Sunday, April 28, 2013

Video of the House Fisker Hearing



The house committee has a link to a video of the entire hearing on Fisker.  Here is that link.


 http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/green-energy-oversight-examining-the-department-of-energys-bad-bet-on-fisker-automotive/


In the second session at about 1 hour and 56 minutes, Congressman Jordan reveals that the new Acting Secretary Of Energy Mr. Poneman had an "interest in Fisker".  DOE lawyers then recused Mr. Poneman from further involvement in the Fisker loans but this was after Mr. Poneman was actively involved in discussions and conversations at the DOE regarding the DOE loans to Fisker.

Yes Dr. Chu has finally left the Department of Entropy.  Poneman was sworn in last week to be the acting Secretary till the new secretary is confirmed.

I think that the gates of Fiskergate are opening.  Ray Lane has been axed from active duty as a "partner" at Kleiner Perkins.  Mr. Fisker has been axed from Fisker.  HP also got rid of their chairman Mr. Ray Lane.  The DOE got rid of Dr. Chu and not a moment too soon.

In the Nixon era we had Watergate and Mr. Nixon had to live with that legacy of an amateurish break in.  Mr. Obama will have to live with the legacy of the most incompetent and corrupt department of energy ever.  Of course Dr. Chu can claim he was an amateur but to do that he would have to return his Nobel Prize in low temperature physics.  President Obama can truthfully claim he was an amateur in fact he can claim he was a neophyte.  The President can return his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize simply because the world has become far less peaceful in the past five years even with his apology for the US's approach to terrorism and foreign policy under his predecessor.

I believe that Mr. Obama should offer US citizens an apology for the utter incompetence of and corruption at his department of energy.  He should openly assist the house committee that is investigating the connection of DOE loans to crony capitalists like Doerr, Gore, Powell, Lane, Khosla, and Rice    

As for Dr. Chu he should hang his brilliant head that knew far better in utter shame.  He simply is a physicist who sold out the laws of thermodynamics for political reasons.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Fisker Congressional Hearing - Bringing In Kleiner Perkins



UPDATE   One of the regular readers of The Green Machine alerted me that Kleiner Perkins has removed Ray Lane as an active Partner involved in Green Tech and is now a Partner Emeriti 



http://www.kpcb.com/teams/partners-emeriti



Just two days I saw he was Al Gore's and John Doerr's sidekick as a Greentech team member 



http://www.kpcb.com/teams/greentech



Ray Lane as the fall guy has fallen fast.  I hope to see that the next two to drop out and become Emeriti will be Doer and Gore.  This will soon happen for the good of KPCB, America and the entire world.  






I suggest you all read the link below.  It is an article by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/potomac_watch.html

I have extracted the following from Ms. Strassel's article.


Fisker Automotive featured in a House hearing this week, as congressmen questioned how that luxury electric-car maker—now in financial straits—ever qualified for a $529 million federal loan guarantee. The Obama Energy Department is facing some awkward questions—a la Solyndra—about what role politics played in granting that subsidy.

Perhaps we need not guess. For an excellent study in how green-energy cronyism works, look instead to the near miss (for taxpayers) of Next AutoWorks. That startup applied for a $320 million federal loan guarantee in 2009, promising a Louisiana factory that would produce cheap and fuel-efficient cars. Next didn't, ultimately, get its loans.

Next had lots riding on the loan guarantees, including $67 million in grants from Louisiana. Yet by early 2010 the Energy Department had rejected the company's initial application. Kleiner Perkins partner Ray Lane stepped in as interim CEO, and Next revised its application. Yet even as an entirely new CEO took over in October 2010, the emails show it was Kleiner working the phones and offices in Washington to land Next its money.

Yet that doesn't stop the political team or Kleiner Perkins. Mr. Fisher informs Mr. McCrea several days later that he'd spent a "very long day yesterday with Next (10 am-5.45)" and that "Jonathan (Silver ex official of the DOE in charge of the electric vehicle loan program) talked to John Doerr and Ray Lane on the phone at the end. They agreed we need to have 2x/week calls to status." Despite the credit department's obvious disdain, the process would drag on through the September 2011 Solyndra bankruptcy. In October, Mr. Silver resigned; in November, Energy pulled the plug on Next. Kleiner Perkins did not respond to a request from the Journal for comment.

The Energy Department has long claimed that its loans were made on merit, and that in this case merit won out. Yet would that have been true if Solyndra hadn't happened? The emails show how well-connected benefactors used their political pull to go around credit officials and try to drive the process "top down." This is called "politics," and it underlines the folly of government moonlighting as an investor.

Was the process for Fisker (also backed by Kleiner Perkins) the same? The Obama Energy Department is keeping tight rein on documents, so we don't know. But the Next story shows we ought to. 


A few weeks back I blogged that Ray Lane resigned from the position of Chairman of Hewlett Packard so "he can concentrate on being the fall guy for Fisker and Kleiner Perkins".  But it won't stop there.  Fiskergate will bring in even bigger fish than Ray Lane.  It will haul in John Doerr, Al Gore, Colin Powell, and possibly Joe Biden.  A minnow that may also get caught is Delaware Governor Jack Markell.  Jack Markell wanted those Obama Good Paying Manufacturing Jobs.  Poor Jack slept with dogs and only got fleas.  Jack has to be scratching his head as well as the rest of his body.

Lane, Doerr, Powell, Gore,Biden and Markell thought and believed the price of batteries would drop real fast.  Way back in early 2010 The Green Machine told the US Senate and you all that batteries would not drop in cost.  What has dropped is the big sword of the second law of thermodynamics.   When Ray, John, Col, Al, Joe, and Jack are called for the upcoming hearings (and they should be called soon I hope) the only thing electrified in the room besides their testimony will be the chairs they sit in.  Actually I can see Al Gore and his five friends from the gang of six pleading the fifth.  There is now a fifth law of thermodynamics that goes as follows:

When any pretend green organization has Al Gore involved, that organization will eventually go stone cold and reach an absolute temperature of zero and a net worth of also zero.         Al Gore is brilliant at talk but really is clueless when it comes to physics.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Fisker Congressional Hearings



A watershed day today as Rep. Jordan of Ohio chaired the hearings about Fisker and the DOE loans.   The hearings were broadcast via a live feed and I watched most of the day long event.   The hearings will be a prelude to other hearings with far larger fish to fry on an all electric skillet.  In fact the next hearing may even have an electric chair.

I think the next hearings will bring in the two Kleiner Perkins professional VCs - John Doerr and Ray Lane.  Doerr is Mr. Obama's big friend and was host to the Silicon Valley dinner with the late Steve Jobs and other big players.  Ray Lane is the fired ex chairman of Hewlett Packard.   KInd of big fish but there are two other even bigger fish who have KP duty.  Note in the army KP duty is the messy job of being in the kitchen.

The two KP duty guys are Al Jazeera Gore and Colin Powell who advise KP.  Together with Doerr and Lane the four of them are horsemen of the green apocalypse.  The humorous part of today's hearing was when the ranking Democrat read from a news paper article about the Romney campaign about Romney getting four Pinocchios.    If the four horsemen appear the noses will go all the way from the Capital up to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Here is the email I wrote to Rep. Jordan's staff member Mr. Dilley after I watched the hearing.

jared.dilley <jared.dilley@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Wed, Apr 24, 2013 3:13 pm
Subject: Re: Fisker Hearings


Mr. Dilley

I watched the entire streaming video of the hearing.  Good job by Rep. Jordan.

All the members missed the point that the loan of $1.4 billion to Nissan for the battery and Leaf plant in Smyrna TN is not a stellar success.  Very few batteries have been produced and very few leafs have been sold.  The Leaf is not a great marketing success.  Nor has Ford sold many vehicles with lithium ion batteries and the plug in Fords have been dismal sellers.

Tesla is not a great success from the DOE (tax payer) point of view.  DOE was promised a $50,000 people's EV with 40 kwh of batteries.  This model has been abandoned.  The Model X is now further delayed and only the super wealthy are buying Tesla Model S cars.

For three years I have been saying that Kleiner Perkins (Gore, Lane, Doerr, and Powell) yes Colin Powell are the folks behind this mess.  Powell needs to be added to the statements about KP.  I hope the Congressman can get the Four folks from KP at the next hearing.  Maybe start with Doerr and Lane and then bring in the two former US officials.  I liked the part about Four Pinocchios.  These other four are Horsemen.


Also the Two Europeans were a bit dumbfounded at some of the humor.  I cant wait till the Qatari board member of Fisker is a witness.  
 

I got to say I loved the show.

Thanks


Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine

Here is how Reuters reported on the hearing
here is a fox news link

Friday, April 19, 2013

Emails to Congressman Huffman






I sent two emails today to the staff of my Congressman Mr. Huffman.  I have been trying for over 3 months to speak to Mr. Huffman who is a freshman congressman who wants to make a national name for himself as being greenest man in the house. Yet he does not have 15 minutes for the Green Machine.

Huffman was an assemblyman in Sacramento and he was pivotal in the state legislation to promote electric vehicles, fuel cells, and other nonsensical and expensive technology.    But I will continue to ask his staff for a meeting as I am sure I can re-educate him and possibly help him to become the truly green congressman.  

The Governor of Delaware who like Huffman wanted to be green now looks mighty gangrene for his policy to attract Fisker and Bloom (Al Jazeera Gore) to the first state with Vice President Biden’s help.

Next week the house will conduct hearings on Fisker.  In the link in one of my emails Bloomberg reported that each Fisker cost $660,000 to produce and only sold for $103,000.  Maybe Just Born Bieber should be asked to fork over half a million dollars to the web designer that got stiffed by Fisker.  Half a mil is the discount on cost that Bieber got on his one of a kind chrome plated Fisker.  

Here are the emails to Huffman’s staff.

To: jenny.callaway <jenny.callaway@mail.house.gov>; charles.morris <charles.morris@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Fri, Apr 19, 2013 8:05 am
Subject: An Economics Lesson For Mr. Huffman
Jenny and Charles


I hope the congressman followed the hearing yesterday on Fisker.  Looks like the fine gentleman Jim Jordan from Ohio is finding out quite a lot about Fisker, Mr. Biden, Mr. Gore, and how DOE money was given to Al Gore's company long after it was brain dead so to speak.

This Bloomberg article should help Mr. Huffman understand that selling an item for $103,000 when it cost $660,000 to make is no winning proposition. 



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/fisker-allowed-to-tap-u-s-loan-after-default-report.html

I would still love to talk to the Congressman.  Also would love to know how much State of California money was wasted on Fisker.  We know tens of millions went to the sister company Bloom Energy in the form of tax credits for a highly polluting technology. 


When should I expect a call from the Congressman?   Also did he understand last week's thermodynamics lesson?    This week's economics lesson is so much more simple.  Spend $660,000 to get $103,000. 


Lindsay Leveen



To: jenny.callaway <jenny.callaway@mail.house.gov>; charles.morris <charles.morris@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Fri, Apr 19, 2013 8:29 am
Subject: Mr. Huffman First Bill
I read with great interest that my Congressman introduced his first bill in Congress



http://www.marinij.com/sanrafael/ci_22990379/huffman-introduces-first-bill-congressman-seeks-protect-sonoma


The mountain beaver and the silverspot butterfly are really important and certainly have precedence over the 884 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electric power the Bloom Boxes emit.  Oh yes add in the VOC's and toxic solid waste the Boxes emit and all the beavers and butterflies in the entire country will soon be gone.  Why in heaven's name does the Congressman not want to investigate Bloom?     This could make the Freshman Congressman far more well known and respected than saving only the mountain beaver and silver spotted butterfly on 1,255 acres in Sonoma.  This could save the world copious amounts of CO2 emissions.  Is it that Bloom has Al Gore, Colin Powell, and John Doerr involved and they are a protected "species"?  

Lindsay Leveen

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Fisker Can't Pay Its Web Designer




Well Done Big Al your Fisker Car Company stiffed its web designer for half a mil after stiffing the landlord for a third of this amount.

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/13/fisker-lawsuits-piling-up-another-from-its-web-designer-over-alleged-unpaid-bills/


Gigaom got it right

Fisker appears to be close to bankruptcy and according to Reuters last week, the company hired a firm to look into bankruptcy, and could file at any time. Fisker’s founders have also been asked to attend a hearing on April 24 in Washington D.C., organized by House Republicans. Fisker drew down on close to $200 million in a government loan from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.
Fisker raised at least $1.2 billion in funds over the company’s five and half year lifetime. Fisker was backed by venture firms Kleiner Perkins (Ray Lane was a board member) and NEA, and worked with now-defunct broker Advanced Equities.

Oh yeah Advanced Equities the company the SEC fined for fraudulently selling stock in Bloom Energy, the sister company of Fisker.  Advanced Equities told investors that Bloom's backlog was far greater than it really was.  Fisker is far "cleaner" than sister company "Bloom".

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/24/sec-hits-advanced-equities-on-bloom-deals/


Ray Lane you blew $8 billion of HP's money.  Now you are the fall guy for Big Al on the Fisker Fiasco.   One of Al Jazeera Gore's Qatari government friends is also on the board of Fisker.  He is Dr. Kamal Maamria.   http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/en-us/about/team/boardmembers

Dr. Kamel Maamria is Head of the General Investments Portfolio and Executive Director of Qatar Holding. He manages the global portfolio of investments of Qatar Holding which includes also Automotive Sector portfolio companies Volkswagen and Porsche. Prior to Qatar Holding, Dr. Maamria was Partner and Managing Director of the Boston Consulting Group. He was also BCG head of Private Equity and M&A in the Middle East. Between 1998 and 2000, Dr. Maamria was based in Silicon Valley with A.T. Kearney advising global corporations on setting up technology start-ups. Dr. Maamria holds a BS, MS and a Ph.D from Tohoku University, Japan.

I guess the Qataris got taken for a ride as well by Big Al's foray into green car manufacturing.  At least the Qataris hedged their automotive bets and also invested in VW and Porsche.  I doubt Kleiner Perkins has positions in Porsche.  Big Al would never allow that.  We have not heard much more about Current TV and Al Jazeera.  It will be interesting how they cover the news of Fisker.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

The Trickle Down Trickle Charge For Electric Vehicles






UPDATE 12:17 pm  Fisker landlord files suit for rent for the HQ in California!!!!   Governor Markell of Delaware is still paying the electric bill for the empty factory in Delaware.  Al Jazeera Gore is missing and for once his big pie hole is quiet!!!!



Slow charging of the exorbitantly expensive batteries in an Electric Vehicle is always better for battery life.   Mr. David Stockman who ran President Reagan’s budget office almost three decades ago accused his boss of performing “Trickle Down Economics”.   Read this link on the trickle down story in supply side economics.


I like David Stockman and he actually has guts as well as brains.  Mr. Stockman stuck it to Obama and his cronies in a book he recently published.  He also had some really sage advice on electric cars.  In an op ed titled Green Vanities of the Billionaires that he wrote on Minyanville linked below he said:
“Given the $100,000 price tag for these vehicles, however, the story is not really about any hardship suffered by the credulous buyers of the Fisker Karma. The actual hardship will soon fall on the taxpayers because the underlying deal stinks to high heaven. It seems that Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firm had a failing auto start-up and Vice President Joe Biden had a failed GM (NYSE:GM) auto plant in his home state of Delaware. Kleiner Perkins’s chief green energy maven and major Obama fund-raiser, John Doerr, therefore arranged a deal.”

“In return for the aforementioned $530 million from Uncle Sam, John Doerr and his purportedly Republican partner Ray Lane would present a new business plan to Henrik Fisker, the intrepid designer-entrepreneur behind their start-up auto company. Flush with vast new money from Washington, the struggling Fisker Automotive would develop a second version of its electric vehicle—a “people’s car” that could retail for a mere $50,000—and build it in Joe Biden’s empty auto plant.”
On Tesla he goes on to say:

“It goes without saying that Tesla would have been Chapter 11 bait years ago without the $465 million federal loan, and will likely end up there anyway. Yet the question recurs as to why the public purse was opened to this scam in the first place. After all, the S Model has turned out to be a high-end luxury sports sedan which will retail with normal customer options for at least $75,000. Like all EVs, its environmental benefits are dubious at best. Unlike most of its more stodgy competitors, however, it does accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds.”




I guess Stockman reads the green machine or also studied real stuff at University.  Well done Mr. Stockman.  You stuck it to these well connected greedy gangrene gringos.  As for Obama he is scratching his head and now has splinters in his finger nails.  When it comes to energy policy Obama is wood-headed but maybe KIOR can turn this into diesel?  But the rate at which the diesel will be produced will be far slower than a trickle. It will be a drip.  In England a drip is a boring person without strong character.  A few of these drips have dropped on DC.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Bio Fuels From Bio Fools





Folks the Department of Entropy published 1,100 peer reviewed papers on Bio Fools in the last 6 years.  They managed to get 20,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol produced in all that time.  I guess each peer reviewed paper generated about 20 gallons of cellulosic ethanol.  This only cost several billion dollars and has been an unmitigated flop brought to you by Dr. Chu Chu and Mr. Obama but don’t fret the Department of Entropy will continue to waste your money and hit their heads against the wall by continuing the same folly.  Here is the press release they sent out on Wednesday.

Energy Department Renews Funding for Bioenergy Research Centers
The Energy Department announced on April 4 that it would fund its three Bioenergy Research Centers for an additional five-year period, subject to continued congressional appropriations. The three centers were established by the Department's Office of Science in 2007 as an innovative program to accelerate fundamental research breakthroughs toward the development of advanced next-generation biofuels. The centers include the BioEnergy Research Center, led by the Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in partnership with Michigan State University; and the Joint BioEnergy Institute, led by the Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Each center is designed to be a large, integrated, multidisciplinary research effort, funded at the rate of $25 million per year, and they have consistently received high marks from outside reviewers for both their scientific productivity and the effective management and integration of their research efforts.
In their first five years of operation, the Bioenergy Research Centers have produced more than 1,100 peer-reviewed publications and more than 400 inventions, as recorded in invention disclosures or patent applications. Among the breakthroughs are new approaches for engineering non-food crops for biofuel production; reengineering of microbes to produce advanced biofuels such as "green" gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel precursors from biomass; and the development of methods to grow non-food biofuel crops on marginal lands so as not to compete with food production. In the next five years, emphasis will be on bringing new methods and discoveries to maturity, developing new lines of research, and accelerating the transformation of scientific breakthroughs into new technologies that can transition to the marketplace. See the Energy Department press release, and for more information on the centers, visit the Genomic Science Program website.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Market Is Rigged



On April 9 2013 at about 1:30 pm First Solar (FSLR) released news that they expect a better year than the market was expecting.  It makes sense that some of the PV solar stocks like SOL, SPWR, and TSL also had a price spike when FSLR announced this news.  See the curves above.  What is interesting is that KIOR and AMRS, two firms that play in the bio-fuels space got similar kicks in price.  There was no positive news about cellulosic fuels and the only reason the stocks spikes is computer based trading that kicked in.  The SEC should investigate because as sure gravity is a fundamental force these stocks will soon be headed back down.

Monday, April 8, 2013

DOE Spokesperson Makes 35% equal 300%






A low level grunt at the DOE was used as the “Susan Rice” spokesperson to deal with the DOE’s ranking if and when Fisker goes bankrupt.    Bloomberg reported in an article in the following link:


The DOE grunt made the following statements per Bloomberg:

Aoife McCarthy, an Energy Department spokeswoman, declined to say where the agency would rank among creditors should Fisker file for bankruptcy.

“While this is a difficult time for Fisker’s employees, the long-term future of America’s growing electric vehicle industry is bright -- and the Energy Department’s portfolio of investments in this industry is performing well,” she said in an e-mail. “Sales of electric vehicles tripled last year, and we just can’t afford to sit on the sidelines in the global race to capture this rapidly expanding market.”


Well Ms. McCarthy is the Charlie McCarthy of Obama’s department of energy.  Some high up pulls the strings of this puppet and she utters that “sales of electric vehicles tripled last year”.  This is absolutely incorrect.  Perhaps sales of plug in hybrids and electric vehicles tripled thanks primarily to the discounting of the Chev Volt and the giveaways of money by the US and state governments.  Pure electric vehicles that were sold in 2012 include the following models.  The Nissan Leaf, the Mitsubishi iev, The Honda Fit, The Toyota RAV, The Ford Focus, The Coda, and the Tesla Model S.  Total sales of these EVs were 14,539 in 2012. 


In 2011 four EVs were available.  The Nissan Leaf, the Tesla Roadster, the Mitsubishi iev, and the Ford Focus.   2011 total sales of these vehicles equaled 10,672 units.  Therefore the increase in sales of EVs in 2012 over 2011 was only 35% not the 300% Ms. McCarthy claimed.


But the DOE was happy to put this ill-informed “Susan Rice” type spokesperson out there to fend off the questions about Al Jazeera Gore’s car company Fisker that is about to fail.  Ray Lane, Al Gore’s partner at Kleiner Perkins, resigned as Chairman of Hewlett Packard so he can devote full time to keep the spin on the wheels of Fisker going.  It is time for Dr. Chu and Mr. Obama to answer what happened and Fisker, A 123, Ener 1, Solyndra, and other rather than have a puppet named McCarthy tell us the DOE’s portfolio of investments is performing well.