Keep in mind, we could have had local Na-Ion battery production in the US. The company producing them needed about $5m of bridge loans, with products already sitting in warehouses awaiting the UL certification.
This company got sold for scrap.
This company got sold for scrap.
Like, that's not an unreasonable size of loan for a regional expansion for medium-sized businesses; there should be some sort of lender interested in doing that for them.
Western industrial policy is indistinguishable from malicious interference.
First shutting down working and safe nuclear power plants in favour of coal, then that.
At this rate I start wondering who actually makes this policy, at most turns exposing the country more to the energy markets issues and making them more reliant on OPEC and Putin.
I don't think there is any other country which had this many opportunities and leads into high-growth and ultra-high-growth industries and made sure none of them panned out. That's not bad timing or bad luck, it's systemic. Maybe the US's conversion into a petrostate?
> In October 2012, A123 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was thrown into a narrative of Obama-era green energy failures with defunct California solar company Solyndra that had received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees — a comparison to which Vieau objects because A123's technology was "proven," and it built plants and hired people with government support.
> Wanxiang Group Corp., a subsidiary of the largest auto parts supplier in China, acquired its assets for $256.6 million after it had sought to acquire 80% of A123 earlier that year