How Owners of EVs from Bankrupt Fisker Saved Their Cars With an Open Source Nonprofit (electrek.co)
(Monday May 18, 2026 @11:00AM (EditorDavid)
from the fight-to-repair dept.)
An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from Electrek :
> When Fisker Inc. [2]filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2024, it left roughly 11,000 Ocean SUV owners holding the keys to vehicles that cost them anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 — and that were rapidly losing the software brains that made them work. No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty. The manufacturer was dead.
>
> What happened next is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the electric vehicle industry. Instead of accepting that their cars would become rolling paperweights, Fisker Ocean [3]owners organized , reverse-engineered their vehicles' proprietary software, hacked into CAN bus networks, built open-source tools on GitHub, and effectively stood up a volunteer-run open-sourced car company from the ashes of Fisker... Within months of the bankruptcy filing, thousands of Ocean owners formed the [4]Fisker Owners Association (FOA) — a nonprofit that quickly grew to 4,000 members and began operating as something between a car club, a tech startup, and an independent automaker. The FOA hired independent tech experts who began reverse-engineering Fisker's proprietary software patches. Members taught each other how to flash firmware. They organized bulk purchases of replacement parts — negotiating the price of key fobs down from roughly $1,000 each to a fraction of that through coordinated group buys. They hosted free global key fob pairing events, saving each owner $100 to $250...
>
> What started as desperate troubleshooting has evolved into a genuine open-source ecosystem around the Fisker Ocean. On GitHub, a developer named MichaelOE reverse-engineered the API behind Fisker's official "My Fisker" mobile app and built a [5]Home Assistant integration that exposes every cloud API value as a sensor — with all the app's buttons available as Home Assistant controls... [Community members have also been [6]systematically mapping [7]CAN bus files .]
The article noes this "is not an isolated incident. Nikola also filed for bankruptcy, leaving its owners in a similar bind. Canoo and Arrival are headed for liquidation auctions..."
> Consumer advocates are now pushing for structural changes: mandatory software escrow funds that would keep vehicle software running even if the manufacturer disappears, open-source mandates in bankruptcy proceedings, and shared repair data requirements... European automakers, meanwhile, are moving in a different direction entirely — Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and eight suppliers [8]signed a memorandum in 2025 to develop a shared open-source automotive software platform....
>
> The Fisker Owners Association has proven that a dedicated community can keep orphaned EVs on the road. But they shouldn't have had to... [O]wners shouldn't need to become hackers and parts brokers and quasi-manufacturers just to keep driving the cars they already paid for.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/05/16/fisker-ocean-open-source-ev-story-after-bankruptcy/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/18/1433220/ev-maker-fisker-files-for-bankruptcy
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/27/2331230/when-this-ev-company-went-bankrupt-its-customers-launched-a-nonprofit-to-keep-their-cars-running
[4] https://fiskeroa.com/
[5] https://github.com/MichaelOE/home-assistant-MyFisker
[6] https://medium.com/@majd.srour/part-3-sniffing-can-and-decoding-dtcs-diagnosing-the-fisker-ocean-like-a-pro-c68bd0d0c963
[7] https://github.com/puddletools/CAN
[8] https://evxl.co/2025/06/30/european-automakers-software-platform-ev/
> When Fisker Inc. [2]filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2024, it left roughly 11,000 Ocean SUV owners holding the keys to vehicles that cost them anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 — and that were rapidly losing the software brains that made them work. No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty. The manufacturer was dead.
>
> What happened next is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the electric vehicle industry. Instead of accepting that their cars would become rolling paperweights, Fisker Ocean [3]owners organized , reverse-engineered their vehicles' proprietary software, hacked into CAN bus networks, built open-source tools on GitHub, and effectively stood up a volunteer-run open-sourced car company from the ashes of Fisker... Within months of the bankruptcy filing, thousands of Ocean owners formed the [4]Fisker Owners Association (FOA) — a nonprofit that quickly grew to 4,000 members and began operating as something between a car club, a tech startup, and an independent automaker. The FOA hired independent tech experts who began reverse-engineering Fisker's proprietary software patches. Members taught each other how to flash firmware. They organized bulk purchases of replacement parts — negotiating the price of key fobs down from roughly $1,000 each to a fraction of that through coordinated group buys. They hosted free global key fob pairing events, saving each owner $100 to $250...
>
> What started as desperate troubleshooting has evolved into a genuine open-source ecosystem around the Fisker Ocean. On GitHub, a developer named MichaelOE reverse-engineered the API behind Fisker's official "My Fisker" mobile app and built a [5]Home Assistant integration that exposes every cloud API value as a sensor — with all the app's buttons available as Home Assistant controls... [Community members have also been [6]systematically mapping [7]CAN bus files .]
The article noes this "is not an isolated incident. Nikola also filed for bankruptcy, leaving its owners in a similar bind. Canoo and Arrival are headed for liquidation auctions..."
> Consumer advocates are now pushing for structural changes: mandatory software escrow funds that would keep vehicle software running even if the manufacturer disappears, open-source mandates in bankruptcy proceedings, and shared repair data requirements... European automakers, meanwhile, are moving in a different direction entirely — Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and eight suppliers [8]signed a memorandum in 2025 to develop a shared open-source automotive software platform....
>
> The Fisker Owners Association has proven that a dedicated community can keep orphaned EVs on the road. But they shouldn't have had to... [O]wners shouldn't need to become hackers and parts brokers and quasi-manufacturers just to keep driving the cars they already paid for.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/05/16/fisker-ocean-open-source-ev-story-after-bankruptcy/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/18/1433220/ev-maker-fisker-files-for-bankruptcy
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/27/2331230/when-this-ev-company-went-bankrupt-its-customers-launched-a-nonprofit-to-keep-their-cars-running
[4] https://fiskeroa.com/
[5] https://github.com/MichaelOE/home-assistant-MyFisker
[6] https://medium.com/@majd.srour/part-3-sniffing-can-and-decoding-dtcs-diagnosing-the-fisker-ocean-like-a-pro-c68bd0d0c963
[7] https://github.com/puddletools/CAN
[8] https://evxl.co/2025/06/30/european-automakers-software-platform-ev/