Another $529 million of taxpayer cash circling the bowl.
Reuters reports:
A $100,000-plus Fisker Automotive luxury car died during Consumer Reports speed testing for reasons that are still unknown, leaving the struggling electric car startup with another blow to its image.
“It is a little disconcerting that you pay that amount of money for a car and it lasts basically 180 miles before going wrong,” David Champion, senior director for the magazine’s automotive test center, told Reuters…
The breakdown of the Consumer Reports car is more bad news for a company that already recalled some Karmas. Fisker also has changed its CEO and halted production over the past month as it seeks to renegotiate the terms of a $529 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy…
Take away the taxpayer funds, and NO ONE would’ve put money into this hole. The only reason to go to the government for funding is because the private sector WON’T fund you.
You have in mind Washingtonians such as Energy Secretary Chu who revealed in testimony that he does not even own a car – he’s the guy who is supposed to be helping me!??? The bureaucrats and some politicians in DC are so far out of touch they may as well be on the non-planet Pluto.
There is no chance that any “green car” will have such a simple system. They will need ability to recover energy from braking the car, ridiculously complex transmission systems, controllers from here to the moon and back … I understand some of these concepts are now transmitting “wireless signals” to turn brake lights on, etc., and so on and so forth.
Motor Trend will keep a consistent readership among the snobs who wouldn’t want to own a car but still like to pretend they know about cars.
Motor Tool
Ahh, replacing the fine outgoing 2011 CotY:
http://image.motortrend.com/f/31442104+w569+h356+ar1/volt-coty-teaser.jpg
Motor Trend should be down to zero subscribers by 2013.
Motor Trend’s forthcoming “car of the Year”
In the US, diesel-electric coupled power systems have reliably moved freight trains for decades, so this isn’t entirely new technology. Take the batteries out of the car and you basically have a street-legal locomotive. Put batteries in, you have electricity control issues, especially if the motors are in the wheel hubs. But anti-lock.traction-control systems have been in cars for at least a decade, if not longer, so this isn’t exactly new technology either. Computer sensor/I/O processing is decades old, so that isn’t new tech, either. The basic problem is that the car relies on government subsidies–which makes the *government* the customer. When the government is the customer, you get things like $400 toilet seats and Hummer battle-wagons without armor. If these things had to be built with private money with consumers as customers, there would be either no financing, or a better car.
Yep. They seem to have done very well with electric golf and utility carts for years. Probably could get a street legal version for the price of the gummint rebate.
An electric car has batteries, cables to the controller and a rheostat to control acceleration of the electric motor.
Pretty simple compared to a modern ICE automobiles.
If Fisker has as many problems as it seems they shouldn’t be building electric cars.
They obviously need a longer power lead?
Bad Karma
On the positive side, nobody needs worry about the brakes.
Huh?
“”The fact that it broke is not going to affect our testing,” Champion said of the Fisker Karma. “It is going to delay possibly getting our testing done if it keeps on breaking…”
Mark, I suspect they were on a “show string” budget ;^). Nobody uses shoe string budgets any more.
Take away the taxpayer funds and make them go groveling to private investors and I bet they really could make a great car out of it. It would take some time but it can be done, if they are willing to live on a show string budget to achieve it.