Fisker lays off majority of staff

This story originally appeared on Automotive News

Fisker Automotive, the plug-in hybrid sports-car maker that has been grappling with financial troubles, laid off about 160 of its more than 200 employees Friday morning.

A Fisker source who was among the employees affected said the layoff took place at about 8 a.m. Pacific.

At about 8:30 a.m., employees were seen leaving Fisker headquarters in Anaheim, Calif., some carrying boxes and many with large white envelopes. Two people who identified themselves as Fisker employees but declined to give their names verified the layoffs took place.

The former Fisker employees said they were given no severance pay, other than compensation for untaken vacation days.

Fisker will retain about 53 senior managers and executives, a source told Reuters today, primarily to pursue buyers for the company's assets. Another unnamed employee verified that figure to Automotive News.

Calls to Fisker spokesmen and to Fisker's main phone number were not answered.

The cuts came less than a week after Fisker employees returned to work on April 1 after being furloughed on March 22. Fisker also is nearing a late-April deadline to repay some of the $193 million loaned to it by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The embattled automaker has retained crisis communications firm Sitrick and Co., based in Los Angeles.

Reuters reported last week that Fisker also had retained the law firm Kirkland and Ellis to prepare for a possible bankruptcy filing. Earlier in March, company founder Henrik Fisker resigned citing "several major disagreements with management" over the company's business strategy.

Fisker has built about 1,800 units of its $100,000 Karma plug-in hybrid, but none since battery maker A123 Systems declared bankruptcy last summer, leaving Fisker without a battery supplier.

Meanwhile, Fisker has been racing to find a partner or buyer to shore up its shaky finances. According to press reports, Zhejiang Geely, which owns Volvo, led the bidding to take over Fisker around the time of Fisker's resignation but later lost interest in a deal.

Dongfeng Motor Co. of China, which has collaborated on some projects with Nissan Motor Co., also had expressed interest in Fisker, but those talks appear stalled.

On April 1, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told Automotive News that the company was still in talks with more than one potential partner.

By Mark Rechtin and Ryan Beene- Automotive News