In 2009, Fisker Automotive was awarded more than $500 million in low-interest federal loans to help the company develop long-range, plug-in, electric hybrid vehicles. At the time, Vice President Joe Biden announced that Fisker would re-open a shuttered former GM factory in Wilmington, Delaware, and said the plan marked “a new chapter in which we strengthen American manufacturing by investing in innovation.  … [W]e’re on our way to helping America’s auto industry reclaim its top position in the global market.” Less than four years later, the Delaware factory has never re-opened, and Fisker has told employees they will be laid off:

Fisker Automotive Inc., a recipient of federal loans to develop and build luxury plug-in cars, is firing about 75 percent of its workforce after failing to secure a deal with an automotive partner to fund operations.
The maker of rechargeable $103,000 Karma sedans told a “core group of employees in Southern California” yesterday of the plan and expects about 25 percent of workers to stay, the Anaheim, California-based company said in an e-mailed statement. …
Fisker has struggled since halting assembly of rechargeable Karma sedans last year when the supplier of the car’s lithium- ion batteries … filed for bankruptcy, and after access to the U.S. loans was blocked in 2011. Henrik Fisker, the auto designer who co-founded the company, quit last month over unspecified disagreements with other executives. …
About 160 people at the company were told today they were being fired …
Last week, China’s Dongfeng Motor Group Co. … a carmaker that had considered buying a stake in Fisker, said those discussions were over.

The White House issued no statement Friday from Vice President Biden on the Fisker layoffs.