Fisker Automotive lays off majority of employees
wheels.blogs.nytimes.com
wheels.blogs.nytimes.com
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/08/19/fisker-karma-cooling-fan-...
Hurricane Sandy slammed the port where hundreds of Fisker Karmas, some of which were already sold to customers, were trapped due to no one knowing how to get them moved or out of customs. 320 were destroyed in the resulting fires due to salt water getting in to the high voltage system. Simply having someone who was even mildly familiar with the process of getting cars handled at the port and on to truck or rail could have prevented that, but instead, the cars just sat for months after my father was let go.
Obviously my story is just a personal one, but from what I've heard from other ex-Fisker employees, basically every department was ruined this way, too.
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/12/29/fisker-sues-insurance-c...
Overweight, overwrought. Further shows how impressive it is Tesla makes compelling electric cars -- no other "start up" has come close.
I guess most people buying $100k cars can afford another one, though.
said about 150 employees had been fired while about 50
senior managers and executives had been retained.
April 22 deadline to repay a portion of a $193 million
low-interest loan from the United States Department of
Energy. Although Fisker was originally granted a $528.7
million loan in late 2009, that money was frozen after
Fisker fell short of its production targets.
Oh, and now that the US taxpayer has funded a 500m dollar investment into developing electric cars, European and Chinese manufacturers are sniffing around to pick it up at pennies on the dollar.
Come on guys! Pick free market or protectionism. And if you must mix the two, do it the right way round !
They spent $193 million from the $500 million before the US government cut them off. The "loan" was part of a 25 billion dollar DOE program.
If that is true, it says a lot about the internal culture. And it ain't good.
IMO they aren't going to try to get the company afloat again; they're just shoring up the edges to sell themselves to someone for their IP and other assets. (at least I'd hope so, since only retaining execs/mgmt if you're a tech/manufacturing company with the intent to somehow turn this thing around and stay in business is just insanity)
B. The Department of Energy's loan program has been an overwhelming success; failure rates have been lower than expected. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/21/1038907/-Solyndra-a...
C. Electric cars have an overall lower carbon footprint than gasoline vehicles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle#Air_po...
And, you are missing the whole point. As the grid becomes completely generated by renewable, then the carbon footprint of electric vehicles will be drastically reduced.
If the tax goes from 5-10% now to something in the thousands of percent over 100 years, it would lower fossil fuel use even as efficiency increases, while encouraging alternate fuels. The only losers would be primary producers (and I guess refiners, etc.) of fossil fuels; broad-spectrum energy companies should do ok since other forms of energy are still available and would gradually replace fossil fuels.
There is not a shortage of capital. It's just that right now, energy investments in new technologies aren't always viable. Creating an escalating tax would instantly make a lot of new energy projects viable, and private capital would be happy to make loans/equity investments/etc.
It would be unfair to tax a company overnight at a high rate for this stuff, because it would strand a lot of current investments. Replacing capital goods 20y ahead of schedule might actually have an environmental cost higher than doing so in 5-10 years, since there's a lot of energy and other pollution embodied in the capital goods. It also picks winners and losers based on something which wasn't made clear to people in advance.
Just as bad is saying "in 10 years, we're going to heavily tax or ban X", which would cost industry (say) $1t. "Good" participants, say half the market, spend $500b fixing things. "Bad" participants spend nothing on remediation but $10b on lobbying and then strand the $500b improvements made by the "good" participants.
In the US, it would essentially require a treaty or constitutional amendment to bind the government to a long-term plan which might otherwise be overturned through lobbying.
An escalating tax at least has the benefit of being minor pain up front, and viewed as "fair", so industry is more likely to cooperate. It's not worth going to the mattresses over a 5% tax, particularly if it takes an immediate ban or 50% tax off the table. Over time, the revenue stream will become important to the Government and to other positive government programs, so it'll be harder for industry to lobby to overturn it. At most, they might be able to lobby for a "temporary" freeze at a certain level.
Both are great examples of doing it wrong.
You do realize the disastrous ethanol subsidies were expanded during the Bush years, right? There's a lot of blame to go around for everyone on Capitol Hill.
I don't see a problem with the kind of research Obama wants to fund, but the money should go to universities producing publicly available research.
My problem is that Solyndra and Tesla are being held to a different standard altogether when it comes to Government spending. I am sick and tired of people complaining about these companies getting loan guarantees. Instead of looking at these loans in isolation they should look at the percentage of successful loans/guarantees made by the DoE. When you look at it from that perspective, money spent by DoE is the best bang for buck the Govt has got. We will never have a perfect scenario for Government spending. We should encourage innovation wherever it is happening be it a private company or a public entity as long as it fits in the overall strategy of moving the country forward. Upside to a successful Tesla cannot be valued in just dollars.
I totally look at the loans in isolation.
I ask: Should the government be involved in the free market by attempting to pick investments in order to guide growth in certain sectors of the economy?
My answer is: No. The Constitution does not allow for the government to perform this type of activity. Thus, the States did not agree to allow the Federal government to perform this type of activity. Due to the special place, power, and privilege of the Federal government - preventing overreach should be a prime concern for all citizens. If the citizenry decides to fundamentally and explicitly change the role of the Federal government, the Constitution should be amended to support that new role.