Going Green Automaker in Red for $139 Million

It looks like taxpayers will have to foot the bill for a plan from the U.S. Department of Energy that failed. They took a chance with a green automaker for many millions of dollars and ended up going into the red. The announcement was made on Friday by the Obama Administration. The total price tag on the government supported electric car maker Fisker Automotive is $139 million. The government gave the automaker a loan and the car manufacturer sold part of it to pay an investor. That means that the company is now in bankruptcy.

This is another Obama Administration plan to stimulate the green initiative with public funding. Unfortunately, the efforts seem to have failed in many cases, and this is the end of this particular transaction which awarded a guaranteed loan amount of $529 million in 2009 so that the company could product a car called the Karma, which was supposed to be a luxury hybrid. However, the automaker could not meet the Department of Energy standards that were set up or the benchmarks that they had outlined. The company use much of the $192 million before the federal government pulled the funding in April, but they were only able to seize $21 million from the company to help cover the tax debt that it had caused.

The new owner of the car company, Hybrid Technology LLC, will keep Fisker going, but only after it has pulled out of bankruptcy. Barack Obama’s plan has draw criticism from many Republicans. The Government was out $528 million when Solyndra went under and that added even more fuel to the fire for the Republicans about Obama’s green energy plans. “Fisker’s collapse closes yet another sad chapter in DOE’s troubled portfolio. The jobs that were promised never materialized and, once again, taxpayers are on the hook for the administration’s reckless gamble,” said Fred Upton (R-PA) who is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.