By Paul Chesser, National Legal & Policy Center
A123 Systems – the taxpayer-funded electric vehicle battery manufacturer that famously shipped duds to Fisker Automotive, which caused one of its luxurious Karma EVs to shut down just before a Consumer Reports test – is now the defendant in an investor class action lawsuit and its stock has tanked to below $1.
Massachusetts-based A123 received more than $279 million in grants from the Department of Energy, most of it used to refurbish two plants in Livonia and Romulus, Mich., for the production of EV batteries.
The company laid off 125 factory workers in November, lost $257.7 million in 2011 (including an $11.6 million write-down of its stake in Fisker), and announced it would spend $55 million to fix the defective batteries it delivered to Fisker and other customers.
Meanwhile A123’s top executives received big raises and inflated parachutes should the company change ownership.
Read the rest here: http://ow.ly/a4y5s
The Occupy Movement was basically protesting the favouritism awarded by their own heroes. Or so it appears.
And thus more proof that the only real green in green energy is the cash that these companies scam from the tax payer.
“Progressive” politicians are still shamelessly foisting these boondoggles, under the pressure from credulous lefties, onto the population at large..
Just curious, does anyone know the actual total of taxpayer dollars used for green energy? Is there a website I could share with my friends? Elections will be here before you know it.
Anthony —
It is getting to the point, you might want to add a “green turkey” feature to the blog’s resource lists, showing all the taxpayer funded green energy and related companies that have gone toes up.
Seems a new one is cropping up every few days now that the wheels are falling off the green band wagon. Some you have already documented such as abandoned wind farms and the media darlings like Solyndra.
I suspect if you added such a feature your readers could provide you with a nearly endless list of smaller local endeavors that have quietly bit the dust as well with out a great deal of media fan fare. Might be a worth while crib sheet for later on when the CAGW brigade tries to tell us that there were no significant failures in the green industries and that is just an urban myth that such failures were rampant in the the 2010 and later time frame.
Larry
“Chu” on this :
63,000 jobs for Michigan…
Thank you Mr. President, for another loser.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402
A veritable Panoply of Paint-Job Paragoric.
It all started so innocently green.
Amber waves of parachuting Execs. Chameleon’s are seen changing color as they drive off, vine ripened to a golden brown exodus on the Money Tree.
Yesterday, Q-Cells in Germany announced insolvency. They were the largest maker of solar cells in Germany.
Is it too late to buy stock? I can see a cat hitting the pavement.
Proof yet again, that when it comes to capitalism and free market economics, no organization knows better about returns on investment than a Democrat president and a government entity. Dr. Stephen Chu must have his packed bag under his desk. Surely the Republicans have a big imaginary target painted on his back.
I totally agree with Larry. There are so many green companies going belly up all over the world, I can’t keep up with it. I’d love a list, simply because it’s so amazing.
The usual response from the green lobby is that all this is just normal industry shake out. Same thing happened in the oil industry.
Ok, so that means we will all be dealing with Big Battery in the future, right? Every company works to secure vertical integration of their suppliers and swallow their competition. Banks, airlines, manufacturers, etc. Gee. I can hardly wait.
That’s a shame. I had decently high hopes for the Karma. Did you know that thing weight 5000+ lbs? And costs over $100K? Bajeebus….
You know, the sad thing is battery technology is just now undergoing a much-needed technology update. I remember reading somewhere that battery storage is the singular technology that has undergone the least evolution of any power technology in the last century. Another sad thing is rushing something to market that should really await event horizon potential revolutions….
From a touch over a year ago today we have this:
New structure allows lithium-ion batteries to get a quicker charge (03/22/2011)
Joey Peters, E&E reporter
A research group at the University of Illinois has developed technology that may have lasting
implications for electric vehicles (EVs) and other electronics.
The group, led by Paul Braun, a professor of material sciences and engineering, has come up with
technology that creates a much more rapid charging time for lithium-ion batteries, which power
electronics like cellphones, laptops and defibrillators. Lithium-ion batteries also power EVs,
which can take all night to charge at home and up to an hour to charge at EV stations.
Braun’s findings, published last week in an online version of the journal Nature Nanotechnology,
could lead to an EV charging time comparable to that for filling a tank of gas. Smaller objects
like cell phones could charge in well under a minute, Braun said.
“We have batteries in the lab that can charge in tens of seconds,” he said.
……
Digital quantum batteries: Energy and information storage in
nano vacuum tube arrays
Alfred W. H¨ubler and Onyeama Osuagwu
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
1110 W Green Street, Illinois 61801, USA
(Dated: September 22, 2009)
Abstract
Dielectric material between capacitor electrodes increases the capacitance. However, when the electric field exceeds a threshold, electric breakdown in the dielectric discharges the capacitor suddenly and the stored energy is lost. We show that nano vacuum tubes do not have this problem because (i) electric breakdown can be suppressed with quantization phenomena, and (ii) the capacitance is large at small gap sizes. We find that the energy density and power density in nano vacuum tubes are large compared to lithium batteries and electrochemical capacitors. The electric field in a nano vacuum tube can be sensed with MOSFETs in the insulating walls. Random access arrays of nano vacuum tubes with an energy gate, to charge the tube, and an information gate attached to the MOSFET, to sense the electric field in the tube, can be used to store both energy and information.
From the BBC on Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Battery that ‘charges in seconds’
A new manufacturing method for lithium-ion batteries could lead to smaller, lighter batteries that can be charged in just seconds. Batteries that discharge just as quickly would be useful for electric and hybrid cars, where a quick jolt of charge is needed for acceleration. The approach only requires simple changes to the production process of a well-known material. The new research is reported in the scientific journal Nature. Because of the electronic punch that they pack, gram for gram, lithium-ion batteries are the most common rechargeable batteries found in consumer electronics, such as laptops. However, they take a long time to charge; researchers have assumed until now that there was a speed limit on the lithium ions and electrons that pass through the batteries to form an electrochemical circuit.
Tiny holes
Gerbrand Ceder, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, and his colleagues used a computer simulation to model the movements of ions and electrons in a variant of the standard lithium material known as lithium iron phosphate. The simulation indicated that ions were moving at great speed. “If transport of the lithium ions was so fast, something else had to be the problem,” Professor Ceder said. That problem turned out to be the way ions passed through the material. They pass through minuscule tunnels, whose entrances are present at the surface of the material. However, the team discovered that to get into these channels, the ions had to be positioned directly in front of the tunnel entrances – if they were not, they could not get through.
The solution, Ceder discovered, was to engineer the material such that it has a so-called “beltway” that guides the ions towards the tunnel entrances.
Traffic management
A prototype battery made using the new technique could be charged in less than 20 seconds – in comparison to six minutes with an untreated sample of the material.
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As fast as the fiery Volt isn’t rolling off the assembly lines at the moment wouldn’t it have been more prudent to look a little farther upstream before plunking down? On talk of government picking winners and losers the discussion ends here.
kbray in california says:
“Thank you Mr. President, for another loser.”
Agreed, and don’t let the President talk you into taking a Vegas trip with him…
What’s even more amazing, though, is his response to the abject, public, and multiple green job failures, which has been a doubling down on the inherently-progressive mantra. President Obama’s 2013 budget (released admittedly more as a campaign talking point than actual spending plan) establishes a number of “Clean Energy Provisions” – clean is the new green because the latter has become soiled by unchecked stupidity – http://tinyurl.com/7n9drfs .
Unfortunately, the President’s opposition in the pending elections appears reluctant (at best) to prominently highlight his misplaced faith in all things green. And such reluctant is, essentially, an abdication of responsibility on a magnitude similar to the President.
Wikiquote goes so far as to allow this:
—–
A quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher goes along the lines of
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”
===============
And then there is an election in November.
Another bloodbath, no incumbent is secure.
Interesting times.
And not just companies. Our bio-diesel mandate which the Green party have been pushing since 2009 (and was fully endorsed by the last Labour govt.) finally died its death in the NZ Parliament this week.
A victory for sanity.
The really sad facts are that the viability of an electric car for any use, except local trips, is a non starter. Any engineer who is familiar with the Research Process knows that one does not rush into investing in commercialization of a device when there is a fatal missing link that makes the development useless.
It is utterly stupid to spend fortunes developing details of a technology while a critical link for it’s function is missing. The smart work process is to first through a careful technical review to identify all the critical weak links and focus your efforts and resources on resolving/developing solutions for those items before you go whole hog on commercializing the easy parts.
The $$$ spent on the electric car is just an attempt to deceive the public into believing there is a near term viable alternative to gasoline as a transportation energy source. Were they so stupid to not believe that a day of judgment would occur, or are they so incompetent to think throwing money at it will certainly solve the problem.
Unfortunately this is not the first or the last misstep.
Mandates and subsidies with timetables for Ethanol from cellulosic sources is another huge failure.
What’s next?
This might be a place to start: http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/ which lists bankruptcies, layoffs and closings each month.
.
Hmm. Anybody want to sell a pile of books? Compile and discuss the waste in Energy projects. Not ALL the projects. Just the ones focused on energy.
Larry Ledwick (hotrod ) says:
April 4, 2012 at 5:52 pm
I concur and second your request, Larry!
How about it, Anthony? Each of us have friends saying “Have ya heard about the Green Weenie Company that just went TU?” A tracking and inventory page could be quite useful.
MtK
I heard this company is changing its name from A123 to A321….ZERO!
From $20/share to $0.79/ share and soon to be zero….
This is what happens when free-market capitalism is replaced by crony socialism.
Do these research guys have ANY idea the size the conductors are going to be to supply this current without substantial I-squared*R (current-squared times R) power loss in a practical implementation? And that includes the lines running to the charging station(s)?
.
MattN says:
April 4, 2012 at 7:08 pm
That’s a shame. I had decently high hopes for the Karma. Did you know that thing weight 5000+ lbs? And costs over $100K? Bajeebus….
———————-
All the progressies say that it was a great car. why? Because the sheet metal looks nice. Colour me unimpressed.
Massachusetts-based A123 received more than $279 million in grants from the Department of Energy,
———————–
Michigan gave them a ton of money too. I wonder if all the government money given to Karma and A123 was contigent on Karma using A123 battery packs. The dominant colossuses of the battery industry are outfits like Panasonic, Sanyo, Toshiba and LG. You cannot run businesses with progressie politicians pulling all of the strings for very long anyway.
My favorite quote of the week: “Just goes to show – you can’t just shove money up a unicorn’s ass and realistically expect something useful to come of it”
Obomber (he who loves to bomb innocent civilians) gave away another $2 billion to his mates to save-the-planet with solar power and failed yet again:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/worlds-largest-solar-plant-21-billion-energy-department-loan-guarantee-files-bankruptcy