Car Maker Gets $529M US Loan, Builds Car in Finland

Another Energy Department loan guarantee is coming under scrutiny. ABC News has discovered that the Obama administration doled out a $529 million guarantee to Fisker Automotive to build its new state-of-the-art luxury hybrid, only to see Fisker build the car in a factory in Finland. Fisker says there were simply no American factories that could do the job, but insists that the government’s money all went to fund engineering and design work done in the US.

Company founder Henrik Fisker says that if he’d built a factory “where it was too expensive,” he’d fail, as Solyndra did. “We’re not in the business of failing; we’re in the business of winning … That’s why we went to Finland.” He adds that the government had signed off on the decision, so long as government money stayed in the US. But it’s clearly not what the administration originally had in mind; Joe Biden announced the loan at a closed Delaware auto plant, promising new manufacturing jobs. (More Fisker Automotive stories.)