Barack Obama presided over one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in history.
Now one of his green energy debacles is coming back into the picture.
And Joe Biden was stunned when this Obama-era electric vehicle scandal came back to bite him.
Electric vehicle company promoted by Joe Biden goes bankrupt
Electric vehicle maker Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after failing to find an outside investor to save the company.
The automaker was once considered one of the darlings of the electric vehicle industry and a potential future rival to industry leader Tesla.
Henrik Fisker, the company’s founder, was a former designer for Tesla before he branched out on his own.
The automaker never turned a profit and went into a death spiral as demand for electric vehicles collapsed.
“Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to operate efficiently,” Fisker said.
Fisker’s flagship vehicle, the Ocean SUV, was plagued with problems and faced four National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations.
The automaker tried to ride the wave of federal spending boosting electric vehicles under President Joe Biden but crashed and burned.
This marked the second major failure for Fisker to get off the ground after its first attempt to build an electric vehicle ended in scandal and saw the business sold off for pennies on the dollar to a Chinese company.
Joe Biden boasted about electric vehicle maker that collapsed in scandal
Henrik Fisker co-founded Fisker Automotive in 2008 and quickly took advantage of former President Barack Obama’s enthusiasm for throwing taxpayer money at unproven green jobs projects.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden boasted in 2009 that a $529 million Department of Energy loan to Fisker Automotive to produce electric vehicles in Delaware would generate “billions of dollars in good, new jobs.”
The company planned to build the Fisker Karma which was supposed to be a high-end luxury electric vehicle.
Biden admitted that he lobbied Fisker to make its vehicle in Delaware.
“A spokeswoman for Mr. Biden said that he had made no direct appeals to DOE [Department of Energy] on Fisker’s behalf before the loan was approved, though he did talk to the company several times afterward to put in a plug for his home state,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
First iteration of Fisker Biden-mobiles went kaput and now so is the second
Fisker Automotive went bankrupt in 2013 without ever having produced an electric vehicle.
Taxpayers lost nearly $140 million on the loan to the company.
Chinese auto parts conglomerate, Wanxiang Group, purchased the assets and Henrik Fisker walked away with the name.
Then-Obama Energy Department spokesman Bill Gibbons downplayed the loss of taxpayer money.
“While this result is not what anyone hoped for, this amount represents less than 2 percent of our advance vehicle loans and less than one-half of 1 percent of our overall loan program portfolio of more than $30 billion,” Gibbons said.
The House Energy and House Investigative committees slammed the Fisker bankruptcy in 2013.
“Fisker’s collapse closes yet another sad chapter in DOE’s troubled portfolio. The jobs that were promised never materialized and once again taxpayers are on the hook for the administration’s reckless gamble,” the House Republicans said.
Electric vehicles are a long-running government boondoggle that leaves taxpayers holding the short end of the stick.
