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Opening Arguments

Electric nightmare

Remember how even Gov. Mitch Daniels salivated over the $17 million in "stimulus tax credits" the Obama administration was going to give us for a wonderful green energy adventure? But, surprise, surprise, it turns out not that nobody wants to buy a $42,000 electric car useless for anything but short, in-city trips:

Think's woes caused one of its investors, Ener1, to file for bankruptcy in January. Ener1 spent a $55 million federal grant to make batteries at this factory in Indianapolis for Think City cars.

So what happened? "The market has not been what everybody anticipated it to be with electric vehicles," said Heiden-Guss.

Indiana had hoped to become the electric car capital. What would Heiden-Guss say about that today? "You can hope for a lot of things, she said. "What reality is is something different oftentimes."

Ah, yes, a difference between hope and reality. That has a larger application, doesn't it? The electric-car fiasco shows Hoosiers can be conned just like anybody else. We can only hope Indiana will be a little quicker on the "fool me once, shame on you" draw than other states

Comments

tim zank
Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:38am

We've been conned more than a few times since 2008 by President Pantload and his pals...let's hope Hoosiers have learned their lesson...

 

Christopher Swing
Mon, 08/20/2012 - 2:10pm

"But it turns out the company had a checkered track record, including three previous bankruptcies."

Wait. No one, democrat or republican - or even the press - bothered to find out about this until after the failure?

"Now in its fourth bankruptcy, Think Global has been bought by a Russian investor who didn't return our calls."

I have a feeling cars themselves aren't exactly the root of the problem here.

But let's rewind to the start of the article:

"Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels was also on board in convincing Norwegian company Think Global to open a plant in Elkhart to build Think City electric cars with a sticker price of about $42,000."

Mitch Daniels behind a foreign-investment debacle? Wow, that's new.

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