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Comments: 293 +- Your Rights Online: $529M Gov't Loan To Develop $89,000 Hybrid Sports Car on Saturday September 26, @09:16AM
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theodp writes "The WSJ reports that a tiny car company backed by former VP Al Gore has just gotten a $529M US government loan to help build an $89,000 hybrid sports car in Finland. The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive follows an earlier $465M government loan to Tesla Motors, purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Fisker's other investors (PDF) include the Al Gharaffa Investment Co., a Cayman Islands corporation."
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Hybrid car (Score:3, Insightful)
The article makes it sound like it would only be a car for the "elite", but I think the hybrid/electric car development also plays a big role in it. Considering how shitty hybrid car development is by far, its only good. And maybe now US can stop relying so much on oil too.
Re:Hybrid car (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree; look at any commodity...in this case, let's say the home computer...and then look backwards in history. Early on, the progeny of such items were expensive, and there's a reason for that. It takes a hell of a lot of money to solve the early challenges, and only after they get solved do issues of producing something more cheaply get worked out. In addition to that, if you look at normal automotive development, you'll see that a lot of the R&D actually takes place in the F1 circuit. Talk about expensive, but it's what gave us a lot of the features we now have for ordinary cars, like ABS. But even then, it was only the most expensive cars that got those features first, before it became cheaper and cheaper. At this point, every Chevrolet made has ABS, and it's been like that for years.
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Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Interesting)
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Typical WSJ Demagoguery (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote the definition of demagogue (Oxford English Dictionary):
Note first the prominent placement of "Al Gore" in the article. Immediately the prejudices against Gore are brought out in the reader, as much work has been done to demonize him. Then the "luxury car" moniker, implying that this isn't for the good of the "common people", but only for rich elites. Finally comes the "rights of the taxpayer" meme, where firmly instilled prejudices against government taxation and spending are brought out.
Nowhere in the article is any real perspective given about the development cycle of high tech products, and about how new tech often first appears in luxury goods before percolating down to the mass market. Nowhere is it mentioned that government has often helped nurture other high tech companies in the past (Boeing for example via military spending). The article is much like the bell for Pavlov's dog, where certain words such as "Gore" and "taxation" elicit a conditioned response in indoctrinated readers. The Wall Street Journal has become the Pravda of the right.
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Re:Hybrid car (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah but intel, etc didn't beg the government for a handout to do it...
Uh, yeah they fucking did!
Intel has received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks -- that's flat-out gift money, by the way -- to build their fabs in Oregon as opposed to someplace else. And they've done this multiple times. The total subsidies, tax breaks, and other incentives they've received in their life time is huge.
But a loan is suddenly "begging the government for a handout" and something no other brand new technology had to do? Please! Let's say they never pay back a single dime -- then they're only equal to hundreds of other businesses.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A tax break is NOT 'flat-out gift money.' It's keeping the money you've earned.
You should get a job and earn some money. You'll quickly understand the difference.
Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Insightful)
Every economist and expert they interviewed said the same thing-- none of these loans the government has made to boost the economy will be repaid.
I believe it, I just don't think that's such a terrible thing in this case. And it's 100% not new.
Loan is the new word for gift because the public has become touch about money.
You'd think in today's America that the word "loan" would automatically be associated with something that isn't going to be paid back :)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd think in today's America that the word "loan" would automatically be associated with something that isn't going to be paid back :)
It is, that's why people are getting pissed off about it. Up here in Canada the government recently bailed out.... um, loaned, GM a shit tonne of money. They kept calling it a loan but no-one is under any illusion that GM is ever going to pay it back. Hell, I'm pretty sure that if the government tries it'll be all, "Oh my, we're barely on our feet as it is! But you're right a loan is a loan and you should be paid back, here, let's close our company and liquidate our assets to pay you back. Of course th
Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Insightful)
You do understand theres other kinds of power plants than just oil? Water power is really green, and nuclear power aswell (and the worries about that aren't really adjusted; theres nuclear reactons everywhere)
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Re:Hybrid car (Score:5, Funny)
But why can't we just build hydroelectric dams or fission reactors right into the car itself? Or better yet...wind powered cars. Just think how fast a wind turbine would spin on top of a car going 80MPH. The thing would practically power itself.
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Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Funny)
But why can't we just build hydroelectric dams or fission reactors right into the car itself? Or better yet...wind powered cars. Just think how fast a wind turbine would spin on top of a car going 80MPH. The thing would practically power itself.
Don't be daft.
You have to build the hydroelectric dams into boats.
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Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Interesting)
But why can't we just build hydroelectric dams or fission reactors right into the car itself? Or better yet...wind powered cars. Just think how fast a wind turbine would spin on top of a car going 80MPH. The thing would practically power itself.
I was listening to the radio a couple days ago, and I literally heard someone, in all seriousness, call in and ask the guy:
"Why don't we just make one big windmill, and have it blow at the little windmills so they're always turning? Wouldn't that give us free electricity?"
The state of science in our country is sooooooooo goddamn appalling...
-Taylor
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Re: (Score:2)
Hydro is all used up; we're not building any more big dams. Same goes with nukes (there's one still in the process of being built, but I wouldn't hold my breath). So anything which results in increased demand for electricity is going to mostly end up increasing burning of coal.
Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Informative)
Hydro is all used up; we're not building any more big dams. Same goes with nukes (there's one still in the process of being built, but I wouldn't hold my breath). So anything which results in increased demand for electricity is going to mostly end up increasing burning of coal.
Ahem... [wikipedia.org] Also... [wikipedia.org]
However you are right, we are only going to be increasing our coal consumption dramatically as we change our energy demands to electrical. Hopefully people do not ignore the long term environmental effects of electricity generation. At any rate the coal companies do have a point... centralized generation of any kind is bound to be less polluting then having millions of tiny little gas engines spreading the pollution all over the world.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If we were going to use them, we would have done so already while oil was cheap. Now it is not and won't be again. Solar/Wind/Tidal are just tools built from oil for increasing the EROEI of the invested oil. They are fundamentally not a replacement for oil.
WTF? I can't possibly see what you mean... When oil was cheap, we used oil... Makes sense to me. Now oil is not cheap, so we look for alternatives. Put enough money into research, and we'll figure this whole solar thing out. Same with tidal - there is massive energy there and a LOT of coastline in the world.
I seriously don't understand your argument that if we were going to use it, we would have used it already, it really doesn't make any sense.
-Taylor
Re:Hybrid car (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, even if the power comes from fossil fuel plants, emissions can be controlled to a much higher degree at a central location compared to thousands of car engines scattered everywhere and moving around. For instance, technology is currently being developed to capture carbon dioxide from the combustion and pump it back into the ground.
Another advantage is that excess heat may be used to heat buildings (i.e. a CHP-plant [wikipedia.org]).
Parent
Re:Hybrid car (Score:4, Informative)
water (hydro electric via damning rivers) is not green. It destroys the ecosystem in any river it is implemented in. Migratory river fish such as salmon are rapidly going extinct due to damning of rivers.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's more about the silt being help up by dams, the fish can manage just fine with fish ladders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder [wikipedia.org]
you left a very important point out (Score:5, Interesting)
Large dams and hydroelectric facilities there are only one half the benefit, we also store water for drought times, and this is critically important and we just slap need those dammed up reservoirs now. In fact, we need more of them, not less.
Yes, there are environmental negatives to them, same as anything else, but we simply *need* the water storage facilities, there is no replacement for them with any other practical tech out there at this time, and as long as we need that, might as well get some electricity from it at the same time.. For example, where I live in Georgia, we are coming off a near three year drought with plenty of rain this year, like right now in fact, but we got to within a few weeks of no water but emergency supplies only for millions of people in the Atlanta region last year, and that is *with* large reservoirs. If they didn't exist and got torn down, well....it would fall into the maximum suckage area. Same with any number of other places around the US and the world. We have little choice. Dams/reservoirs and better usage and conservation are our only options, desalination is just way way way too expensive to do it for billions of people,even nuke powered. It's just better to store up rain when it is plentiful.
As to that "salmon" bugaboo, we have the tech to mitigate that, it's called fingerlings and tanker trucks. They don't do it a lot but *they could* for wild salmon. They can get moved around the dams without major loss. It doesn't take many adults to get thousands and thousands of fingerlings either, they could net some adults when migrating up the river to go spawn, or they use what are called "fish ladders", move em around the dam, then re capture the fingerlings later and put them back in the river downstream of the dam, or do it in long concrete runway tanks that are already old and used tech. Using tanker trucks is the main way they move around and stock trout now for instance.
As to the methane, that's what natural gas is, methane with some scent added to it so people can smell it. If we can eliminate the need to burn natural gas in generating plants by using hydropower and windchargers and so on, that's the tradeoff for the dammed up areas releasing some methane. It's not perfect, but we get a lot more benefits from the hydropower and reservoirs than not. *Everything* we humans do is a tradeoff with "nature", so the best is to look where we can be cleaner and more efficient. And that's it.
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nuclear, hydroelectricity, wind, solar, etc...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well yeah, that's kinda the whole point, right?
Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
In the way that gamer early-adopters help fund computer components the rest of us later buy for dirt cheap, early-adopter rich folk can fund tech that will trickle down. Toys don't have to be built on the scale (and at the massive risk level) of mass market products.
We are in the infancy of alternative vehicle tech. Lots of companies won't survive (no problem) but we need them to pursue development that large automakers will not.
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Re:Typical (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Try living here and saying that.
Signed, almost all of America.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
US technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Much is being made of the US Govt is funding these cars that are to be built outside the US, but the fact is that the technology is going to be owned by a US company. Fisker is essentially outsourcing every aspect of their development but the resulting technology, and the profits, will accrue to the US business and be taxed in the US. It seems perfectly reasonable for the US govt to underwrite creation of valuable technology that will benefit the US in the long term. People need to get over the fact that the US is now a post-industrial nation who's future lies in innovation rather than manufacturing.
Re:US technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Now try to square that statement with the state of the US primary and secondary educational systems...
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Re:US technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, you would make an AWESOME dictator! You're like the bastard love-child of Caesar and Stalin. Please, please, PLEASE get involved in politics!
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Re: (Score:3)
I think his point is that dictators have often dehumanized the populace while raising the importance of a small minority. As soon as you start calling people "beasts" you can justify just about anything.
The lines you draw between "the proles" and "the intelligent" simply are artificial ones. It's not "us" against "them". I do recognize the strange backlash that's developed against intelligence and knowledge, but I think it's another case of a vocal minority trying to overstate its position.
You do far mor
Re:US technology (Score:4, Informative)
Much is being made of the US Govt is funding these cars that are to be built outside the US, but the fact is that the technology is going to be owned by a US company. Fisker is essentially outsourcing every aspect of their development but the resulting technology, and the profits, will accrue to the US business and be taxed in the US.
Unless the big profits just happen to be made by an offshore sub-contractor which just happens to be owned by the people behind Fisker ;-)
Seriously, giving money to multinational corporations is just asking for that kind of scam. And when it happens, it will probably use a loophole in the laws so these guys do not even risk jail time.
Besides, hybrid technology is not that new anymore. I have my doubts if it should be reason enough for governments to fund a new car maker. A better use of tax money would be battery research that is released under Open Access, with the patents going to the public domain.
Parent
Behold your green government (Score:3, Insightful)
Electric sports cars - a good plan (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the niche of electric sports cars, so far occupied by Tesla, has been an incredibly cunning strategy. Consider some strengths and weaknesses of an electric car:
+ Instant high acceleration; high torque available at any time, at any speed
+ Shiny and novel and impressive
- Heavy and bulky batteries
- Short range
- Have to charge it a lot
- Expensive
And the requirements and constraints of a sports car:
Need: Good speed and acceleration
Need: Shiny and novel and impressive (i.e. expensive), so you can show off
But: Drinks fuel faster, may have shorter range.
But: You probably won't go very far in it, or very often.
But: Often have lots of interior luxuries stripped out in the name of weight saving.
Bingo! The requirements of a sports car are - to a reasonable extent - satisfied well by an electric motor. You get incredible acceleration, whenever you want. You get something impressive and futuristic-sounding and exotic. The constraints that lightweight sports cars have *already* do well to mask the disadvantages of an electric vehicle - with a sports car you probably expect reduced range, you don't want to use it all the time (so charging time not an issue, just keep it in the garage plugged in), you don't expect to carry groceries (bulk of the batteries doesn't matter), you don't expect lots of luxuries (so they can be stripped out to somewhat compensate for battery weight). And if you wanted a sports car you were already prepared to spend something expensive (and probably susceptible to image-based marketing - so the futuristic, green, responsible but exciting thing an electric sports car has will probably work on you!).
As a bonus, sports cars are usually expensive in terms of fuel, whilst an electric car is going to be cheap. Probably even in the US, even more so in other markets.
Genius. Goes to show that all those companies trying to make practical, electric town cars might have been starting from the wrong place!
WTF!! (Score:4, Insightful)
DERP. (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla got a loan to develop a sedan (from the ground up) that they will produce in the US.
They currently sell a Lotus Elise-based sports car, because (as a start up) they couldn't afford to develop both the drivetrain AND the rest of the car. It was more efficient for them to source the body/frame from Lotus.
Not only that, but the current generation sports car that Tesla's selling is intended to bring down the cost of the drivetrain package through production volume, while subsidizing development for the sedan.
THE MORE YOU KNOOOW~
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Re:WTF!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wow, There Goes the WSJ (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, I don't recall the WSJ being this biased. Did this all happen after the Mrudoch purchase?
Who cares if Fisker is backed by Gore? Why would that surprise anyone? Gore has money and is an environmentalist. Gore backing an electric car company is almost expected. Both Tesla and Fisker are American companies. Tesla is building a manufacturing plant in CA and it sounds like Fisker is going to be American built, at least for the mass produced version. Yes, Teslas are currently British built but that's for their supercar and first model.
Seeding electric car startups is one way we're going to rebuild the American auto industry. Trying to reboot GM and Chrysler might very well be a lost cause, as some of us had suggested. If these two companies are successful, they will allow America to leapfrog the Japanese and Germans in the making of efficient cars. The Chinese are trying to do the same thing. An electric car is in many ways much simpler than a gasoline driven one. All the accumulated advantages and knowledge of traditional car companies go out the window because the electric motor has a lot less parts than a gasoline engine.
If you disagree with government aid to companies, then it doesn't matter what kind of companies, venture, or backers a companies has. However, if you are OK with some government aid, then Tesla and Fisker are pretty good choices in my opinion. For once, instead of aiding old, antiquated corporations, the government is aiding nimble startups that can potential disrupt and jolt an entire industry.
Greenwash (Score:4, Insightful)
The consumerist faux environmentalism backed by mainstream politicians like Gore is little more than fraud intended to enrich them personally.
The last thing a sports car, any sports car, can be is green. Sports cars are toys for the rich that consume massive amounts of energy both in their production and their use. Whether that energy is elecric or fossil fuel is almost secondary at this point. As a species we need to both make massive cuts in our energy use and change the way we generate that energy if we are to have any hope of survival.
If you take environmentalism seriously it means no more cars full stop. At least for the forseeable future. Putting a 50-100kg person inside a ton of steel is simply not an energy efficient method of transportation.
If you think AGW is some kind of fraud, why build electic cars at all? if you take the predictions of climate scientists remotely seriously you need to realise that the infinite growth demanded by consumerism is an insane pipe dream that will desroy us.
What's that you say??? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, color me a retarded limp-dicked tofu-eating socialist.
I never would have guessed this would happen...
~
Slashdot - the Murdoch way? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, many adults are not able to understand the difference between "million" and "billions". The total amount of the government loan (not handout) of given to these two innovative automakers add up to less than a billion dollars. Compared that to nearly a trillion dollars that has been spent over the last year to rescue banks and investment bankers. It is very likely that a lot more than a billion dollars of the government handout to the banks was used to paid "guaranteed bonuses" for the executives who were (ir)responsible for bringing their financial institutions to the brink of bankruptcy. And the "Citizens Against Government Waste" somewhat did not bother to make any comments regarding the $1 Trillion handout to Wall Street...
Re:Vote for change! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I am a realistic and moderate Libertarian. I don't believe the state should tell people what to do with their bodies, I don't believe in so much government (and taxes). I believe in more personal freedom *AND* responsibility that goes with it (including the ability to fail and suffer). But I understand the need for regulation and fair markets plus inclusion in the world economy and affairs (...to a point).
Extreme Libertarianism doesn't work any more than extreme anything.
But one thing is for sure, without REAL competition in the party system, there can be no real change. Even if people are not "for" any of the so-called "third parties", they should still support the idea of it being POSSIBLE for "third parties" to really participate and put real pressure on the "two parties". Choice is good. It is good for people, it is good for business, it is good for government. The way the system is setup now, there is no real choice... your vote only really works for the Republicrats or the Democans.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Professional Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
When did the WSJ sink to the level of Fox news?
When Rupert Murdoch bought it?
Parent
You're right. (Score:5, Informative)
Development of the $89,000 sports car is already complete. That car ships in a few months.
The DOE loan is for a $39K family car that will be built here.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/fisker-39k-plug-in-hybrid-electric-car-2012-ray-lane.php
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Re:The summary reeks of an agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
The majority of the people working at Financial Institutions aren't Republicans, just take a look at their campaign contributions.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Rupert Murdoch doesn't hate Al Gore, but he loves misinformed people bickering about half-truths on both sides of any issue.
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So why did the WSJ play up Gore's involvement, but not Powell's?
Because they want to make sure people still think Republicans and Democrats aren't sleeping together and pushing the same agenda. Ventura said it best: Politics is a lot like pro wrestling... They fight for show, but off the ring, they're best buddies.