Lame Duck Biden Admin Cuts Massive Check For Failing EV Manufacturer
The Biden-Harris administration announced a multi-billion dollar loan for electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian Monday as the company continues to hemorrhage cash.
Rivian lost $1.1 billion and saw its revenue fall nearly $500 million in the third quarter of 2024 as a slackening of consumer demand for EVs hampered the industry’s growth. Now, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has agreed to a conditional commitment to loan the automaker roughly $6.6 billion to help finance the construction of its manufacturing facility in Georgia, according to a press release from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO).
“This loan will help create thousands of new American jobs and further strengthen U.S. leadership in EV manufacturing and technology,” RJ Scaringe, Rivian founder and CEO, wrote in a press release Monday. “A robust ecosystem of U.S. companies developing and manufacturing EVs is critical for the U.S. to maintain its long-term leadership in transportation.”
Big news for Rivian: a conditional $6.6 billion DOE loan could supercharge production of the R2 and R3 at a new Georgia plant, creating thousands of jobs. Learn more about what this means for Rivian: https://t.co/KJ8NGlZL0f pic.twitter.com/EVjvRHIYAw
— RivianTrackr (@RivianTrackr) November 26, 2024
The Georgia factory will augment Rivian’s factory in Normal, Illinois, and will produce sport utility vehicles that sell for roughly $45,000, significantly less than the company’s current fleet of consumer vehicles which start at around $70,000.
“This loan would enable Rivian to more aggressively scale our U.S. manufacturing footprint for our competitively priced R2 and R3 vehicles that emphasize both capability and affordability,” Scaringe said in the release.
The financing agreement is part of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which has deployed nearly $700 billion in taxpayer dollars to infrastructure, semiconductor and green energy projects. Many of the White House subsidies have gone to the EV industry specifically, including a $7,500 federal tax credit for certain EV purchases and $12 billion in taxpayer funds for car manufacturers to retrofit their plants for EV production.
Despite the subsidies, the EV industry has seen a slackening of consumer demand, with sales growing just 31% in the first half of 2024 — far less than the 71% increase in the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, a June poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found 46% of respondents were unlikely or very unlikely to purchase an EV compared with just 21% of respondents who said they were “very” or “extremely” likely to make the change.
“Even after throwing money at EVs hand over fist, basically paying people tax dollars to drive these cars off the lots, you have a dire spiral of (1) not enough demand to support the number of cars being produced, and (2) the people you paid to buy them now wanting to go back to what they had before,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers and the former solicitor general of Arizona, previously told the DCNF.
Rivian and the DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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The evidence of the Climate change hoax just keeps mounting; from frozen windmills that killed people that couldn’t get heat in Texas in a sudden winter storm to offshore windmills killing whales. Then there’s the EV’s that also freeze up and don’t work or sometimes catch on fire in inextinguishable blazes. And some of it is just laughable. The Biden administration allocated a billion dollars for “Tree Equity”. No, I didn’t make this up. The Forest Service argues on its website that planting trees will reduce crime and improve health outcomes. Go figure. The grants are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate law that he later admitted has nothing to do with Inflation, but is the biggest government “Green energy” spending bill in U.S. history. And, oh yeah, there is 60 billion dollars in that same bill for “environmental equity”. I defy anyone to tell me what in the hell that means but I guarantee people will be getting rich from it.
Now he’s giving a billion dollars to EV truck manufacturer Rivian; even though truck owner’s are the last people to want EV’s. These subsidies are nothing but a slush funds for projects and companies run by Democrat donors. Like the Biden and Kamala touted electric bus company, Proterra. They went bankrupt last year, but not until Jennifer Granholm (our nation’s Energy Secretary) made 1.6 million off of their stock. It’s nothing more than our money grifted to Democrat owned “Green” businesses that take the money in “pump and dump” schemes. The companies, and the “in the know” stockholders and owners profit when government money pumps the stock price up and then the owners, and the insider info stockholders dump the stock before the government money or subsidies dry up. It’s all a hoax to make the political class even richer with your taxpayer dollars. And the people are starting to catch on………
…and I quote, “elections have consequences”
…and I quote, “elections have consequences”.
I guess it’s worth repeating