Fisker Automotive Inc., whose $103,000 luxury hybrid car was driven by celebrities including Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, filed for bankruptcy with plans to sell itself to Hybrid Tech Holdings LLC, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The Anaheim, Calif.-based company listed assets of as much as $500 million and debt of as much as $1 billion in a chapter 11 petition filed yesterday in bankruptcy court. Assets include a shuttered General Motors Co. factory in Wilmington that Fisker had planned to reopen. Safety recalls, a battery supplier that went bankrupt and shipments lost to Hurricane Sandy all contributed to the company’s financial woes, Henrik Fisker, the auto designer who co-founded the company, told Congress in a hearing April 24. A House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee scrutinized a $529 million federal loan granted to Fisker in 2009, questioning why the government had made it in the first place and what the company would do to repay taxpayers. Fisker missed its first payment on the low-interest U.S. loan on April 22. It had drawn about $193 million of the loan before being cut off by the U.S. Energy Department for missing milestones.
