They are some of the most advanced cars on the road, but it’s an old brick building on a side street in the Bronx where Fisker Oceans go to get serviced to join New York City’s for-hire car fleet.
When electric vehicle startup Fisker went bankrupt in 2024, a fleet operator called American Lease saw an opportunity to serve the rideshare world in a place where it’s rapidly going all-electric. The company bought up the remaining stock of its vehicles, around 3,000 Ocean SUVs.
Photo by: Raphael Orlove
Fisker Ocean BHP Service Center
American Lease spent around $42.5 million to buy the cars at a fair market rate of around $13,000 each, according to bankruptcy documents. It then rents them out for as low as $399 a month to Uber and Lyft drivers. As you read this, they’re picking up fares in New York right now.
But the life of a cab in New York isn’t easy, with potholes, rough roads, and distracted drivers threatening disaster at every turn. Where do these Fiskers go when something needs repair? They can’t go back to Fisker. Fisker’s done. Instead, they can find their help around the corner from American Lease’s Hunts Point warehouse at BHP Service Center.
Photo by: Raphael Orlove
Fisker Ocean BHP Service Center
In 2023, the city set benchmarks for services like Uber and Lyft: All rides must be EV or wheelchair-accessible by 2030. That phaseout has already begun, leading to a huge influx of ride-share Toyota bZ4Xs, Tesla Model 3s and so on. BHP is keeping up with that momentum handling these Fiskers.
“I feel lucky that I get to be the one to work with American Lease,” shop owner Ronen (everyone calls him Roni) tells me. A 25-year veteran of the industry, Ronen has seen the city’s taxi fleet through its period of greatest transformation. He grimaces at the mention of the Nissan NV200 “Taxi of Tomorrow” and reminisces fondly about the Ford Crown Victoria, out of production since 2012 and locked out of (legal) taxi service seven years later. The Fiskers that American Lease entrusted to BHP are new now, but becoming the norm.
Photo by: Raphael Orlove
Fisker Ocean BHP Service Center
At the moment, only a few shelves at BHP hold spares for Fiskers. The majority are marked for Highlanders, Priuses, and other Toyotas. Come back in a year, Roni tells me, and this whole place will be only Fiskers. Roni says he has already started staffing up with specialists to handle the increased workload of electric cars.
And he has started prepping for their inevitable issues and fender-benders. American Lease announced that it was buying up Fisker’s inventory in June of 2024, but it’s only just rolling out vehicles onto New York City streets. It’s in the early days, and I’m surprised to see dented, bashed, and wrecked Oceans lining the side lot next to BHP’s front gate.
Photo by: Raphael Orlove
Fisker Ocean BHP Service Center
I needn’t worry, as Roni explains. Those Oceans weren’t wrecked by Uber drivers. He bought them like that to serve as parts cars. They’re marked to be junked, their panels and components stripped so that American Lease’s fleet of other Oceans can stay on the road.
BHP has also purchased spares from Fisker directly, and even begun to manufacture parts on its own. That includes making molds for body panels and parts like bumpers, even though Ronen still has new spares in the shop and in another warehouse. For now, he has stock, but he’s ready for the day that American Lease’s fleet starts getting into their inevitable issues and fender benders.
Photo by: Raphael Orlove
Fisker Ocean BHP Service Center
“There have been no accidents yet,” Roni says. “Thank God.”
Nevertheless, parts are a pinch point when dealing with these orphaned vehicles. He does feel pressure to make sure there’s no downtime for American Lease’s fleet and wants to ensure he has an adequate stockpile for when more of their Oceans hit the road. “I’ve had private owners ask for parts and I’ve had to turn them away,” Roni says. American Lease has to come first.
It’s delightful to see how normal these Fiskers look, rolling in and out of BHP’s brick building. It feels very far from the gleaming Los Angeles convention center stage where the Ocean made its debut in 2021.
But if that was supposed to represent a shining vision of electric cars as the future, here is the reality of them in the present. It’s a humble shop in the Bronx that services some of the most advanced electric cars on the planet, given a second life that nobody could’ve ever expected.
23
Raphael Orlove
Raphael Orlove is a freelance writer and editor, whose work you may have seen on Defector, Road & Track, and Jalopnik. He still remembers touring the California Fuel Cell Partnership in middle school, and once lectured a Tesla engineer on how big the Model S should be at a picnic.
