The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened one second investigation into startup Fisker’s Ocean SUV after the agency received four complaints about the car running away unexpectedly, including one with an injury.
The company tells TechCrunch that it is “fully cooperating” with the security agency.
The new investigation comes just a month after NHTSA’s Office of Failure Investigation began investigating complaints of sudden loss of braking performance. Fisker claims the problem was fixed with a software update released to the vehicles in December.
Fisker has had problems with the Ocean since it started delivering the SUV last year. Owners have been complaining to the company for months about the SUV’s sudden loss of power, problems getting in and out of the vehicle, problems shifting gears and the SUV’s hood going up, TechCrunch revealed last week.
The four complaints reported to NHTSA describe scenarios where owners had trouble moving into or out of park. An owner in Pennsylvania claims his Ocean sometimes shifts into neutral instead of park, causing the SUV to roll backwards. On one occasion in December, that owner says they were getting out of the SUV when it started rolling and the open driver’s side door hit them on the ground. The owner says they were able to “get up, jump in the car and stop it before it hit another car.”
NHTSA’s ODI can open four levels of investigation: Defect Claim, Preliminary Assessment, Recall Inquiry, and Technical Analysis. Similar to the brake detector, this rollover complaint investigation is classified as a preliminary assessment, which the agency says it’s trying to complete within eight months. NHTSA says the goal of the preliminary assessment is to “determine the scope and severity of the potential problem and fully evaluate potential safety-related issues.”
