JAN 13

I like what they are doing here, but are they deliberately ignoring the fact that some of us out here don't drive on paved roads to get home? I'd destroy that car just getting it up my driveway, let alone what happens to the thing when we have eight inches of snow fall overnight.

These cars are a great first step for the folks who live in southern California. I drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee because I have to. Give me one of those that's all electric and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. It just has to have four wheel drive.

(Please re-post this as a community service)
Less than 20 car companies (The ATVM people say there were tons of applications but only a handful were car companies) applied for $25 BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money managed by a certain smug group of people at DOE in order to get loans to make green cars for Americans. This was not all of DOE that did bad things, just a private cadre of men.

There was enough money to help every single one of the car companies that applied. The administrators applied their interpretations of the law in order to benefit the large lobby group-related firms and avoided every one of the “politically unconnected “independent American companies.

The amount of lobby and influence money spent by each awardee is in direct ratio to the amount of money awarded. Pay-to-play was the process.

The smaller companies, due to lower overhead, could have dramatically more productive results with the money than the large burdened companies yet the money was given out based on political career advantages for the administrators rather than the technology advantages for Americans.

The way the ATVM people set it up (Google “Siry says stifles innovation” for more), the smaller applicants were prevented from getting outside investor funding.

All of the people that reviewed the applications had political and financial connections to GM, Ford, Chrysler and the large Detroit recipients.

Each of those smaller American companies had technology and resources that presented a powerful economic threat, if they got the loans, to the large politically connected companies that did receive funds. The big car companies wanted the small companies cut-out at all costs.

The Section 136 law was written to provide first-come-first serve funding but when the small companies got their applications in first, while the big ones arrogantly felt that they did not even need to apply because it was already pre-staged for them, the ATVM officials changed the rules in order to remove the first-come-first-serve standard of the law in order to cut out the smaller independents.

Some of the companies that have gotten money have backed out of making the electric cars they said they would make. But they still get to keep the money.

The Section 136 Law was created by the lobbyists for GM, Ford & Chrysler when they saw that they were about to go bankrupt and wanted to tap into additional taxpayer dollars by claiming the money was going to be used for electric cars in order to win rapid support for Section 136 by tugging at heartstrings. In retrospect, the money mostly went to gasoline car projects. Multiple public hearings have already shown the sister loan guarantee program to have been a failed program via intentional delays, the head was fired and replaced & massive complaints have been filed by many.

Some of the companies that got the money have already wasted more money than other companies applied for as their total request.

Some of the companies that got taxpayer loan money are not even American companies and/or are doing their manufacturing offshore with non-American employees. Thus, the ATVM process has cost American’s jobs.

Those who got the money had to fill out little, or no, paperwork, went through little, or no, review and were connected to the DOE people who gave them the money and shepherded them through the process. Those who they wanted to keep out were forced to jump through more hoops, were slow-tracked in review and had made no political deals via hired law and lobby firms that the big companies has used to conduit “influence”.

The decision about who would get money was made in 2008 by a private group who then pretended there was a lengthy review throughout 2009 but in fact, the money was pre-wired for a select few.

All of the things that the rejected small companies (who did not pay lobby fees) were rejected for, were the same things that the insider big companies were doing. In at least two cases, big companies who were in violation of Section 136 rules were guided by reviewer-insiders to change their whole business structure in order to become suddenly “compliant “with section 136 while smaller companies received no such “help”.

How does this affect you? It cost you and your friends jobs, it delayed American innovation, it made your family have to breath toxic petroleum fumes for another decade, it furthered a corrupt practice and it hurt domestic small business. This was all about money. Controlling who got to make money off of the technology and who got to delay electric cars so the old oil and steel guys could still make money off of their old assets.

Yea, seems a little impractical as far as a daily use vehicle. It seems like electric vehicles should be practical first, so they can become mainstream, then they can roll out the hot rod models!

Electric vehicles are still pretty expensive and not very practical as anything outside a weekend warrior. The sports cars get around both those problems by appealing to the rich and avoiding use as a sole family vehicle.

They are paying the early adoption tax to cover the cost of R&D -- not to mention it helps scale up mass production facilities.

As a side note, I'm really confused as to how this is a 'hybrid' car. It only has an electric engine. A hybrid by definition is a melding of two things.

The ATVM-DOE loan program SHOULD be designed so that the Taxpayers do NOT lose $$$ in investing in some of these companies. Irregardless if the company wants to put a factory in the continental US or not. Some of these companies balance sheets & past practices are horrendous. Was looking at one Southern California company that wants to put a factory in Kentucky & the balance sheet and history of the company showed five name changes, one filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, delisting from three exchanges and yet the company want to inquire as to why it newly for subsidiary company can't get a loan from the US govt. In addition the same company hired a lobbyist in 2008 and 2009 to plead its case with several state legislatures (kentucky) included to change their definition of a 'car' to that of a 3 wheeled motorcycle. The largest shareholder of this same company is engaging the company in a law suit for NON-PAYMENT of a loan to the same company Jan 28, 2010 in California Court.

Will any of the vehicles the US government supplies money to be REQUIRED to meet NHTSA SAFETY requirements?

It seems ridiculous to me to give monies to companies that will be irresponsible with privately held money, so why should we even trust public backed money !!
Then if the final product won't even meet Highway (NHSTA) safety requirements, whats the sense in promoting a vehicle that has no end result possibilities of being used on the roads. Just so the DOE can say it spent some stimulus money? No think that the ATVM-DOE loan programs should continue to STRICTLY investigate these applicants for this ATVM-DOE loan program to weed out the weak and those not capable of making a vehicle that will appeal not only to giving a Return on investment to the taxpayer; while being used in a safe manner with the other vehicles that will share the roadway in the future.

In looking at the picture above, it looks like this is a high performance 2-door sports coupe. Yet when you look at the actual Audi A3 TDI, it is 4-door compact. Of course, I'd like to see both options available to appeal the widest audience.

I'd love to see an electric hybrid (or the recently covered hydraulic hybrid) that uses a small diesel engine to recharge batteries or store energy in the hydraulic cylinder. That would enable you to retrofit the diesel engine with a cleaner alternative, like natural gas or hydrogen fuel-cell.

I've owned an electric hybrid for almost 7 years ('03 Honda Civic Hybrid) and was lucky to have bought the extended warranty (which I rarely if ever go for). Luckily this covered the $4K+ battery pack replacement, which would have completely nullified any economic benefit to driving a hybrid. So we have a lot of work to do with battery technology before the electric hybrid or plug-in models become sustainable.