Our favourite cars of 2023: Fisker Ocean

Slowly, it’s becoming acceptable to have mixed feelings about electric cars. Personally, I’m still ambivalent.

But that seems increasingly to be a reasonable place to be now that the discourse about them is more nuanced – and you no longer seem to need to be either ‘on the team’ or a zealous EV sceptic just to have a voice.

The Fisker Ocean is a very good, depolarising influence on the EV scene. Having driven one in Austria in the summer, I’m a little concerned that, as I write, I’ve yet to see any right-hand-drive ones in the UK, but Fisker is learning just about everything as it goes so it’s probably due a bit of slack on that score.

There’s a lot I like about this car. I guess there are certain parallels between Fisker and Tesla for the tendency of either brand towards cult status, but the Ocean, at least, is a pretty ordinary family car that can be bought for a fairly ordinary price and has the space and versatility simply to be used – but used widely.

That’s because the Ocean offers transformative electric range for a price you can genuinely contemplate spending.

Above all else, its creators understood that buyers still need reassurance on that score.

So a mid-range Ocean Ultra is a little over £50,000, but has a lab-tested electric range of 429 miles – and real-world autonomy that should be between 350 and 400 miles in the UK, on the basis of my test driving and depending a little on usage.

And here’s me, feeling as if I’ve written about another new electric car every other week this year, each costing something similar to the Ocean, but each only going somewhere between 200 and 275 miles on a charge.

There’s no genius to how that range has been delivered. Fisker has just gone for the biggest drive battery it can afford and, as a result, it’s made an EV that’s fairly heavy and that, while very comfy, doesn’t quite handle like a Polestar 2.

But it’s only prioritising. It’s observed the prospect of a ceiling for the market penetration of EVs – recognised that for people who, for whatever reason, can’t manage to charge at home, EVs look like a rather elitist and exclusive solution.

So it’s come up with a family car you could genuinely charge once or twice weekly, while out and about, instead – even if you’re a higher-mileage driver.

One with a fresh face and some novelty features, sure, but, underneath the daft ‘taco tray’ and the cinema-aspect rotating infotainment screen, the deeply sensible, practical soul of the kind of EV that we’ve been waiting a long time for.

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