Prepare for a low intensity price war over electric vehicles. GM announced that its all-electric  Chevrolet Spark, going on sale next month in California and Oregon, will sell for as low as $19,995 after the full federal tax credit of $7,500.  According to the calculations of Reuters, that’s “as much as 38 percent less than what it takes to buy its larger sibling, the hybrid Volt.”

The larger Volt sells for about $32,500 after the tax credit. MSRP of the base Spark will be $27,495, undercutting the Mitsubishi i-MiEV ($29,975) and the Nissan Leaf ($29,650). It is expected that there will be a reaction.

The car can be leased for as low as $199 a month for 36 months with $999 due at signing. California EV owners may also qualify for other state and local tax credits and incentives of up to $2,500, reducing the price to $17,495. EV owners in California are also eligible for carpool lane access with only a solitary driver in the car.

Fisker is worth around 200 Karmas at retail. “A team including former General Motors Co executive Bob Lutz and China’s largest parts maker is looking to buy Fisker Automotive for $20 million, a fraction of the “green” car company’s estimated worth almost a year and a half ago,” Reuters says.

Late 2011, Fisker told prospective investors that its total capitalization was “approaching” $2 billion, according to an investor document filing obtained by Reuters. If the bid is successful, Fisker would have officially lost 99 percent of its valuation over the course of  less than two years.

Fisker now owes the DOE some $171 million in loans. Another deal is in the works to buy out the DOE’s position in Fisker at a discount. The DOE had no comment.

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The tweet was true:  As indicated on Tuesday, Tesla paid off its DOE loan on Wednesday. Nine years before the note was due, Tesla “wired $451.8 million to repay the full loan with interest,” as Reuters says.

The Obama administration has been massively criticized for its largesse towards Fisker Automotive, A123,and Solyndra. Both A123 and Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, Fisker is teetering on bankruptcy. The DOE is understandably effusive over the repatriated money, and Tesla. Said U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

“When you’re talking about cutting-edge clean energy technologies, not every investment will succeed – but today’s repayment is the latest indication that the Energy Department’s portfolio of more than 30 loans is delivering big results for the American economy while costing far less than anticipated.”

Moniz said more than 90 percent of the loan loss reserve Congress established remains intact, while losses represent about 2 percent of the overall $34 billion portfolio.

It’s not that Tesla suddenly made half a billion dollars to repay rich uncle Sam.  Tesla used money from a $968 million stock and note sale that closed Wednesday to repay the debt. The TSLA stock has been on fire lately, Tesla has a higher market cap that Fiat, and  it probably was a good time to issue more.

Executives of major automakers roll their eyes when Elon Musk talks about disrupting their business.  Boutique makers  of $100,000 cars sometimes do OK during an uptick of the economy, only to get wiped out when the economy goes sour and corrodes disposable income.  The big challenge comes when boutiques enter the mass market and find themselves confronted with many billions of investments in R&D, plants, and marketing which won’t show profits for decades. Tesla has for all intents and purposes what little market there is for itself, especially after large OEMs cooled on the idea of EVs.  Should  EVs ever become a viable market, major OEMs can dust off their digital blueprints, slap an updated body on it, and disrupt the dreams of Tesla.

B456 Systems, the lithium-ion battery maker formerly known as A123 Systems, won court approval for its bankruptcy plan. It gives unsecured creditors of the company about 65 cents for each dollar owed, Reuters says.

B456 had received a $249 million grant from the U.S. government. About half the money was never released. B456 received court approval to sell its automotive battery business and related assets to China’s Wanxiang Group.

B456 makes lithium-ion batteries for Fisker Automotive, BMW hybrid 3- and 5-Series cars, and General Motors Co’s all-electric Chevrolet Spark. The company filed for bankruptcy in October due to weaker-than-expected demand.

At least, they kept their humor when naming their new old company.

Loans from the Department of Energy seemed to be a great idea at the time, now they are a millstone one wants to get rid of.

“Given govt loan repayment this week (prob Wed), Supercharger update will be next week. Work continuing independent of announcement,” tweeted Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk today, right after other important announcements, such as “Petting zoo left a chicken behind at the park. Now we have a pet chicken.”

The tweet is a bit cryptic, so a Tesla spokeswoman had to tell Reuters that “Musk was referring to the full repayment of the DOE loan.” Last week, Tesla said it would use $452.4 million from a bond and stock offering to repay the balance of the loan with interest.

(In the video above – from March – you learn a little bit a about gaining – or losing – money from those tweets.)

The annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is quickly turning into a Nurburgring equivalent when it comes to bragging rights of electric vehicle makers. The venue is perfect for EVs:  The track is 12.42 miles long, as cinch even for the most range-challenged EV.  The track finishes at 14,110 ft, a height that deprives ICE-powered cars of oxygen and some 40 percent of their power. An EV just laughs at the breathless engines. I learn all those trivia today in Mitsubishi’s showroom in Tamachi, Tokyo. A descendant on Mitsubishi’s iMiev will be part of the electrified hill climb.

The last year’s winner was the Toyota TMG EV P002. It will defend its title.  Across town in Tokyo, Mitsubishi fields its MiEV Evolution II all-electric racer.  The sport appears to be one for mature men. Mitsubishi-driver and two-time Dakar Rally overall champion Hiroshi Masuoka is a relative youngster at age 53. Toyota’s driver Rod Millen is 61. Pikes Peak legend Monster Tajima, himself 63, won’t return in an EV, but will arrive with a 670hp hachi-roku.

Beleaguered EV start-up Better Place faced yet another blow this week, as Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn declared that rapid-charging, not swappable batteries, will be the predominant charging technology for EVs.

Israeli business outlet Globes quotes Ghosn as saying

“When you look at the overall trends, we must conclude that replaceable batteries are no longer the main track for electric vehicles…The main trail is flat batteries in cars with charging. We believe that people want flexibility in the technology, and we can see that the demand is for rechargeable standard batteries.”

Ghosn stopped short of completely writing off Better Place and their battery-swap technology, but Ghosn made it clear that the focus would be elsewhere. Commercial fleets were one area where Ghosn identified potential demand for swappable batteries, due to a lack of downtime with charging the vehicles.

“There may be cases where people prefer replaceable batteries – as we have tried to include Israel and Denmark. Here we will continue to offer the Fluence with replaceable batteries. There may also be large companies, where they have a huge fleet of cars, and do not want to wait for charging. But it will not be the majority of the market, and going forward, our focus is on the charging technology, among other things look at our new Nissan Leaf.”

Increasingly efficient rapid-charging technology and a lack of demand for EVs has led to a downward spiral for Better Place’s fortunes. The company recently shuttered their American and Australian operations and gave founder Shai Agassi the boot.

Bosch has introduced a home charging point for EVs that costs half as much as current competitors, which will no doubt be welcome news for current and prospective EV buyers.

Dubbed the PowerMax, the charger is said to be capable of 240V charging at half the time of the equivalent Level 2 chargers currently available on the market. The PowerMax comes in a 16 amp configuration with a 12 foot cord or a 30 amp version with a 25 foot cord. Bosch said that it was able to lower the price of their charger by eliminating the overly-long cords featured in many competitive units. Sales begin in June, and while a home evaluation is included in the price, installation is extra.

TTAC’s forays into areas like law, politics and economics are not everyone’s cup of tea, but they do matter. The dry, dense topics like regulation and financial topics have real implications for car enthusiasts, not to mention society as a whole. One subset of that is urban planning, a discipline which can have an enormous impact on our favorite hobby.

Witness the remarks made at the Energy Tomorrow Conference. Sponsored by the New York Times, the theme of this gather is “Building Sustainable Cities”. The IEEE Spectrum quotes Lerner as stating that in the future, the private automobile will become a socially unacceptable vice

Jaime Lerner, a former mayor of Brazil’s Curtiba, known for the work he did there introducing an integrated mass transportation system that has been copied the world over, expressed the belief that cars some day soon will be seen as noxious as tobacco is today. “The car is going to be the cigarette of the future,” Lerner said.

For Lerner, who is best known for pioneering innovative public transportation programs in Brazil, the private automobile is an issue of social justice itself. It is not just a matter of carbon emissions or energy conservation, but the automobile’s mere existence offends him. His sentiments were echoed by Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, who said that

 ”If we are all equal before the law, a bus carrying 100 people should be entitled to 100 times as much road space as a private car.”

If you think that these are just the senile ravings of aging Latin populist politicians, then you might be a bit surprised to find that these kinds of opinions will wind up on your doorstep sooner rather than later. To these types, the private automobile represents a mobility solution based on top-down hierarchical structures (as my least favorite sociology professor would say) that empowers the individual. They would like to see it replaced with collective forms of mobility, like car sharing, public transportation and cycling. I got my first taste of it a number of years ago when a prominent local politician hit a cyclist, resulting in his death.

It didn’t matter that the cyclist was found to be intoxicated and the aggressor in the situation, while the motorist was later absolved of any wrongdoing. The mere fact that he was a wealthy white male driving a Saab convertible while the other party was an Indigenous Canadian of a lower socioeconomic background with a history of mental illness and substance abuse provided the perfect catalyst for these sorts of theories to be floated among the more radical newspapers in my town.

As a resident of a dense, urban neighborhood, it would be disingenuous of me to dismiss cycling, public transit and even walking as real alternatives to our mobility needs. Practicality is another matter. On a balmy 70 degree day like today, walking or biking to the grocery store to buy a carton of eggs is not a big deal. When the forecast calls for freezing rain, getting a whole load of groceries on foot is unpleasant, to say the least. And not all public transit systems are created equally either, as one of our writers discussed last year.

Congestion is a major issue in urban centers, and something will have to be done about it. Cities are experimenting with congestion charges, road tolls and expanded public transit, but nobody has a definitive solution. I wish I knew what the answer was, and if I did, I would be racking up appearance fees rather than writing at TTAC. But heavy-handed, top down solutions are not the answer. The next generation of urban planners are being educated in universities by liberal arts faculty members hold views that are largely not representative of the opinions and needs of the general public. Combine that with a growing apathy for the automobile among young people and you create a situation where anti-car sentiment is easily bred. Look no further than the move to ban EV charging stations from urban areas as a perfect example of their utter refusal to meet reality on reality’s terms.

Even as gas prices rise higher and higher and the cost of new cars increase, people still opt for their own private transportation in record numbers. For some it is a matter of convenience, while for others who must commute from the suburbs, it is one of necessity. While top-down directives for public transportation may fly in parts of the globe where no previous infrastructure existed and cars remain unaffordable, I can only imagine that it would be poorly received in countries which emphasize individual choice and the free market as pillars of society. But still, don’t be surprised if this line of thought becomes part of the discourse at some point in the near future.

Toyota plans to defend its electric title at this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with a tweaked TMG EV P002. The electric racer is currently on its way to Salisbury, N.C., where TRD USA will perform aerodynamic upgrades to the Radical-based chassis.

On June 30, 61-year-old Rod Millen will  attempt a new record in the TMG EV P002 at Pikes Peak.  TMG is using  an off-board battery-to-battery charger, because there is no reliable connection to the power grid at the race site. A 42 kilowatt lithium ion battery is mounted into the back of a Toyota Hiace,. and can quickly charge the TMG EV P002 even in places where there is no plug in sight.

Electric car startup Coda is the latest in a series of greenm dreams to go down the drain – and it won’t be the last. Coda filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, writes Reuters,  “after selling just 100 of its all-electric sedans, another example of battery-powered vehicles’ failure to break into the mass market.”

Coda launched its electric sedan in California a year ago. Based on a slider made in China, the car delivered a range of 125 miles on a single charge. For $37,250 MSRP, the few buyers received a no-frills car.

Coda had no shortage of money when it started. Coda raised $300 million in equity from backers “including Aeris Capital, Limited Brands Chief Executive Les Wexner, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,” Reuters says. Nevertheless, $300 million are not enough to develop a car, let alone a car company.

Coda applied for, but withdrew a request for $334 million in federal loans.

Electric cars are a hard sell, but Coda made its life even tougher: “Coda has two problems,” a leading executive of a Japanese OEM that is heavily invested in electric cars told me last year, “they are trying to sell EVs, and cars made in China.”

We don’t get enough good questions from the readers, and it’s a damn shame. Reader Steve Hofer sent us a great one via email; what if Elon Musk was running General Motors?

I was thinking about how Steve Jobs came from what was essentially a failed company with NeXT, to raise Apple from the dead. I imagined the possibility that GM would take over Tesla. Thinking of the Apple precedent, I imagined what if Elon Musk pulled a Steve Jobs and leveraged a board seat into effective control of the company. Assuming Elon became GM’s CEO, does he have what it takes to do a good job? Perhaps he does. I have some reasons.

(1) Elon is smarter than anyone at GM.

(2) He understands how to put together a critical path to implement very complex tasks, whether building an electric car or a private space program.

(3) He is not risk adverse.

(4) He is not tied to 19th or 20th century ideas.

(5) More traditional choices failed and will likely fail again.

Personally, I am not willing to take the Thomas Friedman-esque leap of logic that posits that a successful tech entrpeneur should be put in charge of America’s auto industry. Tesla and GM are as different as two car companies could possibly be, and who is to say that there isn’t somebody at GM that has an equally formidable intellect as Musk does. We don’t know for sure one way or another. In any case, there are plenty of commenters who have actually spent time working with (or for) GM who have a much better insight than I do. Have at it.

Despite overwhelmingly positive press for the Fiat 500e, the electric Fiat is known to be a bete-noir for Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. Speaking at the SAE Congress last week, Marchionne claimed that Fiat loses $10,000 on each 500e, describing it as “masochism”.

Marchionne has repeatedly stated that Fiat is only building the car to comply with California regulations that mandate the sale of zero-emissions vehicles. But despite rave reviews and an aggressive lease program, Marchionne has repeatedly made negative statements about the car. The Detroit Free Press quotes Marchionne on the nature of the money losing EV

“For every 500 electric that we produce even after all the subsidies we will lose about $10,000 bucks a car,” Marchionne said. “Doing that on a large scale would be masochism to the extreme.”

Machionne also urged governments to stay “neutral” on what technologies it decides to subsidize, citing the current trendiness of EVs versus the widespread enthusiasm for hydrogen a decade ago.

“A number of governments around the world including the U.S. have provided incentives for consumers to purchase plug-in electric vehicles and have provided direct incentives to manufacturers…my fear is that regulators are rushing precipitously into embracing electric vehicles as the only technological solution.”

BYD, the company we visited in yesterday’s story might ditch  conventional gasoline-powered cars and focus on electrics, Reuters says in an exclusive story,

Two senior BYD executives told Reuters that along with dropping gasoline-fueled cars, the company also might offload its solar panel business and concentrate on new greener battery technologies.

BYD will unveil its Green Hybrid Technology at the Shanghai auto show on Saturday. Reuters sees BYD focus on hybrid cars, with a smattering  of  all-electric and ‘plug-in’ electric hybrid cars thrown in.

The story caused raised eyebrows and snickers among the auto executives that congregate in Shanghai for the auto show that will open its doors to the press tomorrow. Currently, EVs and hybrids sell only in homeopathic quantities in China. I am in Shanghai, and we’ll see what develops.

PrivCo, a private corporate intelligence firm, has published a 20+ page dossier on Fisker’s seemingly strong ability to fundraise for itself, while failing to do a good job of actually creating cars. With Fisker teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, the results are staggering; with just under 2000 units sold, Fisker burned through an estimated $1.3 billion in venture capital, taxpayer-funded loans and private investor funds.

According to PrivCo’s estimates, that amounts to $660,000 per Karma sold. PrivCo has charted out an extensive, detailed timeline of Fisker’s operations, and highlighted key information pertaining to corporate developments, government loan proceedings and the various ways that Fisker breached their agreements with the government. What materializes is an amazing picture of how Fisker was able to raise enormous sums of money merely on the promise of providing a “green” car for the very wealthy few, without every creating anything tangible or ready for the marketplace. According to the firm, the government

“…applied negligent underwriting standards in granting the DOE Loan and Credit Agreement to Fisker, which was by any commercial standard clearly a financially unqualified borrower for the loan.”

You can view the full report at PrivCo’s website.

On Friday, Fisker fired most of its rank-and-file employees, 160 out of a total 210, and promptly got into hot water for doing so.  The law firm Outten & Golden filed a class-action lawsuit for not giving employees a 60-day notice under California’s WARN act.

“We contend Fisker ordered mass layoffs on or about April 5, 2013 without providing its employees with advance written notice. The Case is pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California,” says Outten & Golden’s website. The firm is seeking 60 days wages and benefits for former employees. The wheels of justice better move fast. Siliconbeat says that “many speculate that Fisker could file for bankruptcy as early as Monday.”

According to Reuters, the 160 fired were told that the company could not afford to give them severance payments. 53 senior managers and executives were asked to stay on board, “primarily to pursue buyers for the company’s assets,” Reuters says.

The Outten & Gol;den lawfirm is the same that sued ill-fated Solyndra, another fine example of government investments into green technologies. Green as the color of tax payer money.

Detroit Electric is a startup electric car maker that revives the brand of another startup electric car maker by the name of Detroit Electric. As chronicled by Ronnie Schreiber, Detroit Electric cars were produced by the Anderson Carriage company from 1907 to 1939. They sold thousands of them until they were displaced by a better idea, the internal combustion engine. Yesterday, the new Detroit Electric unveiled its first model, a $135,000, battery-powered sports car.

As reported by Reuters, the Detroit Electric SP:01 is “the world’s fastest pure-electric sports car,” with  a range of  ”just under 190 miles” between charges.

The car will be built in the Detroit area at a dedicated plant with an annual capacity of 2,500, the company told Reuters.

According to the report, “the SP:01 appears to borrow heavily from the British-built Lotus Elise — no surprise considering a number of Detroit Electric executives previously worked for various affiliates of Lotus Cars.”

There is another Lotus connection: The brand was revived in 2007 as a joint venture between China’s Youngman and California’s Zap. Youngman also is the Chinese joint venture partner of Lotus, a marriage that produced bastard children, some of them depicted above. Youngman achieved notoriety as an incessant bidder for Saab, a courtship that ended in failure.

Yesterday’s Tesla “lease offer”, (which turned out to be Elon Musk’s “big announcement”) was a classic display of Tesla’s penchant for theatrics. On the surface, the move is a smart one; most customers in the large luxury sedan segment tend to lease their cars, so Tesla’s move is nothing out of the ordinary.

The 5 year lease program will allow customers to keep making payments on the car as a means of buying it outright, rather than the traditional balloon payment used by most auto makers. And, as Wired’s Damon Lavrinc notes, you could technically lease the car with nothing down.

Depending on where you live, the initial payment could be as low as … nothing. Tesla’s financial partners in the program, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, take the $7,500 federal tax credit offered to anyone who buys an electric vehicle, roll that into the state rebates and include it all as your down payment. In California, for example, that comes to $10,000.

Where it gets interesting is some of the numerical gymnastics that, according to Tesla’s True Cost To Own lease calculator, can leave you with a net lease cost of -$2,000. To find out how that happens, check out EV expert John Voelcker’s excellent take-down of Tesla’s leasing program. Rather than summarize and butcher it at TTAC, you might as well head straight to the source. It’s not to be missed. Especially if your time is worth $100/hour, as Musk thinks.

Fisker did put its entire workforce, all 200 of them, on furlough, “while it continues to search for a strategic partner,” Reuters says. That search is not going so well. And quite possibly, the workforce will never come back.

Then there is the issue of the DOE loan. No, not the matter of the DOE only paying out $193 million of the promised $529.  The DOE actually wants money back. There is a loan payment due in late April. The amount was not revealed.

Fisker urgently needs a savior, but those are hard to come by. Dongfeng dropped out of the bidding for Fisker, “because it would be too difficult to move production to China,” Reuters writes. Before, Geely had dropped out, which leaves Fisker with no interested suitor.

According to the story, Dongfeng was interested in Fisker’s barely used production facility, which it wanted to move to China. But soon it transpired that the loan was tied to the plant being in Delaware.

Chinese companies were a bit luckless buying car companies as a going concern. They are, however, good a snapping up the pieces after a bankruptcy. Which also would solve the problem of where the plant is located.

And just as I wanted to hit the “Publish” button,  news reaches us that Fisker  is looking into that option. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Fisker has hired restructuring lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis LLP to prepare for the possible bankruptcy filing, the people said, though no final decisions have been made on whether the auto maker will need to take that path. The cash-strapped company is still seeking buyers or investors that would help it avoid that outcome, the people said.”

We can always hope.

Until the modern day revival of electric vehicles like the Teslas, Nissan’s Leaf or the Chevy Volt, the best selling electric car ever was the Detroit Electric, produced by the Anderson Carriage company from 1907 to 1939. They sold thousands of them (1914 was the high water mark with ~4,500 produced). Among the people who drove Detroit Electrics were electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and Charles Steinmetz and the wives of automotive industrialists  Henry Ford and Henry Joy (he ran Packard). Interestingly, John D. Rockefeller, who made his enormous fortune from petroleum products like gasoline, owned a pair of Detroit Electric Model 46 Roadsters. Now, not only has the electric car industry been revived, but also the Detroit Electric company, which says it will start producing battery electric sports cars in a Michigan facility by the end of this summer. Following Tesla’s example, their first car will be based on a Lotus, in this case an Exige coupe, and the company promises two other “high performance” models in 2014.

Teaser of the Lotus Exige based Detroit Electric sports car

Using a Lotus glider as the basis of an EV, as mentioned, isn’t a particularly original idea. Besides the Tesla Roadster if you remember, before their bankruptcy, Chrysler showed a raft of electric powered concept cars including the Circuit EV based on the Elise derived Europa. With aluminum superstructures and composite bodies, Lotus cars are light enough to still have good performance after being fitted with heavy electric battery packs. The choice of the Exige is an interesting one since that car is not sold in the United States – apparently because of a regulatory issue with its airbags. Perhaps Detroit Electric’s chairman and CEO, Albert Lam, who used to run Lotus, will use his connections with the British firm to get the gliders federalized.

John D. Rockefeller had two Detroit Electric Model 46 Roadsters, like this one for sale at RM’s 2012 St. John’s auction

In addition to announcing that Detroit Electric is going to be more than just a placeholding website that’s been around since Lam acquired the rights to the brand and logo in 2008, the company has signed a lease for its headquarters to be located in Detroit’s historic and automotively connected Fisher Building. The new car will have a press launch in Detroit early next month, followed by a global reveal at the Shanghai auto show later in April. In addition to signing the lease on their HQ, Detroit Electric has selected what they call a “dedicated production facility” in Michigan that will have an annual capacity of 2,500 cars a year. Since they’re working with the quasi-governmental Michigan Economic Development Corporation, most likely it will be a facility that has formerly been used to build relatively short production runs of specialty cars. My WAG would be either the facility in Troy where Saleen did final assembly of the Ford GTs, or the former GM Lansing Craft Centre that built the Chevy SSR. Between the offices in Detroit and the production plant, Detroit Electric hopes to create 180 new jobs in Michigan over the next year.

Detroit Electric logo on the aluminum running board of Helen Newberry Joy’s 1914 Detroit Electric. Note the broken shoe scraper.

Apparently that production facility will not be owned by Detroit Electric. Before working at Lotus, Lam’s resume includes stints in Asia with Apple and Sun Microsystems, and Detroit Electric will be following an “asset light” business model, focusing on R&D and marketing and jobbing out production.

When the new Detroit Electric sports car is first revealed next month we’ll have coverage of the event. Press release here.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

When Henrik Fisker left last week, all we knew was that he “disagreed on business strategy” with the management, code for “board-room brawl, founder leaves in a huff.” Now we know where the disagreement was. It was whether to ask Uncle Sam or Auntie Zhang for money.

According to Reuters, Fisker and CEO Tony Posawatz could agree that the company needs money, lots of it.
Now for the hard part: Where to get the money.

Posawatz, a former GM man, was for hitting up the Department of Energy again to unlock access to a $529 million federal loan. DOE had blocked the loan, supposedly due to the delays in the launch of the Karma, but ostensibly because those loans became a hot potato.

Fisker, says Reuters,  “was opposed to relying on additional federal funds.”  The article did not say where Fisker wanted to get the money from, the guess is China.  With Geely out of the running, the only Chinese suitor seems to be Dongfeng.  If Dongfeng gets Fisker, effectively the Chinese government would give the money.  Donfeng is owned by China’s central government.

Both strategies smell of desperation. The formerly generous DOE does not want to get caught in the cross-fire again. The Chinese are tight with money and usually buy when the company gets bust, see A123 etc.

Remember:  If you want to destroy a small or medium, fortune, start a car company. If anyone asks you to invest in a start-up car company, run. Alternatively, shoot him.

Pau hana means quitting time. Better Place is leaving the island state. Officially, it’s to “focus on its core markets in Israel and Denmark,” as the Star Advertiser says. Unofficially, it’s a retreat.

Better Place operated 77 charge spots with 154 charge points on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island, serving some 700 customers. That’s around 10 customers per charge spots, not a rip roaring business.

Better Place sold the charge spots to OpConnect, a purveyor of charging solutions. First thing they’ll do is charge the stations to OpConnect technology.

Better Place is yet another great idea that falls on its face. Founder Shai Agassi believed the propaganda that there will be pure electric cars by the millions. His great idea: Swappable batteries. That means standard batteries. Agassi also should have asked the auto industry whether it wants to standardize on one battery.

The Chevrolet Volt is the world’s best-selling electric vehicle, followed by Toyota’s plug-in Prius and Nissan’s Leaf, Bloomberg says.

Total sales of electric vehicles are said to have exceeded 100,000.

Carmakers and politicians hoped for much higher sales. The U.S. accounted for 46 percent of global sales of electric vehicles. Japan and Europe were tied for second place with 23 percent.

The Geneva Auto Salon is a small show in a small city of a small country. The show is big because it is an annual confab of automakers where shoulders are rubbed, mergers are planned, policies are set. The cars are mostly decoration. A top topic in Geneva was how to meet rigid EU emission limits. “There is a growing awareness that conventional hybrids and slow-selling battery cars simply won’t be enough,” Reuters reports from Geneva.

The interim goal of 130 grams  of CO2 per kilometer by 2015 does not appear to be a big deal. Most carmakers think they will meet it. “But drastic steps are needed to meet the 95 gram target set for 2020 and the potential for tougher standards after that,” Reuter says.

“We can’t get the necessary gains we need with traditional technology any more. We’re seeing a real break with the past,” Peugeot innovation chief Jean-Marc Finot told Reuters.

While GM’s Dan Akerson made bold battery announcements, there is growing conviction everywhere else that battery electric vehicles won’t be the answer. “Battery technology has not been able to resolve the century-old problem of too much weight and limited range capability,” Arthur Wheaton, automotive expert at Cornell University, told Reuters.

This view reaches the staunchest battery supporters. Said Francois Bancon, Nissan’s upstream development chief:

“Demand for electric cars isn’t where we thought it would be. We’re in a very uncertain phase, and everyone’s a bit lost.”

To meet the fleet goal, cars must do more than output little CO2. They also must be bought. Green cars that just sit in the show room don’t help the environment. High-priced batter-electric vehicles collide with this simple fact. “There’s more and more regulation, but customers want to pay less and less,” Nissan’s Bancon said. “So we have to cut prices and increase technology content – that’s the headache we’re faced with.”

One company does not seem to be worried about the 95 gram limit, and that is Volkswagen.  A day before the show started, VW announced that it is “committing to reducing the CO2 output of the European new car fleet to 95 grams per kilometer by 2020.” Volkswagen also wants to reduce “the CO2 output of its European new vehicle fleet to less than 120 grams per kilometer by 2015. Volkswagen intends to outperform by more than 12 grams the figure required by law for its vehicle fleet.”

Note: While Europe sets CO2 targets, while the U.S. has ostensibly different mileage targets, when all is said and done, both more or less  want the same. Use less fuel, generate less CO2. There even is a handy conversion formula.  Except that the formula is not EPA compliant …

While other carmakers, including electric pioneer Nissan,  are downgrading their EV euphoria, GM’s CEO Dan Akerson suddenly sounds uncharacteristically gung-ho on the issue. At an industry conference, he says GM is working on developing an electric car that has a range of as much as 200 miles.

“There will be breakthroughs in battery technology, they’re on the horizon,” Akerson said at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference, while Bloomberg was taking notes. “We’re actually developing a car today which is really anathema to the way the auto industry works: We’re running a dual play on the technology to see which one will succeed. One will result in a 100-mile range, the other will be a 200-mile range.”

Even the true believers at GM-Volt are skeptical. Said one commenter:

“Musk talk from Akerson. Sounds like the battery experiments have not crashed and burned yet. Or just get a Model S today.”

I have talked to several large OEMs, and none of them sees a battery breakthrough on the horizon, at least not on an horizon that is visible with the naked eye. Toyota and BMW are collaborating on a lithium air battery, but they aren’t sure whether it will work at all.

Both a 100 mile and a 200 mile EV can be built today. Just load a lot of batteries in it, then, charge a lot. In all senses of the word.