With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government stimulus loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."
"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."
I don't think this was a dig at US factories just the fact that the type of factory they were looking for doesn't exist in the US. They want a factory to build cars on contract. Car factories are incredibly expensive, take years to build, and decades to recover the cost. But if someone asked you to build something and you know its going to cost millions in retooling you want a bigger guarantee than 3-5 years.
Tesla was lucky by the fact that the old Toyota plant was available and ready. And they didn't contract the work, they bought it which means they are committed for the long haul.
In most US jurisdictions, dozens of entities have the ability to say "no" to a development project. In states that are actively hostile to business, like New York or California, there may be hundreds of people or groups that can slow down projects.
Examples: Local Zoning Board; Whomever controls permits for running utilities; State/local environmental boards (Lots and lots of $$$ permits); Land speculators ("building a factory in this industrial park will ruin the views from XXX piece of land that we own"); Historical preservation maniacs. ("That collapsing house was was rented by Richard Nixon's maid"); Local politicians ("Oh, you need to build a 200,000 square foot building? Our master plan was modified last week -- buildings are capped at 150,000 square feet.); Local politicians in neighboring municipalities. ("Your project will generate too much traffic"); Local real property tax boards.; State politicians; Local construction unions. (Who will sabotage your project if you don't play along.); State Labor Departments, acting as agents for the construction unions.; Environmental pressure groups. ("Your stormwater mitigation strategy is insufficient, you're getting sued"); Federal regulators.
In New York, things are so bad that any significant project is essentially done under the aegis of the state government, usually via a public authority. The government provides funding, and can cut through some of the red tape, since the State is not subject to local zoning law. But there are usually strings attached, and the process takes years.
In China or Brazil, you basically partner with a connected local, and build your factory in a few months.
In China or Brazil, you basically partner with a connected local, and build your factory in a few months.
I really think you are severely underestimating what actually goes into building a factory. It's not handshake and 3 months later something magically springs out of the ground. Most modern factories are into the billions of dollars. For example Foxconn is opening a new factory in Brazil that won't be ready before 2013 and will cost $12 billion.
If you're just producing commodity items then you can buy commodity factory equipment. But high end manufacturing requires specialty equipment (usually from Germany, Japan or the US).
Anyway, after farming, manufacturing is the largest consumer of freshwater. I think the people have a right to know how the water is being collected and how its being disposed of since it is state money being used for the treatment. Unless you preferred the bad old days, before the Clean water Act, where factories would regularly dump toxic waste into the river, the Mississippi and the East River used to regularly catch on fire, and New Jersey literally stunk from all the pollution in its estuaries.
>n states that are actively hostile to business, like New York or California
If you think things are easier in Finland, then you're wrong. Turns out this is a specific case looking for a specific type of factory that could make a specific car on a specific contract. Your right-wing screed is not as convincing as you think it is. I'm not even going to point out how huge NY and Cali economies are.
>n China or Brazil, you basically partner with a connected local, and build your factory in a few months.
Replace "regulatory bullshit" with just as much bullshit except involving bribes, shakedowns, and forced contributions to political parties and dealing with a level of corruption and labor conditions that are staggeringly awful and depressing. My gf does work with BRIC economies all the time and the lesson I want to somehow teach you is that civilization and labor/environmental protections are worth it. They are waaaay worth it. I'm afraid people like you purposely refuse to learn this basic lesson and are otherwise spoiled by the Western privilege you refuse to share.
You've declared me a right-wing nut and then stuff words in my mouth. Thanks.
I'm not an expert in California, but I happen to live in Upstate NY and pay careful attention to what is (or isn't) going on. The size of the New York economy is an illusion in many ways; New York lives and dies on the back of a single industry -- Finance. That wasn't true 30-40 years ago. The valleys and lakefront between Buffalo and Albany were industrial powerhouses well into the 70s. In the early 20th century, Buffalo was one of the nations great cities, today, it's more like Detroit.
I'd also suggest that you read about the major economic development project going on in New York right now, the construction of a multi-billion dollar chip fab for Global Foundries just outside of Saratoga Springs, NY. Total cost of that project is something like $7 billion, with just under $3 billion being provided by the State of New York under various guises. That's what it takes to do manufacturing in the US today -- even with high-end manufacturing which requires extremely skilled labor.
Slightly off topic, but Finland leads the world in junior and high-school education. They have only one universities in the top 300 of the Shanghai rankings and nothing indicates that the advantage Finish students have leaving high school gives them any advantage at University. One needs to be careful about idolizing the Finish school system. While they are no doubt awesome at producing students that can do really well on PISA tests, they don't seem to be producing students who can go on to achieving academic excellence in a post-high school setting.
The purpose of education is not to enable schools to score highly on the Shanghai rankings - it's to enable students to develop the ability to think critically and independently, understand the world they live in, and learn to sustain themselves within it.
The focus on arbitrary aggregate rankings and making "us" more "competitive" is a dangerous distraction.
The Shanghai ranking doesn't put much weight on student performance.
"The ranking compares 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 percent), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent), highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20 percent), articles published in the journals Nature and Science (20 percent), the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20 percent) and the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10 percent)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Unive...
However, nice bit of selective statistics to only use the top 300 in your calculation. The shanghai list actually has 500 universities listed, which bumps the number of Finnish universities to 5. So on a per capita basis Finland comes out ahead of USA!*
Not exactly building factories. The facility where they're doing the Karmas has existed for half a century, surviving on whatever specialty manufacturing it has been able to find (e.g mostly Porsches for the last 15 years or so, I think some other sportscars before that). In the news once a year with gloomy reports about how they might lose their current contracts in a couple of years, and don't have anything else lined up yet.
So not exactly a case of a ballsy decision from Fisker to build a new production plant in that corner of the world, but rather having exactly the right kind of factory be out of work right at the time Fisker needed it.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car-company-us-loan-builds-car...
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government stimulus loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."