Gov't Funded Electric Car Company Goes Out of Business

thecarchik writes "Consider yesterday's collapse of electric car company Green Vehicles an object lesson in why it's a bad idea for cities to invest in the risky business of start-up car companies — perhaps especially start-up electric car companies. Even such companies with a viable product have seen their fair share of financial troubles, but Green Vehicles did not even have a product to sell off at a fire sale. The city of Salinas, California learned that lesson as Green Vehicles shut its doors, costing the city more than $500,000."

Comments

Just cities?

[MrEricSir]

I'd say it's a bad idea for *anyone* to invest in a company that has no product and/or does not make money.

Business plans are a dime a dozen; ability to execute is an uncommon skill.

If you can't afford to do it, don't do it!

[bennomatic]

Who exactly expected to have a fully functional prototype of a sale-able electric vehicle with a $500,000 investment? Cities, counties, states and the Federal Government get into all sorts of businesses that take time and money to set up. Medicare, BART, the TVA... it's not always a good idea, nor always a bad idea. But if you're going to do it, do it. $500,000 gets you two engineers, some materials and a fab plant for a year, and not much else. That may be a nice way to do a lean start-up, but it's entirely possible that the only reason that the half-mil was a waste was because that was the limit, so it was doomed to fail.

It may not be an impossible task, but if inventing the next generation of EV were easy and cheap--and in this context, I'd suggest that a $500,000 investment is cheap--then everyone would be doing it.

Meanwhile..

[lul_wat]

Banks and finance companies don't make anything tangible either, yet get government bailouts in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.

Too bad they wern't 'too big to fail' while making nothing.