$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)
Re:Sincerity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, Tesla doesn't have any problems building fully electric cars at the ex-NUMMI plant in California, and Chevrolet doesn't have any problems building the range-extended Volt in Hamtramck/Detroit, MI. Sounds like Fisker should have their loan called.
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Big difference to make only few cars vs making a lot of cars. The factory in Finland specializes on small patches and high profile cars such as Porche Boxter. Even the article says first line of cars coming from Finland. If the car sells more than few thousand then US plants can be asked to make bigger orders. I doubt US has such an advanced manufacturer capable of making small patches cost efficiently.
Re:Sincerity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Excellent point. Basically, the USA is little different from other third-world countries like Mexico. If you want to build a giant number of something, sure, you can do it in the USA; you'll have to spend a lot of money to build a factory, hire a labor force, train them, etc., just like if you wanted to build VWs in Mexico. But if you want something built in small numbers quickly, you need already-existing manufacturing capacity that's set up and flexible enough for small quantities, and you're not going to get that here in certain industries. It's kind of like asking Intel to make a small batch of some custom ASICs at one of their fabs here in Arizona; it's not going to happen, even though they're perfectly capable of churning out huge quantities of the latest Core2 CPUs. To get your ASICs, you can forget about America; you'll have to go to Taiwan and ask a contract fab over there like TSMC to make it for you.
Re:Sincerity? (Score:4, Funny)
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Not an excellent point, a straw man.
There are several closed car assembly plants that can easily be restarted for minimal capitol and used for short runs of 1000-2000 cars. It's just that most Executives cant think like that so they fail to see the ability to leverage existing abandoned low cost assets that can be purchased for very little and used.
1000-2000 cars can be HAND BUILT by skilled workers. and an assembly line that was state of the art in 1980 can easily be used by those skilled workers to do
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I'm sorry, this doesn't sound right to me. It sounds like this Fisker company wanted a contract manufacturer to build the cars for them (didn't the article say this was the same plant used to make some Porsche model?), they didn't want to build an assembly plant from the ground up. Even if they took over some closed plant, they'd have to retool it ($$$), and hire and train a new labor force (time and $$$). It's not like there's thousands of skilled workers sitting around waiting for a job; when people ge
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No, you're precisely wrong.
This story turns out to be total BS. The DoE loan to Fisker was spent on American carmaking jobs [energy.gov]. Fisker does also employ 20% of that amount in Finland, but the US public money was not spent on that. Fisker's successful use of the DoE loan employed 2500 Americans who were cut loose by American car corps during this recession, and started back up an American car factory where they work. Since it's successful, Fisker will be repaying the loan.
The government invests money private ind
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Re:Sincerity? (Score:4, Informative)
There are factories in the US building small volume high quality sports cars, Viper, Corvette, CTS, CTS-V (coupe, sports wagon, sedan), BMW, Audi, plus lower volume companies and aftermarket makers like Panoz
The Boxster and Cayman production was moved back to Germany this year.
"Boxster and Cayman production was outsourced to Valmet Automotive in Finland from 1997 to 2011, after which when assembly was moved back to the German homeland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Production_and_sales [wikipedia.org]
http://www.valmet-automotive.com/automotive/bulletin.nsf/headlinespubliceng/ADB15534224D1B0CC225788400418888 [valmet-automotive.com]
Fisker got the loan with the promise they'd use the factory in Delaware, if they aren't using it, they need to return the money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Automotive#US_federal_loan [wikipedia.org]
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Need to make a few hundred of something? Europe may be your answer.
Need to make a few hundred thousand? USA.
few hundred million? China.
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based on hybrid car standards, this is pretty darn terrible.
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That is as interesting as the 32 mile battery life and the 20mpg gas engine for 95K/per car
based on hybrid car standards, this is pretty darn terrible.
Sounds likt he Homer-mobile equivilent
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based on hybrid car standards, this is pretty darn terrible.
By any standards, this is quite terrible. So with a gallon of fuel and a full charge you can drive 32 + 20 = 52 miles. I can drive a bit over 60 miles per UK gallon / 50 miles per US gallon, without having to charge. And immediately after that, I can go another 60 miles with the next gallon, without having to recharge at all. And my car costs just a tiny little bit less than $95,000.
Re:Sincerity? (Score:4, Insightful)
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959-pound feet
Oh, only now do I see the real advantage of Imperial over Metric: Built-in "yo mama" jokes.
Fisker is from Scandinavia (Score:3)
Maybe pushing work back to the home region?
Re:Fisker is from Scandinavia (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe pushing work back to the home region?
I doubt the company have a secret agenda about pushing to Finland. Why?
Manufacturing costs in Scandinavia is a lot higher, it's not uncommon for unskilled factory workers to make 25 USD per hour, not counting overtime, late hours etc.
From the article:
Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive.
Seriously in the process of spending half a billion how much is 500 manufacturing jobs?
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it's not uncommon for unskilled factory workers to make 25 USD per hour
Don't ever look at pay rates for unionized workers.
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$60/hr plus extraordinary benefits for unskilled labor is not a decent wage. Or in the same hemisphere as minimum wage.
I don't have any jealous hostility, just a bit of shock at their greed.
Re:Sincerity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the availability of certain manufacturing processes and related skills is often localized. There are several kinds of modern manufacturing process which appear to be unavailable or uncommon in the US.
One of the products I designed has certain parts (passive, but necessarily complex in shape) which are made in Finland, simply because no US or Canadian supplier could be found who could make them in moderate quantities. The only US bids received stated that they assumed we had made an error in the RFQ, and actually required quantities in the tens of thousands. These suppliers relied on a manufacturing process which required that scale and would result in prohibitively expensive unit costs for a production run of mere hundreds. The supplier in Finland uses an entirely different industrial process, and can produce single digit quantities if necessary, at quite acceptable unit prices.
The double-edge of Economies of Scale (Score:3)
"The only US bids received stated that they assumed we had made an error in the RFQ, and actually required quantities in the tens of thousands. These suppliers relied on a manufacturing process which required that scale and would result in prohibitively expensive unit costs for a production run of mere hundreds."
The downside of "economies of scale". You're right, I'm sure. Sometimes, in order to make lots of stuff cheaply, you have to give up the ability to make small amounts of stuff cheaply.
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You may refer to it as generous, might be, but I'd more pre
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My point was that even low-skill labour should be compensated at a decent rate, even if there might be a surplus of people willing to work for less. If we cut off all regulation and swapped out workers for those willing to take the job for less every time offered a situation would rapidly form where you go to having to chose between food on the table or rent, escalating further to milk fo
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Human Rights? Luxury! When I were a lad, I got spat on as a thank you as thanks, and I was lucky!
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There are very few Illiterate people in Finland
Fixed that for you.
Sincerely,
a Finn.
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That's not it. The US is probably the best country in which to find factories able to run small volumes of specialty products or components. Especially ones made with new technologies, newly complex electronics, dependent on high quality raw materials, and sourcing ingredients from all over the world. Yet which require the plant to work with the product developers to tweak the process quickly and with effective communication. That all is indeed the US strength, since commodity manufacturing of well understo
Fisker? (Score:4, Funny)
The company name is "Fisker"? It's nice to see the American taxpayer getting exactly what he's paying for these days.
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oh, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
They looked at environmental spending and said, "Something must be done!"
Someone said, "Here, is something."
Everyone said, "Then it must be done!"
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Fisker has a facility in the United States - in Delaware [autoblog.com]. They will use this facility, much like Tesla is using the old NUMMI facility in SoCal, for their mass manufacturing. The problem, so Fisker claims, is that they wanted to use a contract manufacturer for their initial production run (presumably while getting their main facility running, and by debugging their mfg processes with the early production run)
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Considering no US money is being spent on this plant and they have bought a Delaware plant for stage II, my comment on your ignorance still stands.
Tesla managed to get around this issue by buying a retired Toyota plant in the US as a stopgap the same way these guys are using Finland as a stopgap.
You can argue whether or not the DOE should be making these investments, but not finding a facility here in the US is perfectly understandable. Regardless, in a year or two they'll be in Delaware and Tesla will move
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:Great (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't even the dumbest use of our money. We currently subsidize cotton farmers in Brazil, because the US was subsidizing cotton farmers in the southern states, and was found to be doing so in violation of free trade agreements by the WTO. So instead of cutting the subsidies to the US farmers, the US government also subsidizes Brazilian cotton farmers as a sort of pay-off. This isn't a small amount of money - it's in the billions every year.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what happens when you let politicians near money.
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Is inflation still that bad down there? :)
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's with my USA money, then yes.
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Did you even read the... oh, what am asking! Derp!
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Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a loan, so it will be repaid, and with interest.
Just like Solyndra, I'm sure.
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or AIG? Hmm... Is the US going to get back anything close to 1:1 what it gave to AIG to keep it afloat?
Don Quixote called, and he wants his windmills back.
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Assuming the company turns enough of a profit to repay said loans. It worked so well for Solyndra, after all...
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It was a loan, so it will be repaid, and with interest.
Yeah, right, tell that to Solyndra.
Green energy makes no economic sense yet, if ever. If it made economic sense then we wouldn't have to subsidize it to heavily.
The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:5, Informative)
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FTA: "The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers[...]"
Sounds like it's both.
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Re:The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:5, Informative)
Two companies doesn't equal two cars. FTA: "Between them, Fisker, at $529 million, and Tesla, at $465 million, have secured nearly $1 billion to jump-start production of their cars." Fisker and Tesla are two separate companies.
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Sheesh, my bad. I was thinking Nina was from Tesla. Thanks for the correction.
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
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http://gigaom.com/cleantech/fisker-scores-529m-doe-loan-to-start-project-nina/ [gigaom.com]
Actually, the loan is for both vehicles, though the Karma was always intended to be assembled overseas.
It's sad that anyone with Google and a couple spare minutes can do a better job of vetting stories than the Slashdot editors.
Re:The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the DOE loan is for the Delaware plant. This fact is well-known: http://www.examiner.com/electric-car-in-national/fisker-automotive-grabs-529-million-from-the-doe
And that omission, soulskill, is either incompetent or dishonest.
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never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
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No. Taxpayer money was put at risk for the benefit of a company in Finland. If the product and the company were plainly viable, there would be far more than the half billion dollars in US tax money racing to them from private investors all over the world.
I thought that was the point of these government loans -- to back new technologies that aren't yet mainstream enough to attract private funding. Just because something isn't "plainly viable" doesn't mean that it's not worth doing. Even $90K electric cars can help drive innovation in the electric car space and new technologies and designs will trickle down into more affordable cars.
Or, we could sit back and wait for the Chinese to do the innovation and use their manufacturing prowess to sell us cheap electr
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This is an Obama administration fashion statement for rich lefties
No, it's the reactionary media doing what it always does, feed lies and distortions to people just like you. Did you even once look up 'Fisker Nina'; that answer would be very telling.
It's not surprising, you'all did the same thing with Clinton (and her husband) was President in the 90's. The GOP always seems to think that 'they win' when the American middle class loses, sad really.
Re:The DOE loan is for the Nina (Score:4, Informative)
Using the word "socialist" without defending it is equivalent to the use of "communist" in the 1950s.
In other words, it's meant as a personal attack and it is should be enough for any thinking person to tell you where you can shove your argument.
There is no such thing as a pure economy... just different balances between unregulated capitalism and (actual) socialism.
Tesla Roadster Comparison (Score:2)
Not sure of the Fiska car is a sports car...it'd better be for $100K. But if you're interested in comparing the MPG between the two, the Tesla Roadster Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] has an interesting breakdown of how it's calculated for electric cars. Short answer is it's about 123 MPG, but it's more complicated than that.
And a handy tidbit: apparently the replacement battery for the Tesla (7 years or 70,000 miles) is $12,000. And a funny story: getting off the ferry back home, a Tesla Roadster was parked on the curb
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And a handy tidbit: apparently the replacement battery for the Tesla (7 years or 70,000 miles) is $12,000
Wow, seriously? That's a steal!
Elise (or AW11, or whatever) - engine + electric motor + replacement Tesla pack = Tesla Roadster for the middle class!
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Shit, I just modded.. ah well.. gotta respond to this.
Anyone who has equity in their home should really consider bumping up your insurance and adding an umbrella policy.
I work around the corner from an exotic car dealer, and a few months back I found myself behind a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron. One slip of the foot and everything I own would be gone in a poof of carbon fiber dust.
I just got a quote for $1mil coverage(about $220/year on top of my normal premiums), bringing my auto coverage to $1.25 mil. Su
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No kidding. Years ago, in Menlo Park, I saw the result of a parking lot accident where a teenage driver backing up a large Mercedes sedan (with mom in the passenger seat) stepped on the wrong pedal and smashed a Sentra and a Jaguar. Not a lot of happy faces there.
Sometimes it makes more sense to just avoid the hazard. There was a large tree in our back yard that was distinctly tilted towards a neighbor's house, and it was starting to look less healthy. We spent almost 11 years of your insurance incremen
Tesla sued Fisker, too (Score:2)
Tesla sued Fisker in 2008, for a car design: http://green.autoblog.com/2008/04/15/breaking-tesla-sues-fisker-over-electric-car-design/ [autoblog.com]
Tesla sued TopGear in 2011, for a car review: http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/tesla-losing-top-gear-court-challenge-1.1162112 [iol.co.za] "Tesla losing Top Gear court challenge"
See the spectacular Jeremy Clarkson review the Tesla in 2008 and compare it with its car design origin (Lotus Elise) http://www.spike.com/video-clips/c3neux/top-gear-reviews-the-tesla-roadster [spike.com]
Tesla sue
Maybe the instructions on how to build the car ... (Score:2)
... are written in Finnish?
Hybrid that gets 20MPG?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The government is a horrible venture capitalist (Score:2)
Of course we're going to pour billions into companies, having no venture capital experience, and even without a proper vetting process that will be adhered to.
(Dis)credit to Bush for signing this into existence, but Obama's corrupt administration of course had to make it worse. His own people told him Solyndra was a bad investment, but he and Chu were chummy with the owners and it was a big political "green" score. It went through anyway even before legally mandated evaluations were finished. Any VC firm op
Obama is a (Score:3, Insightful)
How else to explain giving government money to these firms?
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]
They wanted a contract manufacturer (Score:2)
Being a "fabless automaker" doesn't work all that well. You can get exotics made that way, but it's too expensive for a production product.
Tesla's great achievement was that they finally made a usable, fun to drive electric car. It's overpriced, but it does work. I see them on the road all the time in Silicon Valley. I hope Tesla can actually get their sedan product to profitability. Tesla was lucky to pick up the NUMMI plant cheaply; they got a modern small car auto assembly plant in good condition,
Are You Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
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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.
You need to compare it to the Lambos, Ferraris, etc. in it's market segment. See how economical they are...
fail (Score:2)
- limited range
- low fuel economy
- high price
- See http://mindset.ch/de/?page_id=75 [mindset.ch] for an alternative
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: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.
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All this for $592M in US tax money for a product that doesn't create a single US job.
You're wrong. [energy.gov]
The loan is for a different car (Nina) that the company will be manufacturing in Delaware.
Though their manufacturing date has slipped from 2012 to 2013.
In 2016 they'll be moving production of the Karma (now made in Finalnd) to Delaware.
Further, we're talking about a loan, not a grant.
So unless Fisker goes bankrupt, the US won't have really lost anything.
Technically there is an opportunity cost, but the government isn't really limited by that,
as part of what the government does is fund projects
Finally... (Score:2)
You can run over someone's Dogma with your Karma.
How These Government Investments Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Electric car investment is clearly necessary. Without the investment, no electric cars. Private industry has had the opportunity for years, but blew it off in favor of gas guzzling SUVs and other trucks with suspended emissions regulations that it could sell to a market greased with fakeout balloon credit. That bizmodel crashed the car industry, while helping to drive up gas prices to $4+ and oil prices to $120+ - and made the Greenhouse even worse faster. Only when the public bailed out the US car industry (to save the rest of the US economy and industrial base) did it start to turn to serious electric product development.
But it's not enough. And because a lot of strategic progress hides behind multiple risky options, private industry (and finance) doesn't invest in it. Because those normal investors don't know how to invest in anything - which is why the entire investment industry had to get bailed out by the public. So the electric car investments have to come from the public, too.
Now, those investments are risky, as I said. Not too risky to do any of them, but too risky for each one to pay off. And when the government invests, it's far more efficient for it to invest in larger single investments, because managing a lot of little ones is beyond the ability to centrally plan and organize, especially given the volume and complexity of reporting and oversight that comes with any government contract. And then some of these investments will fail. Big ones will lose a lot of money.
Which is why private investment is better. Except private investment isn't doing it. Even before the Credit Bubble crashed, across many different bubbles (and even sustained growth), private investment wasn't doing it. Yet if we don't do it, either our resources and pollution crises will damage us more than the cost of the investment, or a foreign government will do it in ways that hurt us to help them, or most likely both.
So the government will have some Solyndras. It will have some Fiskers. Just as private investment would have had, though probably overall less wasted investment because there is so much more transparency (even if not enough) than when private investors make their deals - and fail. Plus government investment tends to take other policies, like US labor growth, into account that private investment ignores or worse. Not all the time, as is perhaps the case here with Fisker, but more than when private investment does it. Which, again, it is not doing here. And government investments, even when the commercial venture fails, tend to produce more usable lessons learned (and tech spun off) than private failures that usually keep the intellectual value suppressed in some new owner, or just left to rot entirely without a new use.
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That's capitalism.
Peak oil has already hit, right? The market will take care of this with no need for tax payer subsidy.
Global Democracy... (Score:2)
One loan at a time!
Second of many government backed failures (Score:3)
After Solyndra there will be more failed green energy companies backed by socialist spending. One of my client's, a silicon crystal grower, is busy buying up equipment from green energy companies as they liquidate and pay back the original investors using taxpayer money.
Unpopular as it may be with the Slashdot crowd, the government is not smart enough to pick winners. The government should not be in this business. Taking tax money to invest in initiatives like this is at best foolish and at worst theft.
This was $529 million dollars taken from Americans and given to Obama's cronies. Where did that money come from?
Top 10% of earners: ~$365 million dollars
Top 50% of earners: ~$520 million dollars
If that money had not been taxed and wasted it would have been wasted mostly by those in the upper middle class and the rich. It would have gone to support private schools, yoga teachers, golf courses, 5 star restaurants, designer stores, etc. Each of those business provides jobs and incomes for the service industry: the bottom 50% of earners.
If you want to create more jobs in America then stop taxing Americans.
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Invest in research, not production. (Score:2)
A government should not be investing in commercializing technologies, that's what businesses are for. Gov't should only fund research to develop technologies to the point that they appear to be viable for commercialization, then let private investors take the risks of actually producing and commercializing the product. We're investing in the wrong things. In some cases, a gov't may invest it or subsidize the development of infrastructure (e.g. roads, communication lines, power lines, railroads, water supply
Soulskill Needs To Add Story Correction (Score:4, Informative)
It's not uncommon for /. editors to add a story update when significant new information comes to light, or there was a major f-up in the original. This is one of those times, Soulskill. I know a lot of stuff rotates through your in-box, and you got suckered by @theodp. You need post the correction:
- Fisker Karma, made in Finland, no DOE loan.
- Fisker Nina, to be made in Delaware, with DOE loan.
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Who said it was the GOP's fault?
Maybe that's why right-wingers hate OWS, they assume OWS supports the Democrats, on whose term they're protesting (???).
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There was no attribution of fault for throwing money given to the GOP or the democrats.
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No money was "given" to GM. Get your facts straight, then try and put together a coherent argument.
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He's talking about Democrats, not the left.
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Before you make an argument like that, maybe you should go listen to Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. They believe that everything up to and including every act of god is caused by the liburils.
God forbid we include actual FACTS in our arguments.
Re:Whelp, that investment didn't work out (Score:4, Informative)
Also, it's just a flat out lie to make the title "$529M DOE Loan". It's a loan guarantee, not a loan. The taxpayers are in no way on the hook for anywhere close to $529M.
That's not how it worked with Solyndra. They borrowed the half-billion, using the government loan guarantee as collateral, and then declared bankruptcy, leaving the taxpayers on the hook for replaying the loan.
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This is a drop in the ocean compared to the money given to GM so it could carry on losing money as fast as it ever did.
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Which, in turn, is a drop in the ocean compared to the money spent on war.
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One of the wars might be over. Most of the action is in Afghanistan these days.
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Wait, how is this the broken window fallacy? The broken window fallacy is the idea that replacing something which is perfectly good (e.g. breaking a window so that it must be replaced with a new window), contributes to economic growth.
I'm not sure how I see this fits the current story?
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They also haven't screwed their people up to the point where Manager and Executive are the only jobs that people think deserve a living wage.