OMG! Brian Ross Reveals Fisker Fraud On Massive Scale! World Aghast
After dogged reporting, ABC’s investigative unit, headed by Bria n Ross of dubious Toyota fame, found out the shocking news that Fisker received a $529 million federal, and now the unpatricotic SOB has the Fisker Karmas built in Finland. ABC is shocked, I say shocked:
“With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.”
Isn’t that downright disgusting? Nevertheless, Fisker and the U.S. Department of Energy are unrepentant, claiming that the money was spent in America, developing the car.
Fisker also says the company was unable to find an automaker in the U.S. that is willing to make a small run – 8,000 a year – of the $96,000 plug-in hybrid Karma. The Karma is built by Valmet, a Finnish company that specialized in small runs.
Fisker’s second vehicle, the Nina, will be built at a former General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware.
Even the Freep, usually on the side of the American worker and apple pie, could not help but snicker:
“In its report, tagged an exclusive, ABC News linked the loan to the overseas production, raising questions at a time when House Republicans are investigating whether another Energy Department loan to solar company Solyndra, now in bankruptcy, was awarded inappropriately.”
“But the Energy Department noted that it was known before the loan was even awarded to Fisker that the company’s first run would be made overseas, though the funding would support jobs in the U.S. For instance, the Wall Street Journal noted the Finnish production contract when it wrote about the loan at the time it was announced in September 2009.”
And just in case ABC doesn’t have old copies of the WSJ sitting aroud, TTAC revealed on September 1, 2009 the shocking news that “Fisker has contracted with Valmet to produce its luxury EV Karma, with production to start early next year.“ And we were wrong. It didn’t start in early 2011. Not by a long shot. Now here is a scandal worthy of Brian Ross. He blew it.
(Hat tip to an anoymous source in Salo, Finland)
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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So, every penny of every investment must have complete and immediate payoff at this instant? Are we not allowed to invest in future capabilities, R&D, future processing capacity or anything that might be a little bit down the road? The technologies, the methodologies, and the facilities that are built or designed for these $90k limited run cars, will eventually filter down to other models, and other applications. How many features that are now standard on normal cars were once only exclusively the domain of extremely expensive luxury cars? How many projects might have failed themselves but the technology or processes developed during the failed project were used elsewhere? Man people are so quick to try and produce a "FAIL" related to government any way they can. I am not implying we should just give money away willy nilly, but I feel that the govt has adequately defended the loan in this case. Also, as was mentioned above - unemployment is not exclusively blue collar, engineers and managers need work too. And finally - it is unfair to compare the state of ICE vehicles to that of electric vehicles - as the ICE vehicles have literally had over 100 years of development and expecting EVs to catch up in like 5 years...
I can attest to at least one American job being added to produce the next Fisker model. My company has been chosen as supplier of some of the interior components and since we've been resisting new hires for about 2+ years, this seemed to be the tipping point that caused the hiring of one new engineer when we put a more experienced one on the Fisker program. I have to wonder how many times this scenario played out across the US and whether it is worth $500Mil...