Aren't you Precious.
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Posted on 10/21/2011 9:44:07 AM PDT by Justaham
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.
"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."
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.
"We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business," Fisker said. "That's why we went to Finland."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
So I guess the refurbished and idle former Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee wasn’t good enough.
what’s “freeraepublic?” (on the above link...)
From one ham to another, I believe him. I really do.
I'm reminded of the guy that goes to the racetrack promising to place the $200 trifecta bet for his buddy.
The buddy is ecstatic the next day when he reads the paper and his bets came in on the nose, but his friend laments that he was mugged on the way to the track and the muggers took his $200. Luckily, he had his own $200 hidden in his shoes.
or the NUMMI facility in Fremont CA?
Maybe they should ask that great son of Tennessee, Algore, about this. I read about this at least a month ago and it seems that uncle Al the kiddies pal is behind this “green” project.
Apparently not, according to the article.
For those who support FR, click here to show it!
Well that does it!!! I’m going to go camp out on Wall Street then. That’ll fix everything!
The Democrats here in Delaware gave Fisker something like $20 million to build cars at the old GM plant in Newark. They are in the process of re-tooling it and have recently announced the production here, which was supposed to start next year, has been pushed back to 2013.
Not to mention the BOGUS MPGe rating [52 MPG equivalent] that the EPA gave it.
*****
From Forbes:
“The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52 in all electric mode (we will ignore the gasoline engine for this analysis).
Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car, as I showed in great depth in an earlier Forbes.com article. In short, the EPA methodology leaves out, among other things, the conversion efficiency in generating the electricity from fossil fuels in the first place.
In the Clinton administration, the Department of Energy (DOE) created a far superior well to wheels MPGe metric the honestly compares the typical fossil fuel use of an electric vs. gasoline car.
As I calculated in my earlier Forbes article, one needs to multiply the EPA MPGe by .365 to get a number that truly compares fossil fuel use of an electric car with a traditional gasoline engine car on an apples to apples basis. In the case of the Fisker Karma, we get a true MPGe of 19. This makes it worse than even the city rating of a Ford Explorer SUV.
Congrats to the Fisker Karma, which now joins corn ethanol in the ranks of heavily subsidized supposedly green technologies that are actually worse for the environment than current solutions.
Postscript: I will say, though, that the Fisker Karma does serve a social purpose — Hollywood celebrities and the ultra rich, who want to display their green credentials, no longer have to be stuck with a little econobox. They can now enjoy a little leg room and luxury.
Updates: Just to clarify, given some email I have gotten. Most other publications have focused on the 20 mpg the EPA gives the Karma on its backup gasoline engine (example), but my focus is on just how bad the car is even in all electric mode. The calculation in the above article only applies to the car running on electric, and the reduction in MPGe I discuss is from applying the more comprehensive DOE methodology for getting an MPG equivilent, not from some sort of averaging with gasoline mode. Again, see this article if you don’t understand the issue with the EPA methodology.
Press responses from Fisker Automotive highlight the problem here: electric vehicle makers want to pretend that the electricity to charge the car comes from magic sparkle ponies sprinkling pixie dust rather than burning fossil fuels. Take this quote, for example:
“a Karma driver with a 40-mile commute who starts each day with a full battery charge will only need to visit the gas station about every 1,000 miles and would use just 9 gallons of gasoline per month.
This is true as far as it goes, but glosses over the fact that someone is still pouring fossil fuels into a tank somewhere to make that electricity. This seems more a car to hide the fact that fossil fuels are being burned than one designed to actually reduce fossil fuel use. Given the marketing pitch here that relies on the unseen vs. the seen, maybe we should rename it the Fisker Bastiat.”
*****
If you wanna read about Forbes methodology, referred to in the article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2010/11/24/the-epas-electric-vehicle-mileage-fraud/
The more common case is, $200 worth of groceries go on the EBT card, freeing up $200 to lose on the trifecta.
We have a closed Ford plant in St.Paul they could have used.
And we have lots of unions they have no use for.
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