The federal government is having a good time freely dispensing billions
of taxpayer dollars to green energy companies, despite the fact that it
appears to have no solid game plan for determining which initiatives are
viable, and which ones will go the way of Solyndra.
And now ABC News
reports that the US Department of Energy's (DOE) $529 million loan to
Fisker Automotive, a high-end electric hybrid automobile startup
company, has been used to establish a manufacturing plant in Finland
rather than in the US.
Henrik Fisker claims his company could not
find a suitable manufacturing facility in the US to build its cars, and
instead had no choice but to contract an overseas facility through the
Finnish firm Valmet Automotive. He also claims that none of the US-based
loan money is being used to pay workers at the Finnish plant, and that
the company is utilizing American designers and
"DOE cannot be assured that the projects are on track to deliver the
vehicles as agreed," says the GAO report concerning Fisker. "It also
means that US taxpayers do not know whether they are getting what they
paid for through the loans."
Fisker is already more than a year behind schedule with releasing its $97,000 luxury hybrid, according to ABC News.
And its plan to use federal loan money to mass produce a $57,400 Model S
sedan is also questionable, as the company allegedly has no experience
in implementing this type of large-scale production capacity, and has
yet to even release a simple picture or concept drawing of the supposed
vehicle.
Fisker did purchase a former General Motors
manufacturing facility in Wilmington, Del., where Vice President Joe
Biden emphatically proclaimed several years ago would eventually be home
to a domestic Fisker manufacturing plant. But to this day, there are
still no Fisker vehicles being produced there, and the only progress
that has been made so far has been overseas.
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