Coal Burning Electric cars and the government
Not a good mix -- from
Zero Hedge:
Total Karma Recall: Fisker Pulls All Cars Due To Fire Risk
Last week we reported on the searing woes plaguing the Karma "supercar" of green automaker Fisker, following the most recent episode of automotive spontaneous self-immolation. In fact, things for the company that has so far received $529 million in federal subsidies are so bad that also last week Fisker announced its third CEO hire in the past year (when in a supremely ironic move it hired the former head of the Chevy Volt program Tony Posawatz). As of last night things just went from bad to even worse, following the inevitable next step: a total recall of all Karmas currently on the road. Oh well: nothing that burning, quite literally, several hundred more million in taxpayer funding won't solve.
We taxpayers have given almost half a billion to a Finish company.
Here's another foreign company/government subsidy failure -- from
CBS News:
Electric car boom in Ind. city goes bust
Elkhart, Indiana lost jobs faster than any other city in the country in 2009. Both Democrats and Republicans promised to re-energize manufacturing in the city, backing a new electric car plant. But as CBS News investigated, instead of a boom, things went bust.
With unemployment peaking above 20 percent, Elkhart, Indiana was at the white-hot center of the economic meltdown, and a natural launch point for President Obama's electric vehicle initiative.
" So that's why I'm here today," the president said three years ago. "To announce $2.4 billion in highly competitive grants."
Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels was also on board in convincing Norwegian company Think Global to open a plant in Elkhart to build Think City electric cars with a sticker price of about $42,000.
But wait -- there's more:
But it turns out the company had a checkered track record, including three previous bankruptcies. We recently visited Think City's Indiana plant, and here's what we found: a largely empty warehouse.
Everybody hoped that by this time there would be more than 400 workers inside a bustling plant. Instead, today, there are just two workers at Think City. Rodney and Josh are slowly finishing assembly on a few dozen 2011 models shipped in from Norway.
We were able to drive a Think City car around the empty space where investors once envisioned an assembly line churning out 20,000 vehicles a year.
Now in its fourth bankruptcy, Think Global has been bought by a Russian investor who didn't return our calls.
If the government actually stood back and got out of the way, we would be a lot further down the road to recovery. Instead, our masterminds feel compelled to meddle...
Posted by DaveH at August 19, 2012 5:31 PM