Bankrupt Fisker Unable To Port EV Data, Risking Multi-Million Dollar Fleet Deal (techcrunch.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fisker's Chapter 11 bankruptcy has hit a major snag, as the company buying the startup's remaining fleet of electric SUVs says it might not complete the purchase because of a surprising technical issue. The buyer, a New York-area leasing company called American Lease, says in a new filing that Fisker now believes there is no way to transfer the information connected to each SUV to a new server not owned by the bankrupt EV startup. Since American Lease needs that information to operate the vehicles after Fisker is dissolved, the leasing company has filed an emergency objection to the startup's liquidation plan. Fisker was expected to have that plan confirmed in bankruptcy court as early as this Wednesday.
American Lease has already handed over "tens of millions of dollars" after the purchase agreement of the 3,000-plus Ocean SUVs was approved in July. These funds have been crucial because Fisker was using them to pay for the bankruptcy process. Fisker needed that money to keep itself alive long enough to settle its debts and also prepare to liquidate what it says is around $1 billion in assets that were, until recently, under control of an Austrian subsidiary that was going through its own insolvency process. [...] American Lease says in its filing that Fisker first brought up the possibility that it wouldn't be able to transfer the information to a new server on Friday, October 4, at 8 p.m. ET. And it says that this week, Fisker informed American Lease that it won't be possible at all.
"[American Lease] cannot overstate the significance of this unwelcome news, conveyed to it only after it has paid [Fisker] tens of millions of dollars under the Purchase Agreement," the leasing company's lawyers write in the filing. "It is unclear at the present time what, if anything, Debtor representatives have known about the impossibility or impracticability of implementing Porting of the Purchased Vehicles, and when they learned or otherwise knew of that critical information." American Lease is asking to delay Wednesday's hearing and be allowed to perform "expedited and targeted discovery" of Fisker and its representatives to find out more about when Fisker learned of this problem.
American Lease has already handed over "tens of millions of dollars" after the purchase agreement of the 3,000-plus Ocean SUVs was approved in July. These funds have been crucial because Fisker was using them to pay for the bankruptcy process. Fisker needed that money to keep itself alive long enough to settle its debts and also prepare to liquidate what it says is around $1 billion in assets that were, until recently, under control of an Austrian subsidiary that was going through its own insolvency process. [...] American Lease says in its filing that Fisker first brought up the possibility that it wouldn't be able to transfer the information to a new server on Friday, October 4, at 8 p.m. ET. And it says that this week, Fisker informed American Lease that it won't be possible at all.
"[American Lease] cannot overstate the significance of this unwelcome news, conveyed to it only after it has paid [Fisker] tens of millions of dollars under the Purchase Agreement," the leasing company's lawyers write in the filing. "It is unclear at the present time what, if anything, Debtor representatives have known about the impossibility or impracticability of implementing Porting of the Purchased Vehicles, and when they learned or otherwise knew of that critical information." American Lease is asking to delay Wednesday's hearing and be allowed to perform "expedited and targeted discovery" of Fisker and its representatives to find out more about when Fisker learned of this problem.
Impossible (Score:2)
Re: Impossible (Score:3)
Legal issues about who customer data can be transferred to?
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drm locks and no funds to pay for an transfer lice (Score:3)
drm locks and no funds to pay for an transfer license?
Re: Impossible (Score:2)
Oops with an EC2 bucket?
Re: Impossible (Score:2)
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Quite simple: No documentation, no experts for it left and a really convoluted system. Then time and cost make it not "impossible", but as good as. It it takes, say, 10 years and 100M to reverse-engineer things, but you do not have the time or the money, then "impossible" becomes real, even if it is only "impossible under the given circumstances".
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Quite simple: No documentation, no experts for it left and a really convoluted system.
So it's not feasible, rather than impossible, and thus the claim that it is impossible is wrong.
They ALREADY spent 10's of millions of dollars, according to TFS, There's apparently over $1 billion in assets. I don't buy for a second that it's simply not feasible, given those sort of figures. IMO, this mystery is only such because they're not telling us all the facts. It might be fun to theorize and jump to conclusions, but maybe we should be asking why they're withholding that info? If it's a technical iss
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That is really nonsense. For all practical purposes "infeasible" and "impossible" mean the same thing.
As to it being not doable, something becomes practically impossible just as well if you do not have the people that can see a solution and you do not have the people that know enough to hire people that can see a solution. Of course, lawyers and business people generally only have a tenuous connection to reality, bit it is quite possible that a solution cannot practically be found here, even if it would be
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That is really nonsense. For all practical purposes "infeasible" and "impossible" mean the same thing.
Is English not your first language (honestly)? Do you also believe 2^32 is, for all practical purposes, the same as infinity? If we're not speaking the same language, that may explain why you'd think I'm spouting nonsense.
As to it being not doable, something becomes practically impossible just as well if you do not have the people that can see a solution...
Oh, you're doubling down on this. OK. That does not make this practically impossible, nor is it even infeasible. There is a clear and direct feasibility to hiring someone that can. It has clearly been done before, and within recent history (not that I think it has anything to do with whate
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That is really nonsense. For all practical purposes "infeasible" and "impossible" mean the same thing.
Is English not your first language (honestly)?
It is not, but the word have the same meaning in my native language. Unlike you, I am just not a terminology-nazi and, again, unlike you, I actually have a good appreciation of reality.
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That is really nonsense. For all practical purposes "infeasible" and "impossible" mean the same thing.
Is English not your first language (honestly)?
It is not, but the word have the same meaning in my native language.
Well, that explains things. BTW, you write in English very well. That said, please be aware that impossible and infeasible have different meanings in English. It's like the difference between "sometimes" and "never".
Unlike you, I am just not a terminology-nazi and, again, unlike you, I actually have a good appreciation of reality.
That's OK. Like you, I'm also an asshole sometimes :-P
Stupid (Score:2)
Fisker factory (Score:4, Informative)
It's a total shit show. https://jalopnik.com/fisker-le... [jalopnik.com]
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Right??? Those pics aren't bad AT ALL. Why highlight a photo of a couple office chairs next to a bog standard garbage can that is laying on its side? Just stand up the garbage - NBD. Or the short file cabinet that was tipped over - and the file folders all still in it even (not strewn everywhere, though that wouldn't even be a big deal) - it's in perfectly good condition, just laying on its side. OH NO! THE HORROR! Gimme a break
It is not impossible (Score:3)
DIFFICULT, perhaps, but if the original data remains accessible on the original server, then it can be copied, exported, converted, remapped, whatever.
It's just bits, not magic.
Re:It is not impossible (Score:4)
Just guessing, but it's more likely a legal issue than technical.
Re:It is not impossible (Score:5, Funny)
Just guessing, but it's more likely a legal issue than technical.
Or an economic issue. We're literally talking about a bankrupt company. How many highly qualified IT staff that are capable of executing a migration of a fundamental system do you suppose they currently have on payroll? I will bet a Marsbar they went to some contractor and said "can you migrate this" and they got the answer back in return "WTF is this? Do you have someone who can explain it or show us documentation?" only to be told "Someone? You mean ... like a human? There's only lawyers left here bro."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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... "can you migrate this" and they got the answer back in return "WTF is this? Do you have someone who can explain it or show us documentation?"
It's apparently worth over $1 billion. Hire someone, or a firm, or start a whole company even, and give them a few million to do it. That does not rise to the level of "impossible!" (and I hear Inigo Montoya question the use of that word in my head)
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No, it's worth nothing. That's the whole point of being bankrupt, it has not enough money to pay for basic operations much less debt obligations. During bankruptcy proceedings anything you may be worth in assets is not something you can use for operational expenses. Whatever value exists in the company is owed to someone already.
They can't just arbitrarily borrow money on hopes and dreams to pay for engineering. They aren't the US government.
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They can't just arbitrarily borrow money on hopes and dreams to pay for engineering. They aren't the US government.
Fisker doesn't have to borrow anything. The buyer, who has already sank $10+mil into this, does have money and an vested interest in completing the transaction, and they could certainly afford to sink a bit more in to port some data (on the assumption this is just about hiring someone competent).
Re: It is not impossible (Score:2)
Why don't just transfer the whole server to the new owners and don't copy any data? What else does this server contain that makes it so non-transferable? Nuclear launch codes? The CEO's secret cuckold pr0n stash?
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Accessing a database is more than just possessing it. You need to understand how it works so you can plug it into a new environment. And a database is just a pile of bits until you do something with it, so you need the applications that query it, the authentication systems, etc. They all need to know what the other is expecting and provide it. ...They're EVs. If they don't work without a server, they're badly designed. If it's just fleet monitoring, there are turnkey solutions that could be bolted in a
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That depends. Do you have engineers with real experience and a real clue? Then yes. But these are in really short supply in the IT field. And if you do not have these people, then "impossible" becomes a reality. Or maybe they asked IBM for help and got quoted a price that is so astronomically high that they simply cannot pay it ...
One more time... (Score:3)
...the cloud is a trap. Run away!
It's fine to store backup data on the cloud, but the customer MUST own their data and have access to a local copy.
If the law does not already guarantee this, the law must be changed.
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You're targeting the wrong thing. The customer doesn't care about about ownership nor locality. The requirement is continued functionality, nothing more. You say the cloud is a trap, but the reality is many functions we take for granted require some kind of cloud integration.
E.g. as an EV owner I find it really REALLY useful to see the charge status of my vehicle while it's off charging somewhere. Since NAT broke end to end connectivity of the internet that feature is by necessity cloud enabled. That's not
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E.g. as an EV owner I find it really REALLY useful to see the charge status of my vehicle while it's off charging somewhere. Since NAT broke end to end connectivity of the internet that feature is by necessity cloud enabled.
Did you forget that servers can and do exist outside of "the cloud"? Let alone the myriad of other solutions possible for that situation.
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Did you forget that servers can and do exist outside of "the cloud"? Let alone the myriad of other solutions possible for that situation.
I did not forget this. But what you have forgotten is that this is a distinction without a difference. I (the user) don't care where a server sits. Whether it is in the cloud, or some office is irrelevant to me. All I care is that something magically works.
Please think of some solutions to post, and remember when you post the solution your solution will be judged by its ability to be implemented by my mother reading only the first page of the manual and then throwing the manual in the trash. That is your cu
And there you have it (Score:3)
Not even a company can buy a physical product because that product is locked behind a digital wall.
Re: And there you have it (Score:2)
Mod parent up!
Technically or legally? (Score:5, Interesting)
One post speculated that American Lease isn't buying all of Fisker's technical assets, only the vehicles, meaning that they would end up getting more than they were paying for, including data on all of the other vehicles in Fisker's fleet, which presumably they don't want to inherit any responsibility for. Migrating only a subset of vehicles would require having a way to flash those specific vehicles with custom firmware, which would require pushing an update only to specific cars, which might require engineering effort involving staff that they no longer have.
If that's not the issue, then I'm wondering if the issue is technical — that they cannot transfer the data (e.g. because the servers were lost and there are no backups) — or legal (e.g. that the users' personal information cannot be transferred to a new company because of privacy laws, contractual terms, etc.). The former would be shocking, the latter not so much.
Worst comes to worst, one would reasonably assume the ability to simply hand over the physical servers as-is, along with root passwords, ownership of the domains, any signing keys, etc., and everything should keep working as it did before, just on a different network. But that only works if there aren't agreements in place or laws in place preventing such a transfer. And again, that largely depends on whether they're transferring control over everything (making this company the new Fisker, effectively) or only transferring the physical cars that the company is buying.
The other possibility is that this is some horror involving DNSSec and cars refusing to trust unsigned domains, or something similar, or needing to use a now-past-expiration signing key to sign some certificate, in which case CA rules may be problematic, or... basically at some point, I could easily see an extended period of company downtime resulting in a system becoming unserviceable without convincing a timestamping server to lie, at which point the only fix involves physically flashing the firmware in the main computer by unsoldering the flash parts, etc. I have no idea how far towards that sort of nightmare scenario they've gone.
So I'm going to be really curious to hear the "why" part of this story.
Re: (Score:3)
Having worked with 'good enough for today' software development shops, it is very much possible that the server is more than one server but rather a bunch of services across a bunch of poorly identified hosts where the 'discovery' mechanism is to hardcode ip addresses all over the place, potentially even in the source code itself. In a design like this you can't actually just move the server and start them in an other location, you would need to reproduce the networking environment, and if some of these har
Re: (Score:2)
It's certainly perplexing as to how it's so impossible with no explanation at all. And the article doesn't raise this point of no explanation either.
Lack of information.... (Score:2)
I'm going with "The private key for signing software updates for the vehicle disappeared in the chaos".
State-of-the-art security would have the private key on an unconnected computer; based on the stories being told, I have no problem believing that someone walked off with the computer ("The kids need a new one"), and it's likely been wiped and repurposed. When we had similar security, we used Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm - the key was split into 5 parts, and any three parts were sufficient to sign.
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This is what a key escrow service is for.
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We do love to speculate on technical issues. But there's a more fundamental one: financial. The company is bankrupt, virtually everyone has been laid off at this point, offices are empty. You can forget virtually any solution which requires engineering effort of any kind, even easy ones.
I hope (Score:5, Funny)
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"I can still buy their scissors. They're really good." - and DRM-free!
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"Wouldn't be possible"? What, within a deadline? (Score:2)
Rich Rebuilds (Score:5, Interesting)
Rich Rebuilds on Youtube bought a Fisker for $10,000, or roughly 90% off. It wouldn't charge. Turns out the charge port was in fail-safe, and once resetting the fail safe it worked. Thing is, to reset it from fail safe, you had to disassemble the entire charge port assembly, pull the port out, remove a solenoid, and manually reset it. This wouldn't be so terrible, but you can trip the fail-safe manually by pulling a wire loop in the driver side door frame. Pulling that wire loop means an hour and a half of work to reset the charge port.
Also, from the factory, it included multiple software bugs like aggressive torque steering due to a drive power imbalance, multiple false alerts showing up on the dash more-or-less constantly, and the car randomly rolling backwards when letting go of the brake on flat ground.
Firmware update (Score:2)
They need to update the firmware on the cars to point to a different server. They can probably just move the existing servers, but they would also need to acquire the Fisker domain (unless they hard-coded IP addresses, which would have been dumb but not inconceivable). Of course, the company probably no longer has any engineers who know how to update the firmware and point it at a new server, which is likely the key problem.
can an fake cell force DNS servers on DHCP? (Score:1)
can an fake cell force DNS servers on DHCP?
Just need to block cell use wifi and set your WIFI to use an DNS service with an host over ride?
Re: (Score:2)
What are you even talking about? No. Get some minimal clue about the technology.
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The OP theory is kinda silly but, "can an fake cell force DNS servers on DHCP?" would address that theory.
If it is about the fisker domain (it's almost certainly not, as that is trivial to work around), then yes... they could hijack the network connection from the car and force DNS traffic to go their own server.
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According to Rich Rebuilds, the firmware can only be updated locally by a tech. It takes 5 hours and they can't jump versions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
5 hours is it usb 1.1? (Score:2)
5 hours is it usb 1.1?
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Even USB 1.1 can transfer 27 GB in 5 hours. How big is this firmware?
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Even USB 1.1 can transfer 27 GB in 5 hours. How big is this firmware?
It's Sooo BIG that you can't comprehend how big it really is.
It makes the endless enormity of The Known Universe look Sooo Small /s
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Probably serial line at 2400 baud via acoustic coupler.
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Hahahaha, engineering even more crappy than a sane person could envision. I guess no actually good engineer was involved in the design process.
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Who would have though that not retaining critical people could be a problem? Well, yes. probably some "business" people were completely unaware that while they are a dime-a-dozen and easily replaced, the same is very much not true for competent engineers.
"Cloud software" (Score:2)
This may be relevant:
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-24/fisker-bankruptcy-ocean-car-owners-shareholder
Beta testing has its risks (Score:2)
You pay to be a beta tester (of a vehicle or of its unstable infant manufacturer) you take your chances. This is why I don't buy vehicles until several years into a model let alone a make. If it's not exhaustively proven in fleet use and with solid aftermarket parts support I don't need to own it.
Enthusiasts who score them cheap used may do interesting things with the components though. Hot rodding electric vehicles goes back several decades before Fisker.
In other words, (Score:2)
Fisker's greatest remaining asset (their fleet of cars) just turned to hot air (unusable, bricked). There is an easy solution for it. Abort the Chapter 11 proceedings and convert to Chapter 7. Scavenge the cars for usable parts and be done with it. Adding some more techno junk to the existing mountain of it won't change things much, anyway.
Crappy software engineering needs to be a crime (Score:2)
I mean, things like these are just completely pathetic and an utter disgrace for a supposedly "high tech" society. They need to stop.
BS (Score:2)