Um, surprise?
(Washington Examiner) Four years have passed since President Obama visited Kansas City’s main airport, rolled up his shirt sleeves and admonished the skeptics who said Smith Electric Vehicles was unlikely to make good on its promises to build 510 experimental electric-powered trucks and buses suitable for commercial use.
“Come see what’s going on at Smith Electric,” the president said, inspecting a table full of bright green truck batteries in what was once a maintenance hangar for TWA. “I think they’re going to be hard-pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.â€
The skeptics turned out to be right.
Despite $32 million in federal stimulus funds and status as one of Obama’s favorite “green” companies, the firm has halted production, having built just 439 of the promised 510 vehicles.
It has also left a trail of broken promises and unpaid bills.
Smith created just a quarter of the jobs it initially promised the state of Missouri it would create in return for $1.4 million in tax credits. Meanwhile, it has also stiffed the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the state government, and a local electrical supply company, as well as its landlord, the Kansas City city government, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to interviews and reviews of public records by the Washington Examiner.
Now, supposedly, this is just a temporary situation, according to Smith. They state that they are briefly shutting down production in order to come out with a Generation III model. They also state that they have a “tight cash flow situation”, and that they are ready to announce “major new funding”. Isn’t it interesting that so many of these projects cannot survive without a constant infusion of cash, rather than surviving because they are making a profit?
Smith is not as bad as some of the other Obama green companies, but it certainly could not be termed anywhere close to a success.
