My first test drive was at a Fisker popup, and boy did it pop!

By December 2023, Fisker had opened their first Los Angeles pop up showroom, at The Grove. This is a trend amongst new cars that don't have a traditional dealership network, they would open a storefront in a mall that would at least allow you to get hands on with the car. Tesla did this, Lucid does this, even Polestar with its Volvo connection, has them. I have to say, I don't really like these pop-ups. The problem is they have one or two cars on the floor, so you didn't really get a sense of the variety of interior and exterior colors, various wheels and fabric packages. Fisker at the time had 12 colors to choose from, four of which were blue. There was Mariana blue which was a blue-green glossy finish, there was Blue Planet, an Easter Bunny pastel blue, Silver Lining, which had tinges of blue, and then there was Big Sur Blue, a $4,500 upcharge for the Metallic Matte Blue finish that honestly, needed to be seen on a full car. There were also two Blacks, a White, and a Gray, the classic Los Angeles colors. Or lack thereof. And then 2 different Greens, a Red and a Copper color that never made beyond a color wall. Contrary to Tesla, they only have five colors, White, Black, Gray, Blue, Red. But fortunately, there were enough Teslas on the road already to actually see what the colors look like.

Either way, the popup was there with two cars inside, so we popped by the pop up (haha) and I was excited to see the cars had made it to production. I have to say that upon my initial sitting in the car that I was pleasantly pleased with the spacing of the car. It felt nice and roomy, and yet at the same time, not overwhelmingly big. I felt myself neither lacking room, nor wanting more. The first thing that caught my attention was the massive morning was the massive thinner screen. At 17", it's a huge vertical LED screen. And seeing it rotate to a vertical display was cool. But as I sat there in the car I kind of started to get a sense, an actual overwhelming sense, of the amount of plastic in the car. My initial feeling was that it was overwhelming and on the short video I made of sitting in the car both my wife and I commented that the car felt plasticky. Both my wife and I commented that the car felt "plasticky". I found that a little disappointing in that sense, but overall, I thought the car was well laid out and basically like any other car, which was a good thing. I didn't need the car to be some newfangled this design plan of how cars are going to be designed in the future, I just needed to know that the car felt like a car, or an SUV in this point. The main selling point was that there's space for me, my wife and the dog and a huge range of 360 miles. Even with the EPA estimates being some 20% above what real world cars actually returned, I still figured the car could get somewhere around 300 miles between charges and that would easily do a round trip from Palm Springs to LA, or Palm Springs to Las Vegas on a single charge. At the end of the day, that's all I was looking for.

That's when Adam walked up to us and started talking about the virtues of the car, of which looking at the rear trunk space I was actually a little surprised that it wasn't more space, and not disappointed that there wasn't a frunk. Everybody makes a big deal about a frunk. My Polestar had a frunk. And for three years, I never used it. From there he offered us a test drive, and that perked my ears up. Cool, let's do it!

Nancy and Chris on a test drive, Fisker Ocean Extreme

We gave Adam our information and headed upstairs to the fourth level of the parking garage where they parked the test drive Fiskars cars. For humor, one of the Fiskers was on a test drive, and in it's place, was some douche-bag Tesla owner who had parked there and plugged in the charger. What an A-hole!. But back to the Ocean, this was going to be fun I thought as we were driving around the parking garage. At least I got to see what to see how the car felt in typical LA traffic. Unfortunately, it was a super-crowded Saturday afternoon and really, we only got to drive about a mile in total, just circling the block of The Grove. Overall as we pulled out of the lot onto the Beverly Blvd. I thought the ride was pretty nice in handling the busted up street beneath us, giving a soft, smooth ride similar to BMW X5 or Mercedes M-class. When we got to the light at Fairfax, that's when Adam shared the information on "The Boost". This was going to be of mind blowing experience for an all-wheel drive electric vehicle. He instructed me on the screen to go to Settings, then Driving, then press the Boost button. Then, back on the steering wheel, switch the drive mode to Hyper. Then he said the words I've always dreamed of hearing from a test drive, "When the light turns green punch it!" And punch it I did!

I was so surprised to hear the screeching of the rear tires under acceleration. I couldn't believe it! I guess when you select the boost and the hyper, it disconnects the front motor and puts all the torque into the rear. And the quick acceleration from the Hyper setting spins the tires into a high pitched screech that caught the attention of several pedestrians. I couldn't believe it, the idea of an electric car burning rubber? They usually have dual motors in all-wheel drive which pretty much eliminates that. It was fun and definitely quickened the pulse.
The rest of the drive around the block was pretty sedentary, as we quickly caught up to traffic. As I said this was Saturday afternoon and the streets were pretty packed, so I didn't really get a chance to open her up. But the ride was pretty stable and if anything, it gobbled up the war-torn streets pretty well. I was impressed with the car, and Nancy agreed, but I was a little unimpressed with the finishes. That's when Adam said yes, I should try the other car with the white Alcantara interior we return.
So we made it back to the garage, and we headed back to the showroom to check out the Alcantara. It did feel much nicer, more elegant, more sophisticated. I thought to myself, this very well could be the car that I purchase when my Polestar lease expires. But that was going to be another 10 months away, so I had to pace myself and not get too excited about the idea of being a Fisker owner. Little did I know...