I’m sure all the money the US government put into Fisker was already gone by then. A decade later and even more reminders of what a terrible “investment” that was.
A relative worked at Fisker recently. The loan you are talking about was in 2009. That version of Fisker went out of business in 2014.
The most "recent iteration" of Fisker was basically a company from scratch. It was only called Fisker because it's original founder (Henrik Fisker) retained the rights to the name and logo.
This time around there weren't any loans from the US govt.
Which also failed which proved that the founder is a bad bet and that if the US government chooses to invest again, it should steer clear of that dude.
My point is public money shouldn’t be used for “investment”. If they contracted with the company to make a fleet and they didn’t deliver at least the public would have recourse to liquidate and collect. By handing out free money on a risky gamble, everyone loses.
Don't forget that a massive part of their income that allowed them to survive was selling carbon credits to the tune of billions of dollars, and that their cars have been massively discounted due to federal subsidies on EV cars (depending on your income level.... which btw doesn't apply to just them but makes a big difference).
I wouldn't qualify it as a subsidy. It was a credit that you take on your taxes. It's picking nits, sure, but subsidy sounds like the federal govt rolled up a truck full of money at EV car makers' factories.
The Federal government and state governments paying ~$10k to people who buy Teslas is the definition of a subsidy. People wrote $50k checks to Tesla and got $10k from the government for doing so.
