--- title: "Fisker went bankrupt and owners built open source car company from the ashes" url: https://daily.dev/posts/fisker-went-bankrupt-and-owners-built-open-source-car-company-from-the-ashes-nsir6lbgv source_url: https://electrek.co/2026/05/16/fisker-ocean-open-source-ev-story-after-bankruptcy type: article source: "Hacker News" published: 2026-05-17T04:06:51.150Z updated: 2026-05-17T04:07:38.280Z tags: ["open-source", "reverse-engineering"] reading_time: 9 upvotes: 1 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Fisker went bankrupt and owners built open source car company from the ashes **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary After Fisker Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2024, roughly 11,000 Fisker Ocean owners faced the prospect of their $40,000–$70,000 EVs becoming inoperable as cloud-dependent software systems went dark. In response, owners formed the Fisker Owners Association (FOA), a 4,000-member nonprofit that reverse-engineered proprietary firmware, mapped CAN bus networks, published open-source tools on GitHub, organized bulk parts purchases, and launched mobile repair programs in Europe. Technical highlights include a Home Assistant integration exposing the car's cloud API, published CAN bus DBC files, and community guides for sniffing CAN traffic and decoding diagnostic trouble codes. A $2.5 million deal with American Lease to preserve cloud services collapsed over a refusal to provide itemized invoices, cutting remote connectivity for owners. The story raises broader questions about software escrow mandates, right-to-repair legislation, and open-source requirements for cloud-dependent vehicles, as more EV startups face potential bankruptcy. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The CRA Readiness Reality: What Changed \(and What Didn’t\) Between 2025 and 2026?](https://daily.dev/posts/the-cra-readiness-reality-what-changed-and-what-didn-t-between-2025-and-2026--gnnp5ktpp) · Linux Foundation · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The EU CRA Doesn’t Change What Good Open Source Governance Looks Like. It Just Makes the Accountability Visible.](https://daily.dev/posts/the-eu-cra-doesn-t-change-what-good-open-source-governance-looks-like-it-just-makes-the-accountabil-ktb7v0fog) · Security Boulevard · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [CRA Compliance: A Wake-up Call for Open Source](https://daily.dev/posts/cra-compliance-a-wake-up-call-for-open-source-xvwzazq8s) · OpenSSF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/fisker-went-bankrupt-and-owners-built-open-source-car-company-from-the-ashes-nsir6lbgv)