Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney may be a Michigan-bred entrepreneur with a successful career in business, but the man knows little about the electric vehicle sector.
During his first debate with President Barack Obama, Romney labeled upstart automakers Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors as "losers." The commentary came as the Republican presidential candidate was railing against Department of Energy and other federal loans provided to green energy companies under the Obama administration, despite some of those loans being issued during the Bush administration. He specifically called out four companies as failures in the marketplace.
"You put $90 billion, like 50 years' worth of breaks, into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1," Romney said to Obama. (Some transcripts have Romney saying "Tester" instead of "Tesla.") "I mean, I had a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right?"
"We don’t consider ourselves a loser having sold 1,500 cars already, raised over $1.2 billion of private equity and now expanding our export markets to GCC and China," Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told Wired on Thursday. "We believe that is a quite an achievement for a small American business."
Fisker has certainly been plagued with issues, including a pair of fires that engulfed its $100k+ plug-in hybrid, and a government freeze on its $529 million loan guarantee due to missing certain DOE milestones. But with a fresh round of $100 million in funding sourced from private investors and cars on the road, the American automaker is holding its own for the time being.
While Solyndra's epic – and highly politicized – collapse and Ener1's failure (and ongoing refinancing) can be turned against the administration and the federal loans it oversaw, the line that Fisker and Tesla are somehow failing in the marketplace are largely unfounded. Tesla announced earlier this week that it expects to be, "cash flow positive at the end of next month."
The automaker's co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk, wrote in a company blog post that the automaker has produced 359 vehicles in the last quarter, of which over 250 have been delivered to customers. Musk went on to address concerns about its DOE loan repayment, announcing that "we will be initiating an advance payment today to prefund the principal payment that is due in March 2013."
Most troubling is that Romney's comments appear to be in direct opposition to his focus on America's innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, and a return to stateside manufacturing.
In Musk's letter, he asserts that these loans and Tesla's efforts have resulted in "a resurgence in American manufacturing ability and the creation of over 3,500 high quality jobs."
If that isn't the beginning of a "winner," we're not sure what Romney is looking for.
