Fisker: “Not a single dollar” from federal loans will be spent outside of America

Fisker Automotive, which plans to build a hybrid plug-in electric vehicle at the former GM plant on Boxwood Road, says “not a single dollar” from Department of Energy loans has been, or will be spent, overseas.

Fisker was the focus of a report prepared by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity late last week which said some of the loan dollars were spent on its assembly line in Finland, where Fisker is already producing the higher-end hybrid Karma. 

In a statement, Fisker says “Only private equity financing, of which we have raised over $600-million so far, has been used for costs not covered by the Department of Energy loans, of which only a small part is production costs in Finland.”

The automaker also says any federal money related to the Karma program was “used soley in the U.S. to fund design, engineering and integration work.”

The company says over 100 people are already at work in Delaware reconfiguring the plant.  A Fisker spokesman told Fox Business Network that it was on target to begin production of the Nina in about a year.  Eventually, about 2,000 may be working at the plant near Newport.