Romney slams Obama over Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by A123…calling it part of a ‘disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars’
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Blast from the Past in: Where Are the 5 Million Green Jobs? Then candidate Obama set forth his plan to create 5 million green jobs in 2008 debate
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Another One Bites the Dust: $249 million government-backed electric car battery co. A123 Files Bankruptcy
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Green stimulus billionaire profiteer Elon Musk comes under IRS scrutiny: ‘The question at hand: Did Obama’s Treasury Dept inappropriately give stimulus money to Musk’s company?’
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Watch Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News on fed tax dollars to electric cars: ‘The old adage about ‘Who killed the electric car?’ — while I think Energy Sec. Chu killed the electric car’
Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News on October 12, 2012 to discuss electric cars and Tesla.
Watch here.
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The DOE Restructured Its Loan to Tesla: ‘Imagine that. Weeks to go before the election and the Department of Energy has restructured its $465 million loan to the electric-car company to make sure it didn’t run out of cash. The New York Times reports: (Emphasis mine)
As it ramps up sales of its sleek electric sedan, Tesla doesn’t appear to be much of a loser right now. But a closer look at company’s cash flows suggests it is hardly out of the woods…The federal government eased terms of its $465 million loan to Tesla to ensure the company didn’t breach key financial hurdles. The company then raised $193 million in a secondary stock offering, easing cash concerns… Tesla’s CEO has said he raised the $193 million “simply for risk reduction.” Yeah. It’s called the risk to Obama of Tesla running out of cash right before the election.’
Taxpayers Subsidize Forbes ‘Green’ Billionaires’ Schemes: Musk, best known as co-founder of the company that became PayPal, is Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, SolarCity spent $535,000 in 2009 and 2010 to lobby Congress and the Department of Energy on climate legislation, the Recovery Act, “green workforce training and development,” and provisions in various legislation “relevant to solar development.”… So far, according to DOE reports, SolarCity has received more than $66 million from that program. The company also won a partial guarantee from DOE of a $344 million loan that will place up to 160,000 rooftop solar installations on military housing across the country. Similarly, Musk’s Tesla Motors spent $480,000 from 2007 to 2011 to lobby Congress, the White House, EPA and DOE on climate and energy issues, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program, the Promoting Electric Vehicles Act, and the Recovery Act. Tesla receiveda $465 million loan guarantee from DOE’s ATVM program. Musk is also a generous political donor, mostly to Democrats, although his investments and giving are equally diverse.
Tesla Motors warns it will miss sales expectations
Climate Depot’s report: Electric/Hybrid car industry loses power in the face of market reality and lack of consumer demand — Washington Post on Chevy Volt: ‘The basic theory— if you build them, customers will come …
$100 million man — Gore to be govt billionaire?! Al Gore has thrived as green-tech investor — ‘Benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks’, as part of Obama’s stimulus
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‘Soviet-Style’ Wind Farm Subsidies To Face The Axe: ‘Must be scrapped because turbines are blighting local communities’
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The U.S. Must Choose Ethical Energy Over Conflict Energy
Climate Depot Editorial
On October 3, during the first presidential debate with President Barack Obama, Republican nominee Mitt Romney declared his intention to make “North America energy independent.”
Romney continued: “Energy is critical, and the president pointed out correctly that production of oil and gas in the U.S. is up. But not due to his policies. In spite of his policies. Mr. President, all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land. On government land, your administration has cut the number of permits and license in half. If I’m president, I’ll double them. And also get the — the oil from offshore and Alaska. And I’ll bring that pipeline in from Canada.
And by the way, I like coal. I’m going to make sure we continue to burn clean coal. People in the coal industry feel like it’s getting crushed by your policies. I want to get America and North America energy independent, so we can create those jobs.”
Climate Depot Response: Gov. Romney’s carbon based energy goals are the moral and ethical choice for the United States. Extracting domestic energy from the U.S. and other parts of North America where human rights and environmental protection are markedly better than many other energy choices – is the ethical choice.
Limiting North American drilling, mining, pipelines and energy extraction can only mean more reliance on conflict energy from such places as the Middle East, Venezuela and China, where human rights and environmental protection may be less than desirable. See: Analysis: Obama Policies Making US More Dependent on Persian Gulf Oil
Not only is the U.S. importing carbon-based energy from countries with questionable human rights and environmental records — ie. conflict energy, but now we are also importing so-called renewable energy from these countries.
See: Obama Administration Caught Redistributing Stimulus Dollars to Chinese Solar Firms
America needs to choose ethical energy – both carbon based and so-called renewables from North America. It is long past the time that the U.S. continued to have a heavy reliance on conflict energy.
Related Links:
Obama Administration Caught Redistributing Stimulus Dollars to Chinese Solar Firms — ‘The Obama admin. used stimulus dollars to purchase Chinese solar panels – a clear …
Climate Depot’s report: Electric/Hybrid car industry loses power in the face of market reality and lack of consumer demand
This news round up contains a small sampling of recent Climate Depot coverage of Electric/Hybrid vehicle industry. Very few industries have fallen on hard times so quickly despite such massive government funding.
Plant that got $150M in taxpayer money to make Volt batteries furloughs workers — before a single battery has been produced! — ‘Workers at the Compact Power manufacturing facilities in Holland, Mich., run by LG Chem, have been placed on rotating furloughs, working only 3 weeks per month based on lack of demand for lithium-ion cells. The facility, which was opened in July 2010 with a groundbreaking attended by Obama, has yet to produce a single battery for the Chevrolet Volt, the troubled electric car from GM. The plant’s batteries also were intended to be used in Ford’s electric Focus.’
Electric carmaker Tesla Motors warns it will miss sales expectations — ‘Tesla has lost $660 million in last 14 quarters’ — ‘Tesla said the U.S. Dept of Energy agreed it could delay a third-quarter interest payment due on Tesla’s $465-million federal loan. But Tesla agreed to accelerate future payments on the loan. The company said it would seek to raise up to $147.6 million through a public offering to help repay the loan, which has now been amended four times’
‘Record’ Volt Sales? Not Really — GM Counts $159 Leases for an $89,000 Car — ‘Fully 2/3s of the ‘sales’ were leases, leaving around 925 cars that were truly sold. And this lease scam appears to have been going on since the Volt’s November 2010 launch’
Heavy discounts only way to sell Chevy Volts: ‘GM’s discounts on the Volt are more than four times the industry’s per-vehicle avg.’ — ‘It costs $60,000 to $75,000 to build a Volt, including development, manufacturing and raw materials…With a sticker price of $40,000, minus the $10,000 the company pays in incentives, GM gets roughly $30,000 for every Volt. So it could be losing at least $30,000 per car’
Wash. Post Shocker: ‘GM’s vaunted Volt is on the road to nowhere fast’ — ‘The basic theory— if you build them, customers will come — was a myth. And an expensive one, at that’ — WaPo Editorial Board: ‘No matter how you slice it, the American taxpayer has gotten precious little for the administration’s investment in battery-powered vehicles, in terms of permanent jobs or lower CO2 emissions. There is no market, or not much …
NYT: ‘In 1900, 34 percent of cars in New York, Boston and Chicago were powered by electric motors. Nearly half had steam engines. What happened?’
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