Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

I doubt Tesla will be around. It is paying its government loan back with private debt and another stock offering. It also doesn't have a sustainable source of income yet -- except for selling emissions credits that the government gave them to other auto companies that need the credits in order to operate.

That is neither here nor there, though. The same "loan" program (these are loans that were given arbitrarily and without collateral) also funded loans that haven't been paid back and in some, if not many, cases won't ever be. Fisker Automative, for example, got a larger loan than Tesla did. There have been several other companies that got these politically-connected loans that have gone bankrupt and taken their public money with them.

At the same time, there is an inherent unfairness to it. Where is my loan collateral-free loan -- other than the fact that I'm not Elon Musk and I don't make well-placed political contributions?

Forget about me. ... Why Tesla? What did Carbon Motors Corporation do wrong? It wanted the same kind of loan Ford and Nissan wanted and spent two years addressing every concern the DOE expressed. Denied.

At the same time that Tesla was biding time (it would have been bankrupt) on the largesse of the U.S. government, Bright Automotive could have used half a billion dollars to stay afloat -- same concept. Plug-in EVs. It waited 4 years for the DOE to respond to its application and finally ran out of cash and had to go out of business (as Tesla would have without that half a billion dollars). Nobody at Bright had the rolodex and political connections (bought) that Elon Musk has.

Take it a step further. Why autos? Why EVs favored within autos? What about my business producing widgets. Why is our government shifting the playing field in the auto industry at the expense of MY industry? And just how much does that hurt the broader economy?

There is an inherent corruption to it all.

 

Wasting billions of dollars on potentially dead-end technologies that there is no demand for -- and that lead to costlier products than the gasoline-fueled cars -- would not be the way to do that, would it? Even if it is a "national priority" that everyone agreed about.

We'll wean ourselves from oil when a viable alternative -- that makes more sense to consumers -- becomes available. Politicians are not going to determine those alternatives. A marketplace will.

When you let politicians do these kinds of corrupt things, in the name of "national priority" we get the corruption and the massive debt we have used to pay for it -- all of which hurts our broader economy. And they funnel money from potentially productive areas of our economy to unproductive ones.

You didn't quote another part of my post that you could have responded to. Why Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors? Why not Bright Automotive -- which didn't have the clout and friends that Elon Musk does? How is that fair and equitable and neutral -- things our government should be?

Do you believe that our government should be putting us into massive debt and using part of that debt to hand out cash to people who are in good with politicians (and think about how you get in good), but not others who aren't? Or should our government be neutral in our private business affairs --not benefiting certain people over others . ... and not bankrupting our country with debt in the process of all the cash that gets passed around?