Crippled carmaker Fisker Automotive suffered yet another indignity this month, as the DOE helped itself to $21 million of Fisker’s cash, which will go towards paying down the $192 million that Fisker owes the government.
Crippled carmaker Fisker Automotive suffered yet another indignity this month, as the DOE helped itself to $21 million of Fisker’s cash, which will go towards paying down the $192 million that Fisker owes the government, according to Reuters.
“The department recouped the company’s approximately $21 million reserve account – funds that came from the company’s sales and investors, not our loan – and will apply those funds to the loan,” said DOE spokeswoman Aoife McCarthy. “Using the safeguards we write into our loan agreements, the Department stopped disbursing on the loan in June 2011 after the company fell short of the aggressive milestones that we had established as a condition of the loan.”
A DOE official said that Fisker missed the deadline for a $10 million loan payment this week, and other sources told Reuters that, before the DOE swept its account, Fisker had less than $30 million on hand and was struggling to conserve enough cash to keep the doors open.
The company has already laid off three quarters of its staff, and hired a law firm to prepare a possible bankruptcy filing. The true signal that the end is here: the company’s web site at www.fiskerautomotive.com seems to have disappeared.
This week, company founders Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler are expected to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The title of the hearing, “Green Energy Oversight: Examining the Department of Energy’s Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive,” makes it clear that they will be performing before a tough crowd.
Source: Reuters
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