At last week's politically charged congressional hearing on the troubles of Fisker Automotive, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said that the company had "no business acumen" and that "taxpayers have effectively subsidized luxury novelty vehicles for the likes of Justin Bieber, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore."
Ouch.
Republicans eager to score points against President Obama had a field day last week with Fisker. But politics -- and the perils of taking venture capital from the federal government -- were in retrospect a secondary problem for the startup automaker.
The roots of Fisker Automotive's precarious state go back several years, to a time when the company and the Department of Energy established unrealistic sales goals for an unknown automaker working with tricky hybrid technology.
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