Over a Dozen Government Subsidized Fisker $100,000 Cars Catch Fire and Explode in NJ Port

Let's start with the fact that the federal government has agreed to subsidize Fisker Automotive to the tune of $529 million for the purpose of building luxury sport cars for the rich.

Why Is the Government Subsidizing a $104,000 Car?

Fisker Automotive suspended efforts in Delaware last week to retool an abandoned GM production plant into a manufacturing facility for its new electric hybrid NINA, derived from the $104,000 luxury Karma.

Fisker's problem is that it is the recipient of a $529 million loan from the Department of Energy. Having already pocketed $193 million to help push the $104,000 Karma onto the market...

Fisker Automotive is an Al Gore project because, well, forcing American taxpayers to subsidize sport cars for the rich is sooo Al Gore - a typical Al Gore calling card. Even worse is that these taxpayer funded luxury sport cars for the rich are being built in Finland and not the US.

OBAMA ADMIN GAVE HALF-BILLION-DOLLAR LOAN TO GORE-CONNECTED ELECTRIC CAR COMPANY TO BUILD CARS IN… FINLAND?

An electric car company that received more than a half-billion-dollar Obama administration-approved loan is reportedly now assembling its first line of cars in rural Finland, rather than in the United States. What’s more, the car company, Fisker Automotive, is funded by a venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore.

As if the Fisker Automotive story isn't bad enough already, it gets worse. It's being reported that over a dozen Fiskers caught fire and literally blew up in a New Jersey port right after Hurricane Sandy hit.

More Than A Dozen Fisker Karma Hybrids Caught Fire And Exploded In New Jersey Port After Sandy

Approximately 16 of the $100,000+ Fisker Karma extended-range luxury hybrids were parked in Port Newark, New Jersey last night when water from Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge apparently breached the port and submerged the vehicles. As Jalopnik has exclusively learned, the cars then caught fire and burned to the ground.

Our source tells us they were “first submerged in a storm surge and then caught fire, exploded.” This wouldn’t be the first time the vehicles, which use a small gasoline engine to charge batteries that provide energy to two electric motors, had an issue with sudden combustion.

The vehicle, despite only being in limited production, has already experienced numerous fires due to equipment failures and electrical shorts. How, exactly, they caught fire after being submerged in sea water is unclear. It’s possible the salt water caused a short that led to a fire.

As far as we know, no other vehicles caught fire and exploded as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Business Insider and Wired  have also reported on the Fisker cars that caught fire.  Zero Hedge especially had some fun with its headline:

Fisker Karma Is First Car To Burn Underwater  Zero Hedge

16 Fisker Karmas Caught Fire During The Hurricane  Business Insider

At Least 16 Fisker Karmas Drown, Catch Fire at New Jersey Port  Wired

Furthermore, the taxpayer subsidized Fisker has a long and problematic history.

Fisker Looking Into Another Karma Fire

Fisker Automotive has another fire to put out.

Fisker, the Anaheim, Calif.-based maker of luxury plug-in hybrid sports cars, says it is investigating why one of its Karma models caught fire Friday in a parking lot in Woodside, Calif.

For Fisker, images of one of its $100,000 cars mysteriously going up in flames represent another detour for the company’s efforts to regain momentum....

The Woodside fire comes as Fisker is fighting to rebut charges in the German magazine Autobild that the Karma’s design presents a high risk of fire. The company and federal and state officials also are investigating a May incident in which a Fisker Karma was one of three cars destroyed in a garage fire near Houston, Texas.

Late last year, Fisker recalled about 260 Karmas to fix potentially defective hose clamps that could lead to battery coolant leaks.

Meanwhile, Fisker’s been reshuffling its top management, and looking for new funding to replace a $529 million U.S. Energy Department loan that was frozen earlier this year after the company fell behind schedule in developing a new plug-in hybrid model, the Atlantic. Fisker has stopped work equipping a former General Motors Co. assembly plant in Delaware that had been targeted to build the car.

It appears clearly evident that Fisker's Karma has some really bad taxpayer funded karma and may end up being the worst vehicle ever manufactured.  But what the heck, it's only taxpayer cash!

Al Gore is a Welfare Queen

In 2001, John Stossel wrote a fascinating piece titled Confessions of a Welfare Queen, How rich bastards like me rip off the taxpayers for millions of dollars. Stossel wrote:

If the ocean took my house, Uncle Sam would pay to replace it under the National Flood Insurance Program. Since private insurers weren’t dumb enough to sell cheap insurance to people who built on the edges of oceans or rivers, Congress decided the government should step in and do it. So if the ocean ate what I built, I could rebuild and rebuild again and again -- there was no limit to the number of claims on the same property in the same location -- up to a maximum of $250,000 per house per flood. And you taxpayers would pay for it.

Thanks.

I did have to pay insurance premiums, but they were dirt cheap -- mine never exceeded a few hundred dollars a year.

Why does Uncle Sam offer me cheap insurance? "It saves federal dollars," replied James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), when I did a 20/20 report on this boondoggle. "If this insurance wasn’t here," he said, "then people would be building in those areas anyway. Then it would cost the American taxpayers more [in relief funds] if a disaster hit."

That’s government logic: Since we always mindlessly use taxpayer money to bail out every idiot who takes an expensive risk, let’s get some money up front by selling them insurance first.

The insurance, of course, has encouraged more people to build on the edges of rivers and oceans. The National Flood Insurance Program is currently the biggest property insurance writer in the United States, putting taxpayers on the hook for more than $640 billion in property. Subsidized insurance goes to movie stars in Malibu, to rich people in Kennebunkport (where the Bush family has its vacation compound), to rich people in Hyannis (where the Kennedy family has its), and to all sorts of people like me who ought to be paying our own way.

But John Stossel isn't the only welfare queen in America. From Napoleon Hills 'Think and Grow Rich' to Al Gore's 'Steal from the Taxpayers and Grow Rich", Al Gore has mastered the art and science of sucking off the taxpayers nipple, along with many other rich folks who feed at the pubic trough.

The Telegraph wrote a most interesting piece on Al Gore.

Al Gore could become world's first carbon billionaireAl Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world's first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.

Last year Mr Gore's venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts....

Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Al Gore is a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that also happens to be a major investor in Fisker Automotive. Fisker received $529 million in federal money and loan guarantees to build a sports car for the wealthy.  Subsidizing sports cars for the wealthy is obscenely immoral as well as a slap in the face to taxpayers.  

Why Is the Government Subsidizing a $104,000 Car?

Fisker Automotive is the brainchild of Henrik Fisker, a 48-year-old Danish auto designer who first made his mark working at BMW's advanced design studio in Munich...

Like many ambitious auto executives before him -- John DeLorean comes to mind -- Fisker's real dream was to build his own car...

He also produced the initial design for the Tesla Model S, the scaled-down version of the $109,000 Tesla Roadster that is supposed to reach auto showrooms this year. In 2008, Fisker unveiled his own luxury hybrid, the Karma, designed to compete with the Roadster at $104,000. Although still headquartered in southern California, Fisker elected to build the Karma in Finland at a plant that once produced the Porsche Boxster and Cayman....

Solyndra, remember, was a loan guarantee, where the federal government promises to indemnify private lenders if things go wrong. Fisker received a check directly from the U.S. Treasury. The first $193 million went to save the floundering Karma venture...

These clean energy scam companies that live off of government subsidies are entwined with each other as well as Wall Street.  According to MSNBC "Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr announced he’s joining the advisory board of Generation Investment Management, the $1 billion investment firm that Gore founded with David Blood, who previously managed $325 billion in assets out of Goldman Sachs’ London office."

How much money has welfare queen Al Gore made off the taxpayers nipple?  I don't know but he must be doing quite well to afford a $9 beachfront getaway mansion in Montecito, CA, a mansion that may have been paid for by American taxpayers.