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
To Robert Brown and others who defend this kind of funding – do you think that Steve Jobs and his team or Bill Gates and his team were paid hundreds of thousands a year when their businesses were not even producing anything? Or, if they were, were losing money, breaking even or perhaps making tiny profits?
This has nothing to do with true entrepreneurship, and everything to do with a few individuals walking away with large amounts of taxpayer money, no care, no responsibility.
No-one seems to be held accountable for these boondoggles. When was the last time someone was sent to jail for these thefts? The answer is – never.