Henrik Fisker has come a long way in the past few months, from the Man With No Car (or at least none that anyone had driven) to Elon Musk’s Worst Nightmare. Oh wait – he already was that.

But now Elon is really grinding his molars because Fisker Automotive has outscored Tesla on the big DOE Handout Challenge, $529 million to $465.

The funds come from the DOE’s Advanced Technologies Vehicle Manufacturing Loan program, and are to be spent on getting two Fisker models into production. The first $170 mil is to help the supplier community tool up for the kick-ass Karma [for the first of which Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has clearly locked in his order - Ed.] into production next summer. The remaining $360 million is for the production development of a lower-priced ($39,000) 2013 Fisker model which has a name – Nina – and not much else yet to hang an extension cord on.

The slippery-slope math is that the loan will save about 5,000 auto-industry votes, er, jobs, which comes out to less than $106,000 per job spread from here to 2013, and if Fisker lasts, it’ll end up being a fair bet in Nu Deal terms, especially if we can actually go to a Fisker dealership and take a test drive. Besides, it’s a loan so maybe we’ll even get it back.