Fisker Automotive, maker of the Karma, a hundred-thousand-dollar electric-gas hybrid sports car, is in deep trouble. It’s laid off seventy-five per cent of its workforce, hasn’t produced a single car in nine months, and may well declare bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks. And opponents of the U.S. government’s attempts to invest in green energy couldn’t be happier, since Fisker received nearly two hundred million dollars in loans from the Department of Energy under a program designed to foster investment in electric and hybrid vehicles.
Fisker’s failure (like that of the solar company Solyndra before it) is, as a result, being held up as evidence of the futility of all government investments in green technology. Lou Dobbs said, simply, “All they pick are losers.” And House Republican Jim Jordan, who will be chairing a hearing next week on the government’s loan to Fisker, called the company’s troubles “a very timely case study of what happens when the Department of Energy plays venture capitalist with taxpayer money.”
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