With unemployment peaking above 20 percent, Elkhart, Indiana was at the white-hot center of the economic meltdown, and a natural launch point for President Obama’s electric vehicle initiative.
” So that’s why I’m here today,” the president said three years ago. “To announce $2.4 billion in highly competitive grants.”
[…]
Everybody hoped that by this time there would be more than 400 workers inside a bustling plant. Instead, today, there are just two workers at Think City. Rodney and Josh are slowly finishing assembly on a few dozen 2011 models shipped in from Norway.
We were able to drive a Think City car around the empty space where investors once envisioned an assembly line churning out 20,000 vehicles a year.
…things for the company that has so far received $529 million in federal subsidies are so bad that also last week Fisker announced its third CEO hire in the past year (when in a supremely ironic move it hired the former head of the Chevy Volt program Tony Posawatz). As of last night things just went from bad to even worse, following the inevitable next step: a total recall of all Karmas currently on the road. Oh well: nothing that burning, quite literally, several hundred more million in taxpayer funding won’t solve.
This all reminds me of that parody song at Rush Limbaugh: ” In a Yugo” by Paul Shanklin.
To the tune of In the Ghetto by Elvis it goes like this:
As the snow flies
At a used car lot on the edge of town
A liberal guy and a liberal gal
Buy a Yugo
And they drive with pride
Cause if there’s one thing that this world needs
It’s environmental friends who’ll take the lead
In a Yugo
They say, “people don’t you understand
Those suburbans are ruining the land”
But they’ll wish they had a full size van one day
They point fingers at you and me
They say we’re too blind to see
But do we simply use our heads
And choose another way?
As those small wheels turn
Fifty miles to the gallon
And their knees on their chest
They’re gonna save enough gas
For all of the rest
In a Yugo
Then one day on the interstate
They suddenly lose control
They swerve to miss a baby duck
They’re squashed beneath a produce truck
But they drove with pride…
And as the crowds drive past a little flat car
You know they saved a lot of gas
But they didnt get far
In a Yugo
And as they’re trapped inside
At a used car lot on the other side of town
A liberal guy and a liberal gal
Buy a Yugo….
And they drive with pride…
Visited a Tesla showroom when I was in California a few weeks ago. Looked at the new sedan they have on offer. Admittedly it is a very cool looking car, but that’s all it is.
Honestly I don’t know how any of these vehicles will ever become mainstream. Price is simply too high for what you get, and the benefits are just too over-hyped. It really is a case of the emperor having no clothes.
From the link “The most recent fire occurred when an owner parked his car at a Woodside, California grocery store. By the time he was done getting the groceries his car was already on fire.”
It happened in Woodside, California. Oh the irony!!
At least he is doing something for a future not reliant on oil, our computer and processor technology is increasing in strides I dont see why renewable energy shouldnt do the same, even if it needs some help. I know there is a lot of anti clean energy propaganda put out by oil companies, but its hard to take it seriously.
Even if the amount of help needed is going to bankrupt the country? Renewable energy is not ready for prime time, nor will it be at any time in the near future. Any industry that requires billions of dollars in subsidies just to employ less than skeleton crews of people makes the public more cynical than they already are.
Meowman “I know there is a lot of anti clean energy propaganda put out by oil companies, but its hard to take it seriously.”
I call BullShit. What propaganda? Seriously!!!
Do you think that maybe oil is king because it contains a lot of energy and is easily transportable. When economics dictate otherwise, oil will be gone, despite any propaganda and something will take its place. Are you saying there isn’t any anti-oil propaganda? Out of the cocoon please.
Scar, apparently Fiskars electrics going on fire at the supermarket is “anti-clean energy” propaganda.
The Phantom “Fiskars electrics going on fire at the supermarket is “anti-clean energy” propaganda”
Right, the Truth. The outta do something about that.
Meowman
You just don’t get it. The clean energy environmental clan is at heart anti-Technological. They want an end to private transportation. Not a replacement that works. At every turn they stop real progress on a technical basis. Through regulation, or suppression. Mean while they become rich on subsidies.
Like they want an end to smoking for good. These folks hate Civilization. They idolize the dark ages. Think mankind are vermin to be disposed of for a (Never has been ) pristine Earth , a garden for the few like themselves who are Philosopher kings. This is a Religion not a business group.
Revnant, just to clarify, “end to smoking” and “hate Civilization” and “idolize the dark ages” shouldn’t be used in the same statement.
Smoking is dark age mentality and helps to end civilization.
If you think smoking makes one a Rambo type, maybe stop watching TV.
😉
johnbrooks
I meant it as how viciously they pursue an objective no matter how they trample on peoples rights with determined legislation . While not making it illegal for monetary reasons like taxes. How they could Care less about individuals than an Ideology. By the way Chimneys where an 18th century invention. Before that humans sucked smoke in enclosed rooms, for most of our existence. Including candle wax & other noxious fumes.
Meowman you have drunk the Kool Aid. You throw out the usual terms like “renewable energy”. For an engineer like myself that is such a stupid nonsensical term. It’s a bit like “sustainable development”, another idiotic term invented by the left purely for their propaganda.
If we ever get off oil it’s *not* going to happen by the government throwing billions of dollars at companies with half-baked technologies who are simply feeding at the trough. It is a research problem, more than it is an engineering problem.
Oil was a game changer in the industrialized world, and it will take a game changer to replace it. Putting batteries in a car is not going to do it, even if the best battery technology available it used. Nothing I have seen yet from the “green” movement even remotely falls into the category of game changer.
By the way, oil is in essence just a form of solar energy.
Note too that you can do some basic physics calculations that absolutely demolish most if not all of these so called “green” technologies. Most of the stuff these companies are claiming they can make is just a pipe dream, but in Obama’s socialist world pipe dreams gets you tax dollars. That is the la la land he lives in.
Tesla is different, TJ. They are owned by Elon Musk, the same guy that owns SpaceX, and they operate differently, at a profit. Check out the Tesla production line – top photo in the story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-adept-robots-is-changing-global-industry.html?_r=1
I can only see one person in that photo.
johnbrooks “If you think smoking makes one a Rambo type, maybe stop watching TV”
All the cool kids smoked. I wouldn’t say that generalization still holds but the dorks typically didn’t smoke, back in the day.
Snowbunnie @ 12.40 am… Here the music for that (great parody):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqTKZgEW8pM
Further to Tesla:
It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is; a high-tech toy for people who want to be conspicuous while making a statement.
And even Tesla has had problems with its batteries “bricking” if allowed to become fully discharged.
TJ
Well put.
Your game changer will come if at all from some out field no one will see. Just like computers have changed the information game. It too came from outside the “Establishment” science. No one stopped it by regulation because no politician or bureaucrat seen its potential.
Ed I know quite a bit about Tesla and Musk. In a weak moment I toyed with buying their new sadan, but in the end it simply didn’t make any financial sense. Not only that I refuse to support engineering ideas that are not sound.
Do you know how much money Tesla has received from the US government in grants? About half a billion dollars. In fact it is probably more, as they keep dipping into the trough.
Musk himself has said in interviews that in hindsight he would never have got involved with a car startup.
Nissan is not small car company, and yet last month they sold only 395 of their electric Leafs, despite all the hype.
Look at the facts.
Scar “but the dorks typically didn’t smoke, back in the day.”
Yes but those ‘dorks’ run million dollar businesses today.
Fiskar – inventor of the EXTERNAL combustion engine!
Tony Scott parked his Prius along the the Vincent St. Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles. According to eyewitnesses, the 68-year-old proceeded to scale 8- to 10-feet of fencing and, “without hesitation,” jump to his death.
I wouldn’t drive a Prius either, but Scott’s reaction to sparky cars is over the top.