Today's lesson is on the contradictions we often have in government, and how it can crush sectors of the economy and innovation. To start, we're going to try and avoid endorsing or knocking Green Energy. Yeah, there are fine examples of government and business teaming to create a new advancement. We don't have a problem with government throwing a few million to a small company to push the envelope technically. Lots of great advancements are done in garages and small shops everywhere. Sustaining an industry is another thing. Common business tells us if there were a viable product or business out there, and they just needed capital, private investors would give them money. It's a fine line...
No, we're here to chat a bit about regulating to the point where they are unable to fund companies that are promoting the very causes they are trying to advance. Here's a good example: Bright Automotive is based in Indiana. They are an electric automaker with a big idea: making electric trucks. It's a huge gamble, but if it paid off, bright would have the world at it's feet. Large industry lives and dies on trucking. Trains are great, but trucking is the final method of transportation. Gas trucks are hugely inefficient, and diesel trucks are better, but not by much. The pretty successful Sprinter line shows just how much a small to medium sized delivery or service truck that gets good mileage can sell... If there were a viable and affordable electric truck, every buisness from UPS to Uncle Guiseppe's Meat Market (yes, there is such a place, and they drive a Sprinter) would likely flock. Cash Bonanza, baby!!!
Not that we know them inside and out, but Bright seemed to have a decent business model. They'd been around for a while, with a manufacturing facility in Indiana (home to thousands of unemployed former AMC and motor coach workers). Maybe it was Indiana's recent decision to become a Right to Work state, but something odd went on with Bright...
According to a Wall Street Journal article yesterday, Bright Automotive has been getting stonewalled by the Department of Energy for almost 2 years. They applied for a DoE grant years earlier, and the process took it's time, with DoE slowly moving it along. Bright has complained that they were promised by the DoE that an approval for the grant was 'a month or so away'. Whether or not any specifics were given is unknown to us, but it kept on going.. Month after month, the DoE promised approval was coming. Then they changed the game...
Suddenly, the DoE was requesting new restrictions from Bright that weren't required previously. Bright looked at this as the DoE were acting in bad faith, which is pretty reasonable. We're not sure why they changed, and neither does Bright. Perhaps it was the move to Indiana to a Right to Work state. Maybe it was the Solyndra debacle. Maybe there is another company doing the same that the Obama Administration thinks is a better bet - one that donated perhaps? Who knows? After eighteen months of waiting and shoestringing along, Bright Automotive announced this week that they were closing their doors. The clock struck zero at last....
Electric trucks could be a viable use. We're not talking about a regular car that costs $10k more to save $15 a week in gas, or adding a $40k solar panel to save $80 a month in electricity. Delivery and service trucks drive tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of miles a year. They'll pay more for the technology. Hell, they already make electric sports cars, so the engine power is there, they're just working on the battery life. It could be functional. Barack Obama himself was in New Hampshire yesterday, touting to community college students (again) that electric trucks were on the way. Thanks to overregulation, there will one less maker of those trucks. Perhaps none now..
Like we say, it's tough living in the middle ground, where sanity lies. You have to ferrit through all the bullshit that the environmental whackos and the right wing total free market til the wheels fall off capitalists spout out. Both are a little right. Both are a lot wrong... there is such of Too Much of a Bad Thing. Regulations need to be in place, but absolutely, overregulation hamstrings the economy. Barack Obama is going to find it hard to push his Green Energy forward when he finds out that his right shoe is accidentally tied to his left.... Actually, flip those two around - the 'left' shoe is tied to the 'right'.
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