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Comment by jonhohle | Hacker News Reader

I’m sure all the money the US government put into Fisker was already gone by then. A decade later and even more reminders of what a terrible “investment” that was.

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A relative worked at Fisker recently. The loan you are talking about was in 2009. That version of Fisker went out of business in 2014.

The most "recent iteration" of Fisker was basically a company from scratch. It was only called Fisker because it's original founder (Henrik Fisker) retained the rights to the name and logo.

This time around there weren't any loans from the US govt.

Which also failed which proved that the founder is a bad bet and that if the US government chooses to invest again, it should steer clear of that dude.

Can’t decide if irony or surprise at the empirical naïveté is surprising me more about a HN comment advocating for blacklisting once-failed founders.

My point is public money shouldn’t be used for “investment”. If they contracted with the company to make a fleet and they didn’t deliver at least the public would have recourse to liquidate and collect. By handing out free money on a risky gamble, everyone loses.

What was all the money?

It's so far worked out for Tesla, and at least of the major auto companies in the US they're still alive when they could have gone under previously.

Supporting new private industry is good policy, if done with balance. China has been employing this very successfully industry after industry.

US govt. invested in Tesla? That's news to me.

DOE gave them a $465 million loan to build out their Fremont factory during the height of the GFC: https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla#:~:text=In%20January%202010...

adding context to the above comment:

> Tesla repaid its $465 million loan from the US Department of Energy (DoE) nine years early in 2013

Don't forget that a massive part of their income that allowed them to survive was selling carbon credits to the tune of billions of dollars, and that their cars have been massively discounted due to federal subsidies on EV cars (depending on your income level.... which btw doesn't apply to just them but makes a big difference).

I wouldn't qualify it as a subsidy. It was a credit that you take on your taxes. It's picking nits, sure, but subsidy sounds like the federal govt rolled up a truck full of money at EV car makers' factories.

The Federal government and state governments paying ~$10k to people who buy Teslas is the definition of a subsidy. People wrote $50k checks to Tesla and got $10k from the government for doing so.

They also have received various other grants, including ~$17 million for chargers.

Fisker continues to widen my eyes. Unfortunately.

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