Posted on 07/18/2011 3:14:37 PM PDT by keat
A Salinas car manufacturing company that was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs folded before almost any cars could run off the assembly line.
The city of Salinas had invested more than half a million dollars in Green Vehicles, an electric car start-up company.
All of that money is now gone, according to Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan.
The start-up company set up shop in Salinas in the summer of 2009 after the city gave Ryan a $300,000 community development grant.
When the company still ran into financial trouble last year, the city of Salinas handed to Ryan an additional $240,000 in investment money.
Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue said he was "surprised and disappointed" by the news. City officials were equally irked that Ryan notified them through an email that his company had crashed and burned.
Salinas Redevelopment Director Jeff Weir said Green Vehicles folded because of a "lack of investors," and a $2.7 million grant from California Energy Commission that never materialized.
Donohue said he will work with the state to try to get at least $240,000 back from the now-defunct company.
Mike Ryan YouTube Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan
Last year, Salinas city officials said they were excited about Green Vehicles moving from San Jose to Salinas because they wanted to turn Salinas into a hub for alternative energy production.
City leaders wooed Green Vehicles to jump-start the sputtering local company and turn Salinas into an "electric valley." Donohue and Weir both voiced their high hopes for Green Vehicles.
The start-up company promised city leaders that it would create 70 new jobs and pay $700,000 in taxes a year to Salinas.
Green Vehicles was supposed to be up and running by March 2010 inside their 80,000 square-foot space at Firestone Business Park off of Abbot Street.
Ryan had lofty goals, listing his company's mission as: "To make the best clean commuter vehicles in the world; To manufacture with a radical sense of responsibility; To engage in deep transparency as an inspiration for new ways of doing business."
Green Vehicles designed two vehicles, the TRIAC 2.0 and the MOOSE, which it planned to manufacture.
On July 12, Ryan wrote a blog post announcing that his company was closing.
"The truth is that not realizing the vision for this company is a huge disappointment," Ryan wrote.
Ryan outlined three mistakes he made while steering his company into a brick wall. All three reasons boiled down failing to generate enough capital.
I am just wondering if he spent the dough on coke, prostitutes, real estate (international?) or all the above. Whatever the answer dude made out like a bandit—literally.
It means they thought they could build a better mousetrap. Just one problem though, no mouse would be caught dead in it.
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General George Washingtons Order Against Profanity
The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice hitherto little known in our American Army is growing into fashion. He hopes that the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it and that both they and the men will reflect that we can little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our army if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this it is a vice so mean and low without any temptation that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.
Yes. Good point. They should have stuck with what they do know. Was just up in that beautiful area last week. It is all farming country and it looks like they wanted desperately to be like their neighbor San Jose.
Not that kind of green! LOL! I don’t mind paying for that grown with pesticides or without!
Message received.
That’s not ugly. That’s fugly!
“Acid” is making a comeback?
Pretentious “Green” snobbery and ignorance of reality are a recipe for disaster.
Mike,
No VC partner in their right mind would write a check to you. Your product is, well, lacking.
President - VC Anonymous
M. Skinner
Socialism at its finest.
This guy is just blowing smoke and large plumes of it. Like all great con artists . . . confuse 'em with your words. Swindle 'em with you lengthy siren song.
When the company still ran into financial trouble last year, the city of Salinas handed to Ryan an additional $240,000 in investment money.
Ryan notified them through an email that his company had crashed and burned.
THANKS, SUCKAS!!!
ROFL
I think he is saying in commie speak... that he envisions a future where no driver will be necessary and that we all just share our cars with each other. These cars... which will have full autopilot... will be available everywhere... we just have to get into the first car that comes along and go... and the best part is... that the government will pay for it all so it will not cost us anything. My head now hurts and I need Crown and water.
LLS
Or one at 500k. Good deal for the owner. :)
Guess in their leftist fog out here they can’t grasp the concept of due diligence.
Must have forgotten to give the Rats a bribe, I mean, a campaign contribution, to get some federal funding.
I, however, am neither surprised or disappointed. No electric car company anywhere on the horizon will survive without the support of a national government. Probably the US national government. Which is rapidly becoming too anemic to spare the capital.
Oh, that's easy. It means when you're dealing with suckers like this:
...a scam artist like Mike Ryan can spout meaningless tripe and it'll be swallowed whole.
Mayor, Dennis DonohueEducation: B.A. in History, University of San Francisco;
M.A. in Religious Education, Gannon University
Can you imagine Ryan trying to peddle something like that to businessman C. Montgomery Burns?
...me neither.
Here is a different opinion from another great General named George:
“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.”
George S. Patton
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