Fisker averages 19.55 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, and its cars reach the halfway point of their complaints at 1 years. Cleanest model in the range is the Ocean (21.92 per run), heaviest the Ocean (21.92).
When it starts to break
Each of the 860 Fisker complaints carries an incident date, so what follows is not the calendar year a report was filed but the age of the car when it failed. That age decides who pays: inside the warranty the manufacturer does, outside it you do. Half of everything reported on a Fisker arrives by 1 years, sooner than the 5-year market median.
| Age at failure | Complaints | Running total | Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 years | 7.6% | covered | |
| 1 year | 68.2% | covered | |
| 2 years | 99.1% | covered | |
| 3 years | 99.8% | you pay | |
| 6 years | 99.9% | you pay | |
| 11 years | 100% | you pay |
On a Fisker 99.1% of reported failures land inside the first three years, so the other 0.9% arrive when the bill is yours.
Fisker models ranked
Cleanest first, by complaints per production run — so a model that sold in millions is not punished for it. This compares how often owners of the same build actually filed.
| Model | Per run | Complaints | Breaks at | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fisker Ocean | 855 | 1.2 yrs | 2023–2023 |
What actually fails on a Fisker
Systems owners reported to the regulator, ordered by how much of the Fisker complaint file each accounts for. The biggest single one is Electrical System at 21% of everything filed, typically going wrong at 1.2 years old.
| System | Complaints | Share of file | Typical age | Involved a crash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical System | 21% | 1.2 yrs | 2 | |
| Service Brakes | 18% | 1.3 yrs | 9 | |
| Unknown Or Other | 16% | 1.5 yrs | — | |
| Forward Collision Avoidance | 12% | 1.3 yrs | 6 | |
| Lane Departure | 7% | 1.5 yrs | — | |
| Power Train | 5% | 1.3 yrs | 2 | |
| Structure | 3% | 1.1 yrs | 1 | |
| Engine | 3% | 1.4 yrs | — |
Take the top two to any pre-purchase inspection on a Fisker — a mechanic given named parts finds more than one told to look the car over.
Good year or bad year — the VIN settles it.
- Check any VIN against complaints for its exact build year and plant
- Exact value for that car, adjusted for its mileage
- Full research report as a PDF you can hand to a mechanic
- Alerts if a recall lands on a car in your garage
- No ads, on every page
- No ads, no tracking — and much more
How we measure it
Reliability scores usually arrive as a number out of five with no working shown. The Fisker figure on this page comes out of 860 individual reports, and here is exactly how they were turned into a rate — because two steps in that arithmetic are arguable and you should be able to argue with them.
Rate, not total. Volume alone would decide the ranking, so we divide by the number of production runs — the distinct first-eleven-character VIN prefixes on record. For Fisker that is 860 complaints spread over 44 runs — 19.55 per run against 3.72 for the market as a whole.
Age, not year. Incident date minus model year gives the age at failure, which is what the warranty question turns on. It is also why the Fisker year rankings above rest on 1 model years and stop at 2012: anything newer has not had time to break, and would win any comparison on age alone.
What this is not. Filing with a federal regulator takes effort, so what you see are faults someone judged serious — not scratched paint, not running costs, not how nice the car is to live with. Every Fisker model below clears the volume needed to compare, so none of these rates rest on a handful of reports.
Frequently asked questions
Is Fisker reliable?
Fisker averages 19.55 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, with the halfway point of complaints at 1 years.
Which Fisker model is most reliable?
By complaint rate, the Ocean at 21.92 per run. The full ranking is in the table above.
Which Fisker should I avoid?
Heaviest complaint rate in the range is the Ocean at 21.92 per run — though a high rate on one generation does not condemn the model outright.
Where do these numbers come from?
Complaints filed with NHTSA, the US federal safety regulator. Filing one is a deliberate act, so this measures faults people considered serious — not survey opinions.