…
Fisker said it was not aware of any consumer complaints, warranty claims or “any other reports related to this condition.” It said fewer than 50 vehicles were in the hands of consumers.
Under federal regulations dealers may not sell the remaining new models until the recall is completed.
Full story at the NYT
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It’s another example of USA tax dollars at work – in Finland:
From ABC News, Oct 20th, 2011:
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.
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the company’s manufacturing jobs are still limited to the assembly of the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car in Finland.
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Let’s do the math.
239 cars produced for 2012 model year.
$529,000,000 USD in Government loans
That works out to $2,213,389 (2.2 million) per car.
Selling price $103,000 USD, that leaves only $2,110,389 in taxpayer funded overhead per vehicle. And, they’ve only sold 50 so far.
Such a deal.
Of course, when your promotion strategy revolves around a sitcom based on Charlie Sheen, such things are bound to happen:
Full story at GreenCarReports.com
The 2012 Fisker, the peoples car affordable to Internet billionaires and Hollywood actors, fire extinguisher not included.
PaulH says:
January 1, 2012 at 9:56 am
It *is* a sharp looking car. 🙂
—
Well, for $100,000+ you’d better get a good looking car! :^)
Interestingly…on the subject of Google Searches and WUWT…I did a Google search for the first “Tag” (Electric Car) and WUWT didn’t show up through Pg 52 so I added the “Second Tag” (Finland) to the Google Search and this story finally appeared but on Pg 13
Boy Anthony, Google really doesn’t like you
So true. For boats these have been replaced with CO2 …. somehow I don’t think they’d like the optics on that though. 😀
All show and no go.
Mr. Green and company Obama, Jackson and Peolsi are still smiling think of those campaign dollars. Wonder if the brought a couple to Hawaii to test drive, why not?
Subsidy for Fisker – $529 Million. Subsidy for Chevy Volt – $1.5 Billion. Spontaneous electric car combustion on a cold winter day – priceless.
How about calling the next model Fisker Insha’Allah.
Or how about an Electric car deathmatch – in which you place a Chevy Volt and a Fisker Karma on the opposing ends of a parking lot and wait. The car that doesn’t burst into flames wins.
Andrew says:
January 1, 2012 at 10:04 am
“Halon, pretty safe stuff as I recall. Didn’t the Germans use it for their submarines? You can breath it and the fire goes out. ”
The purpose of Halon is to displace air, specifically the oxygen, so a Halon fire extinguisher will leave you with nothing to breath. You can surely breath the Halon but the lack of Oxygen still kills you, and pretty fast.
Here’s the most serious problem I have with this: The selling price is $103,000. Now exactly who is going to spend $103,000 for a car? Who spends that kind of money for any car?
So we have subsidies from US taxpayers subsidizing the manufacture of these. Then in many states we have subsidies for purchasing them. Again, paid for by the taxpayers. If your state has a sales tax, the poorest of your state’s poor are subsidizing a car only the very rich can afford to buy. People struggling to make ends meet as it is are being forced to subsidize a toy for the rich.
That’s just plain wrong.
1 Volt = $250,000+
Is this the start of a new law of car creationism, one in line with Kar-mic (mike test, mike test…) principles…..”Om’s Law” perhaps? Everyone gaze at your navels and repeat this mantra after me…our money is not important….our money is not important….
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2826408/posts
I would go with a Volkswagen Jetta TDI (diesel) but that’s a bit out of the $15K range.
From the cited ABC News article:
“Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive. ”
It costs a half billion dollars for engineering and design work?!? And Henrik Fisker is not an American — he is European. The video on the ABC News site says that they will start producing these cars in the Delaware in 2012 or later. Maybe if we all hold our breath awaiting this, we can reduce our CO2 contributions.
BTW, my wife drives a 2008 Honda Oddysey. The van flawlessly switches between 6, 4, and 3 cylinders, the only indication of this happening is an “ECO” indicator light appearing on the dashboard. It gets fairly decent mileage — even stays in the ECO mode doing 75 mph on fairly level expressways. I’m impressed. (Getting OT — sorry).
A related article. It’s all about the money, as usual.
That leaves more corn for tamales and George Dickel.
@ur momisugly crosspatch says:
January 1, 2012 at 10:39 am
Same fundamental principle applies to Cash for Clunkers.
“…That’s just plain wrong.”
From the NYT article:
“…workers at the Valmet Automotive assembly plant in Finland noticed coolant dripping. “,/i>
and
“…some hose clamps were not properly positioned, which could allow a coolant leak. “If coolant enters the battery compartment an electrical short could possibly occur, causing a thermal event within the battery, including a possible fire”
Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice is saying, “This is a made up, cover story to get the cars back to the dealer to fix a real problem.”
Electric car manufactures may have discovered cost cutting measures in assembling the Nanophosphate Lithium-Ion Battery is presenting a safety issue. They are at the crossroads of balancing cost/weight against safety. Increase the cost, the car fails. Allow them to burn up at random, the car fails. This is a terrible dilemma for the environmentalists to be in.
Let’s see. This car is the ideal car for a guy that can afford to spend +$100K for a personal luxury car, but considers purchasing gasoline at $3.50/gallon to be overwhelmingly costly, ok.
To satisfy this broad demographic of car purchasers the progressives in the govt will finance this vehicle to the tune of $2.2million/copy and give the buyer a $7.5K bonus with tax payer dollars. However, if an average Joe wants to buy a Shelby GT500 with his own money the progressives in the govt will hit the guy with $5 – 7.5K in additional “gas guzzler” taxes. This is so fair it’s incredible.
Why has the government forsaken the green mega-yacht industry?
Can’t we get a few billion in subsidies to create hydrogen powered yachts to reduce the incredible guilt and suffering of owners of AGW causing diesel mega-yachts?
Another investment in a FOO™ (Friend Of Obama) company gone bad. Gosh, would it be too much to ask Big Al Gorge (who demonstrates inflation in the time-space continuum every day) to put up some of his own money? Why do I have to get taxed to pay for this POS (Piece Of Scheiswurst). I mean I am not against all electrics, I even have one in my back yard. Top speed 70 mph, 40 mile range. But really, do we have to make this AGW fraud cost the taxpayers to feed big AL?
At least it is a 54-state car…
… or, is it 57?
Is everyone feeling stimulated, yet? Keynes would be proud. Gee, I just can’t figure out why even after the stimulus we can’t shake the economic doldrums. Given the failure of the renewable energy plans and the closing of the coal plants, has anyone wondered where we’d get the energy to charge these fire hazards if electric cars became widely adopted? Morons.
DirkH says: January 1, 2012 at 10:26 am
Andrew says: January 1, 2012 at 10:04 am
“Halon, pretty safe stuff as I recall. Didn’t the Germans use it for their submarines? You can breath it and the fire goes out. ”
The purpose of Halon is to displace air, specifically the oxygen, so a Halon fire extinguisher will leave you with nothing to breath. You can surely breath the Halon but the lack of Oxygen still kills you, and pretty fast.
————————————————————————-
Err, no. Halon works kinda like a catalyst. It preferentially occupies chemical binding sites on the fuel and prevents oxygen from combining with the fuel (all you real chemists out there: I know this is over simplified). CO2 is not as good at fire suppression as halon because it does just displace air which excludes oxygen in a bulk manner. CO2 is also slightly more dense than air, so it settles onto the fuel a bit better than nitrogen used as a fire suppressant. This means that CO2 is no better than nitrogen for fighting fires on the Space Station where density is no advantage in weightless conditions.
The toxicity problem with halon is that in a fire, some of it is partially pyrolized into really nasty toxic chlorofluorocarbons. It’s great for fighting the fire, but you need to get away when you’re done.
When the manufacture of new halon was made illegal, Boeing went around to commercial computer installations and replaced the halon systems for free and installed CO2 systems. Why? Because a halon fire suppression system in a 747 weighs a thousand kg less than a CO2 system with comparable performance.
Al Gore has interests in Fisker Automotive.
Fisker’s top investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a veteran Silicon Valley venture-capital firm of which Gore is a partner. Employees of KPCB have donated more than $2.2 million to political campaigns, mostly for Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions.
Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125383160812639013.html#MARK
Leather all over an eco car? Still, everybody else got skinned so why not a few cows?
Happy New Year, the madness continues…