$529M DOE Loan Spawns $97K Made-in-Finland Cars 372
theodp writes "With PR successes like the Fisker Karma, does the Department of Energy need to worry about PR failures like Solyndra? ABC News and others are reporting that electric car company Fisker, which received a $529M federal loan guarantee with the approval of the Obama administration, is assembling its first line of $96,985 base-priced hybrid cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work. According to Green Car Reports, Fisker said the EPA had rated the Karma at 54 MPGe (MPG-equivalent) when running on electricity from its battery pack, and that the EPA-rated electric range would be 32 miles. Omitted from the press release was the 20-mpg rating for a Karma running on power from its range-extending gasoline engine."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Boy, it's great being a taxpayer in America. (Score:0, Insightful)
You never know what you didn't buy that you're paying for anyway!
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
So, not only are middle class tax dollars used to bail out and ensure the bonuses of those capable of affording a $90,000 "green" sports car, but they're also used to subsidize the production of said sports cars in another fucking country.
Re:The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's with my USA money, then yes.
Hybrid that gets 20MPG?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is a (Score:3, Insightful)
How else to explain giving government money to these firms?
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what happens when you let politicians near money.
Re:oh, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the point of the program is free money from the federal government. And the politicians can say they've invested $int64 billion dollars in environmental programs. They don't really care what those programs are, they just need to get rid of the money.
Are You Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
And to add insult, their first Fisker $97K car only gets the equivalent of 19MPG -- the same as the average SUV. Damn, I'm mad.
Both are highly politically connected... (Score:4, Insightful)
Green is new the buzzword for hiding payments to political allies.
http://dev.publicintegrity.org/2011/10/20/7152/energys-risky-1-billion-bet-two-politically-connected-electric-car-builders [publicintegrity.org]
As in, Fisker is connect to an Al Gore group and Tesla is connected to Google leaders who are major fund raisers for ......
So just like Solyndra, none of this was about viability, this was all about who is connected to whom, follow the money. It is nothing more than politics as usual
Re:Hybrid that gets 20MPG?? (Score:4, Insightful)
What was the business model that allowed the US Government to invest $500+M??
That's easy. The primary investors in this company donate copiously to the campaign coffers of Democratic Party politicians.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a loan, so it will be repaid, and with interest.
Just like Solyndra, I'm sure.
Is this supposed to be irony? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't really tell from the wording... was "PR Success" meant as irony?
These specs seem to be really poor -- $100K price tag, only slightly less than the high-end Tesla sports car, 32 mile electric range, which the Roberts Electric Car built in 1896 beats by 20%, and 20 MPG on gasoline, which my F150 truck beats by 13% on the freeway. Do the people of Finland really have such low standards?
All this for $592M in US tax money for a product that doesn't create a single US job. This is a success that makes up for the failure of Solyndra?
And now we're calling the Solyndra bankruptcy, with it's loss of more than a half billion dollars of taxpayer money, a PR failure??
Seriously?
Re:The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:1, Insightful)
Or, we could sit back and wait for the Chinese to do the innovation and use their manufacturing prowess to sell us cheap electric cars.
Which is exactly how it turned out with solar panels, except the Obama administration put half a billion tax dollars on a bonfire in the Solyndra parking lots so we could be warm while we watched it happen. Of course, they rigged that financing situation so that a handful of private investors would get paid back before the taxpayers ... private investors who happened to be friends of and fundraisers for the Obama campaign. Classy, huh?
Let private companies attract private fundraising for this sort of thing. And let only those people lose out if it's a waste. And if it's successful, let them be rich for having been smart about it (though being smart, and reaping those rewards is now an Eeeeeevil 1% thing to do - and we can't have that now, can we).
Re:Is this supposed to be irony? (Score:4, Insightful)
I really have a bad feeling about this. It's like people are using environmental issues to launder massive amounts of cash.
Re:Obama is a (Score:5, Insightful)
Every president is a proponent of the power of the state. Especially liars like Ronald Reagan and Bush/Cheney, who expand state power to everyone's serious injury as they claim to avoid it.
You want an actually sensible explanation? You got it. [slashdot.org]
Re:Sincerity? (Score:4, Insightful)