Posted on 09/06/2012 9:25:37 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Few companies in the U.S. South have gotten as much nurturing by President Barack Obama's administration as Charlotte-based Celgard LLC. Obama and two of his Cabinet secretaries visited the plant and praised its successes after it was awarded $48.7 million in stimulus grants.
But as Obama prepared to deliver his speech at the Democratic National Convention just 14 miles away on Thursday night, Celgard stands as an example of how the jobs, industrial development and green energy policies the president has implemented since taking office in January 2009 are no guarantee of success.
It hasn't collapsed like solar panel maker Solyndra and isn't teetering on the verge of bankruptcy like some other stimulus grant recipients that have become political targets for Obama's Republican opponent in the November 6 presidential election.
...
Electric car sales, meanwhile, have not come close to the Obama administration's goal of having a million vehicles on the road by 2015.
Around 30,000 purely electric vehicles are currently on the road in the United States, according to Environment Georgia, an environmental group.
Electric vehicle and hybrid sales were only 3 percent of total U.S. car sales in the first 7 months of this year, says green-car website Hybridcars.com.
Theodore O'Neill of Litchfield Hills Research said "2011 was a great year for them (Celgard) because the companies that make the batteries for the Chevy Volt ... had to build up inventories to meet the projections for sales that were expected, that never materialized.
"So when 2012 came Celgard sales went flat, because their customers have lots of excess inventory."
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Why not bring back the FURNITURE-MAKING business to NC, instead of a company with a ludicrously opaque name that makes batteries for cars no one wants?!
Command economies always, always, always fail miserably.
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