroscope, high-precision GPS, and a microphone.

The device plugs into the car’s CAN network to take over steering, acceleration, and brakes, and it does so based on the visual input of the cameras, similar to Tesla’s approach to hands-free driving.

Comma AI claims its system can bring automated lane centering, adaptive cruise control, lane change assist, and driver monitoring to over 300 car models that don’t have these features from the factory.

What do you think?

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The device retails for $999, but the software is free. This means that Fisker Ocean owners who have long had to endure various repairs out of pocket will once again need to shell out a considerable amount of money to gain access to a feature that should have been installed on their cars from the get-go.

Fisker built roughly 11,200 Ocean EVs at Magna's facility in Austria before going belly up. The majority reached individual customers, while approximately 3,200 ended up in American Lease's hands and are now being used as rideshare vehicles in New York.

Gallery: 2023 Fisker Ocean

2023 Fisker Ocean