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A123 Systems (AONE) received a $946,830 grant payment from the government on the day it filed...
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Sunday, November 18, 2012, 4:22 AM ETA123 Systems (AONE) received a $946,830 grant payment from the government on the day it filed for Chapter 11 last month. The money, which was was part of $115.8M in funds that the electric-car battery producer has received, will add fuel to criticism about the government's support of green-energy programs. What won't help is that a court has approved bonuses of up to $4.2M for 10 employees who have stayed on while A123's assets are sold.
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That company just can't catch a break..
I don't believe George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and Elihu Thomson received such handouts. America industrial leadership is history.
Of course they will probably have to hire a few consultants (ie friends/relatives of federal government bureaucrats) to actually tell folks what the different assets really are, since its likely these executives don't actually know much at all about the business and spent their time smoozing politicians to get government money!
http://tinyurl.com/bex...
Taxpayer money used by a company that declares Chapter 11. Kind of sums up the Administration's idea of getting behind Green energy. $90B here, a few hundred million there.
Is anybody out there?
Does anybody care?
Met a lovely Panamanian women at breakfast the other day who asked, "what has happened to your country ? You elect Chavez ? He's no different from Fidel in Cuba. Your country no longer wants to work. Just "give me free stuff.""
Incidentally, we use A123 cells for a Solar Car program at my University (and we bought extras months ago with the suspicion that the company would be out of business soon). The project itself will probably never lead to a commercial solar powered vehicle, but projects like it do push the envelope for what can be done and challenge engineers to test their abilities. For a group of students to build a car that goes down the highway at 55-65 on 1500 watts (about 2 horsepower) is a fairly impressive, and common, engineering feat in the academic world. In the corporate world this would be seen as a sheer waste of capital as there is no way to quantify the returns. Had the market for electric vehicles developed we might be seeing a different story... didn't Henry Ford have to declare bankruptcy a few times?
As far as politics go - Romney's comment on half of the programs going into bankruptcy was fact checked and found to be an exaggeration. It was around 8%. Investing in IPOs is risky business and we can debate whether the government should do so, but researching battery technology is a worthwhile investment in my mind. I may be a bit biased as I am studying Electrical Engineering.