Wall Street Journal:
A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.
Beau Friedlander: Why Does Competition Over Green Tech Spur Gore Baiting?
You may have heard about the "Gore-backed" car company that got more than $500 million to make a sports car. What you may have missed: the government is backing green technology and a plan to make it popular.
Kirsten Dirksen: Gulfstream Greens: Gore the Man vs. Gore the Messenger
If someone like Gore has the power to affect a massive change in consciousness of the American public, he should be allowed to do so without a perfectly green credentials.
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also from the examiner article
This is also good.
More than 1,500 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrids have already been ordered. Fisker has a network of 45 retailers in place to market and service the Karma, and plans to double that by the time the affordable plug-in electric car that comes out of Project NINA is ready for the road.
I'm unused to knee jerk reactions from liberals here!!
Read up... they are planning affordable $20K family vehicles in the near future.
Fisker also has plans for affordable family PHEV cars – and this money will help get them off the drawing board and onto the road.
After giving billions of bail-out bucks to save General Motors and Chrysler, the US Department of Energy is loaning more than one-half billion dollars to Fisker, to create affordable, fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid electric cars. Affordable means under $40,000, after tax credits. Okay, so that’s a bit more than the super-popular 2010 Toyota Prius. But unlike the Prius, these Fisker PHEV plug-in electric hybrid vehicles will be made in the USA.
The DOE loan will create or save at least 5,000 US jobs among auto suppliers, and thousands more jobs to manufacture a plug-in hybrid in the U.S.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1995-Green-Car-Examiner~y2009m9d24-Fisker-gets-529-million-from-US-government-to-build-Priuspriced-plugin-electric-hybrids-in-USA
Nice. How about one that doesn't cost more than a small house?
I'm getting one... just as soon as my lotto ticket hits......
I can hear it now--Al Gore is a ... whatever. Hey! At least it's considerably cheaper than a US-made electric sports car--the Tesla. This is what's commonly referred to "capitalism" folks. If you are wont to pay less for a competitive product, put your money where your mouth is and shut the hell up.
CO2 environmentalist fear mongers admit the Cap N Trade law will not fix their obsessive compulsive nightmare of a flooded Earth. However, Cap N Trade will have a profound effect on our economy.... Destruction of American jobs, a hidden regulatory tax on the man on the street, and a drop in the standard of living.
How nice, a billion $ so Fisker and Telsa can build 'green' cars for the ultra rich (I consider anyone who can spent upwards to 100grand on a car to be rich). These aren't designed for the average person to have an efficient car. They're desighed for the wealthy to make a statement; to show how environmentally consious they are with their fancy toy in the driveway.
The potential for these two companies to produce a viable product to market is virtually nil. Think about how many upstarts have come and gone over the decades. And those are ones started by people knowledgable about cars, auto production. Gore has no known skills with the car market.
What we need is to invest a billion, or more, in efficient 20,000$ cars.
I feel that it's the only way right now to get the technology(Expensive) out there... once the big 3 and new startups (Saturn once was) get the pulse of the people, THEN they too will begin producing..but not until then.
I am all for the loan, the company and the R & D
Remember, it was Ed Begley Jr who had the electric and fought to keep them on the road.
Wow, the future is here now. A beautiful car, just perfect.
If this works out, it will be a great UN Climate Change photo op.
They can stuff the over sized GORE into the driver's seat and on the passenger side, they can stuff the mother POLAR bear and put her two cubs in the back. When everybody is in, the UN can use the photo to show us how to save the planet!
The Honda FCX pollution free HYDROGEN FUEL CELL car is in production and ready to be rolled out but the OIL CARTEL are not installing hydrogen gas pumps on their service station lots. And it costs a heck of a lot less than this fiasco and Honda did it largely on their own DIME!
The Oil Cartels are not going to install electrical outlets at their pumps either, I'll wager. I thought there was a cool-down with hydrogen due to its prohibitive cost to produce. For instance, I don't hear California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about it anymore.
Your politicians are controlled by the corporate state and the politician will emphasize the script handed to them and will de emphasize legitimate technology.
You see, Auh-nuld is handcuffed by GM who won't build a fuel cell powered HUMMER for him to drive around because the OIL cartel controls GM board of directors. And he can't drive Honda's production ready FCX production ready hydrogen fuel cell vehicle because it would appear to be UN-AMERICAN!
But Jamie Lee Curtis can at least sit in here POLLUTION FREE Honda FCX. Only if she could find a hydrogen gas pump, though.
And there is this this fine gentleman in Erie Penn that splits the hydrogen atoms off of the salt water molecule in real time using a particular frequency: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzLTeQeI8tY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpeswiki.com%2Findex.php%2FDirectory%3AJohn_Kanzius_Produces_Hydrogen_from_Salt_Water_Using_Radio_Waves&feature=player_embedded .
Gee, that video only has 13K views, no wonder no one in America knows the HYDROGEN ECONOMY is in the process of being launched.
Gee. It's so nice to know my tax money is going for Finland so they can profit from making cars for rich people. Whatever would the rich do without us? And before anyone throws that planned 40K sedan back at me, what class of people can afford a 40K car? The limousine liberal and corporatist conservative class. Why am I being forced to finance the lifestyles of the well off when NO US JOBS are coming out of it?
Meanwhile, Congress is looking to formalize TARP, i.e., privatizing profits and socializing losses for any oligarch who can hold us hostage with a too big to fail argument:
http://financialservices.house.gov/Financial%20Regulatory%20Reform/Section-by-Section/Title%20XII%20section-by-section%20-%2007-23-2009%20(230pm)%20(2)%20(2).pdf
So that's the story: When the working class can no longer afford to finance the lifestyles of the wealthy, they just have Congress take it out of our hide in the form of taxes! When Obama said he was in favor of income redistribution, who knew his administration would have it going from poor to rich? I don't know about you, but this isn't a future I signed up for.
Watch it now. It sounds like you might criticize Gore and you may be called a racist for doing that.
Talk about empty thoughts!
Once again, you have no point.
Maybe this should put to rest the hillbilly canard that Obama is a "socialist."
Gee, I'm glad you read the article..NOT
It's a California company. They will eventually be built and sold here... U S policies make it really difficult to do this work HERE
This article linked to the Wall Street Journal, which stated no such thing.
to ad to my post...
"Fisker also has plans for affordable family PHEV cars – and this money will help get them off the drawing board and onto the road"
After giving billions of bail-out bucks to save General Motors and Chrysler, the US Department of Energy is loaning more than one-half billion dollars to Fisker, to create affordable, fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid electric cars. Affordable means under $40,000, after tax credits. Okay, so that’s a bit more than the super-popular 2010 Toyota Prius. But unlike the Prius, these Fisker PHEV plug-in electric hybrid vehicles will be made in the USA.
The DOE loan will create or save at least 5,000 US jobs among auto suppliers, and thousands more jobs to manufacture a plug-in hybrid in the U.S.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1995-Green-Car-Examiner~y2009m9d24-Fisker-gets-529-million-from-US-government-to-build-Priuspriced-plugin-electric-hybrids-in-USA
Sports Car? That is sick!
tesla will be releasing a 5 seater that will cost approx $40,000 next year. It will you the consumer options such as paying more for 300 miles for a charge the standard 250 miles per charge.
I have seeing crap they only gets 50 miles on a charge
Finland, eh?
I wonder if Michael Moore will feature Al Gore's capitalist action here with the same critical assessment?
Of course not - Moore and Gore are hypocrites above everything else.
I thought people were supposed to get smarter as they got older.
Judging by your goofy looking avatar, you've no rool to comment about what's smart or not. How about this - address the hypocrosy of Moore and Gore or is that too deep for you?
Henrik Fisker has a good enough reputation and good enough connections to attract private capital. I don't think these development loans are necessary. All of the automakers have recently started investing seriously in electric drive systems, and it's because of market forces, not government loans.
That said, this WSJ article is blatantly slanted, focused almost exclusively on tying the loans to Democratic interest groups. The other theme is the claim that the loan is to develop an $89K car, which is patently false, since the Fisker Karma is already entering production. The loan is to develop the follow-on product, a $39K family sedan for 2012 at volumes of over 100,000 units per year.
You have to give to Al Gore, he knows how to get rich off the people of the USA that do not have a brain capable of critical thinking. The only I regret is I was not in on this global warming, sorry, climate change, scam. My great grand children would have been provided for.
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First Posted: 09-24-09 11:54 PM | Updated: 09-25-09 12:01 AM