Del. Governor Notified Of Fisker Layoffs

DOVER, Del. (AP) — The state of Delaware will continue to work with troubled automaker Fisker Automotive Inc., which notified Gov. Jack Markell's office of its plans Friday to lay off a large number of its staff, a spokeswoman for the governor said.

The company said the layoffs involve about three-fourths of the workers at its Anaheim, Calif., headquarters. It didn't provide numbers.

Fisker made the Karma plug-in hybrid sports car. It planned to hire more than 2,000 people to build a second line of electric hybrid cars, the Atlantic, in a former General Motors plant on Boxwood Road in Newport.

Markell spokeswoman Cathy Rossi says state officials are "disheartened to learn that Fisker intends to lay off most of its remaining workforce."

"This does not bode well for a company that, at one point, had the potential to produce a cutting-edge clean technology vehicle in Delaware," she added.

She noted that Fisker no longer has a battery supplier and has had difficulty obtaining additional capital from the U.S. Department of Energy. Fisker had received $193 million of a promised $529 million federal loan. But a series of problems led to Energy Department to freeze the loan in May 2011. That left the firm without access to the money it needed to begin production of the Atlantic.

Rossi says Delaware officials want to "put autoworkers back on the job."

"The state will continue to work with Fisker's investors and remaining management to make the best of this situation," she said.

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