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US Government Seizes Fisker’s Cash Reserve

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13 years ago

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 Weak Fisker: On April 11 the federal government seized $21 million from the company’s cash reserves. Image: Flickr/Fisker Auto

U.S. electric car pioneer Fisker Automotive once posted a manifesto on its Web site: “New isn’t easy.” Not for them, it wasn’t. Now their site is defunct and the company is scrambling to find a funder or face bankruptcy.

An electric car company buoyed by federal dollars in 2010, Fisker has now been crippled by supply chain and other problems, and joined legions of start-ups that get dragged down by technical glitches and financial woes. The capital backing from taxpayers caused a dustup that has kept Fisker in the limelight.

The greater question now is whether Fisker’s crash will have repercussions for the electric vehicle industry, which has seen some sales successes with Tesla’s Model S in recent months but largely remains unrealized.

Rewind to just a few years ago when the future for electric vehicles looked promising. In 2010 the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt hit the road. Gas prices were rising and Pres. Barack Obama pledged to put one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. With climate change legislation on the table in Congress as well, the EV market seemed primed for an upswing.

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Enter Fisker, whose electric sports sedan Karma rolled into showrooms in 2011 amid fanfare. TIME listed it as one of the 50 best inventions of 2011. The Anaheim, Calif.–based company netted a $529 million government-backed loan to help fuel its efforts. In recent years it reportedly raised $1 billion more in private funds.

But things started to fall apart. Its lone battery supplier, A123 Systems, floundered and eventually went bankrupt—a significant blow when as much as half of electric cars’ price tag comes from that piece of technology. Karma had to halt production. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) froze Fisker’s loan at $192 million in June 2011. A flawed cooling fan was also linked to a fire in 2012, prompting recalls.  In October Hurricane Sandy destroyed several hundred Karmas waiting for shipment at Port Newark, N.J. Fisker’s founder left last month, leaving the company to contemplate its next steps. This month it laid off the majority of its employees. It is also reportedly being sued by a Web designer, an investor and some former employees.

And the hits keep on coming: On April 11 the federal government seized $21 million from the company’s cash reserves. Fisker did not respond to a request from Scientific American for comment on this story.

Republican lawmakers blasted the company at a House Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairshearing on Wednesday, accusing Fisker of profiting from close connections with the Obama administration. But lawmakers saved most of their fire for the DoE, blaming it for continuing to dole out funds when some lawmakers believe there were early indications the company was not delivering on its product. “The real issue here…is the government shouldn’t be in this business of actually trying to be a venture capitalist. The government is a very poor venture capitalist,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R–N.C.). “We lose taxpayer dollars, and when we lose taxpayer dollars it outrages the public.” Armed with private e-mail correspondence House Republicans obtained between the company, DoE and related consultants, it tried to pin down who knew what and when.

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Henrik Fisker, the company’s former chairman and founder, told House lawmakers that strategic financing at this stage could still allow the company to rebound. In any case, Fisker’s bevy of problems are unique to the company and do not reflect the electric vehicle landscape, says Alan Baum, a Michigan-based analyst specializing in the automotive industry. Start-up car companies—electric or not— often fail, he said.

The real next steps in the industry will come from the larger auto companies such as General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, Honda, Mitsubishi and BMW. “All those automakers I mentioned have vehicles in the pipeline that will debut in then next two or three years if they have not yet,” Baum says. “Major carmakers know with electric vehicles you can’t just sit on the sidelines.”

Navigant Research predicted this month that a total of 21.9 million electric vehicles (both all-electric and plug-in hybrids) will be sold worldwide between 2012 and 2020. Its forecasts suggest a fraction—368,000—will be sold in the U.S.; and only 107,000 would be all-electric vehicles (instead of plug-ins). That means that in seven years electric vehicles are expected to comprise only a sliver of the anticipated U.S. car market in 2020—roughly 2 percent, says Dave Hurst, a principal research analyst with Navigant. It will be an uphill climb, Navigant’s researchers expect about 71,800 electric vehicles to sell in the U.S. this year, 17,300 of which would be all-electric vehicles.

One issue is cost. Even with up to $7,500 in federal tax credits, electric vehicle prices can be steep. Without the credits, Karma’s sticker price was in the six-figures. Tesla’s top-of-the-line Model S costs $95,000. The Chevy Volt sells for about $40,000 and the Ford Fusion Energi rings in at $39,000. The price for the Nissan Leaf, which recently moved its manufacturing operations to the U.S., has dropped to around $29,000.

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Finding an advanced battery that comes in the perfect package—high in energy density, small in size and lower in price—remains one of the largest hurdles to getting more electric vehicles on the road. “If we want to change things dramatically in the next 10 years we have to find a new material set—a new cathode–anode electrolyte set that will hopefully decrease the cost and increase energy density,” says Venkat Srinivasan, deputy director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR). “If we can achieve that something dramatic would happen and significantly change the penetration curve.” JCESR, an “advanced battery hub,” was established in 2012 at DoE’s Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago with the far-reaching goal of finding batteries with five times the current energy storage at one fifth the price in five years.

On the research side, federal loans from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan program (ATVM) have also supported other electric vehicle options, including Tesla, which received $465 million from DoE in 2010 and has said it expects to repay its loan five years early. Under this loan program, established under the George W. Bush administration, DoE also cut Ford a check for $5.9 billion to upgrade and modernize factories that produce vehicles including the Focus, Escape and Fusion. To Nissan, ATVM gave a loan for $1.4 billion to support the Leaf. And the Vehicle Production Group, LLC, received a $50-million loan to develop a wheelchair-accessible vehicle that will run on compressed natural gas. “To date, DoE has committed and closed five ATVM loans, totaling $8.4 billion, to auto manufacturers large and small who are adopting cutting-edge technologies and deploying them into the market,” Nicholas Whitcombe, former acting director of the ATVM program at DoE, told lawmakers Wednesday.

But the same problems continue to plague the electric vehicle industry year after year: the need for a battery that is long on power and short on cost; and a public that still feels uneasy about purchasing electric vehicles. So much of the future for electric vehicles also remains murky because it is difficult to predict gas prices. Navigant’s forecast for 2020 assumes that fuel prices continue to climb around 7 percent per year, electric vehicle costs come down and government incentives to buy electric vehicles stay in place for consumers. That’s a lot of what-ifs.

In the coming years there may be a host of experimentation with electric vehicles—inclusive of testing different products under the hood but also different types of cars with more spacious backseats and trunk space. “Every major automaker is going to be offering one or several models, and they come in at different price points and configurations,” says Genevieve Cullen, vice president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association.

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In Europe several companies have tried to lower the price of purchasing an electric vehicle by allowing consumers to buy the car but lease the battery. That has not yet caught on in the U.S. but smart USA plans to offer it to U.S customers for the first time when its smart fortwo Electric Drive is released in May. Whereas leasing batteries could lower risks and costs, consumers still might balk. “It’s like buying a car without an engine and then leasing the engine,” Navigant’s Hurst noted.

“It’s a fantastic idea in some ways,” JCESR’s Srinivasan says. “What you’re telling consumers is don’t worry about the battery and how long it will last and how much it will cost.”

Leasing batteries is just one business model approach, Cullen says. Some carmakers are also exploring how they could tap the batteries’ remaining energy once their life in the car is over, she said. “Diversity in the marketplace will be an enormous step in growing this market.”

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Tesla Roadster patent hints at radical seat redesign ahead of reveal

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37 minutes ago

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March 5, 2026

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A newly published Tesla patent could offer one of the clearest signals yet that the long-awaited next-generation Roadster is nearly ready for its public debut.

Patent No. US 20260061898 A1, published on March 5, 2026, describes a “vehicle seat system” built around a single continuous composite frame – a dramatic departure from the dozens of metal brackets, recliner mechanisms, and rivets that make up a traditional car seat. Tesla is calling it a monolithic structure, with the seat portion, backrest, headrest, and bolsters all thermoformed as one unified piece.

The approach mirrors Tesla’s broader manufacturing philosophy. The same company that pioneered massive aluminum castings to eliminate hundreds of body components is now applying that logic to the cabin. Fewer parts means fewer potential failure points, less weight, and a cleaner assembly process overall.

Tesla Roadster Seat Concept Image by TESLARATI

Tesla ramps hiring for Roadster as latest unveiling approaches

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The timing of the filing is difficult to ignore. Elon Musk has publicly targeted April 1, 2026 as the date for an “unforgettable” Roadster design reveal, and two new Roadster trademarks were filed just last month. A patent describing a seat architecture suited for a hypercar, and one that Tesla has promised will hit 60 mph in under two seconds.

The Roadster, originally unveiled in 2017, has been one of Tesla’s most anticipated yet most delayed products. With a target price around $200,000 and engineering ambitions to match, it is being positioned as the ultimate showcase for what Tesla’s technology can do.

The patent was first flagged by @seti_park on X.

Tesla Roadster Monolithic Seat: Feature Highlights via US Patent 20260061898 A1

  1. Single Continuous Frame (Monolithic Construction). The core invention is a seat assembly built from one continuous frame that integrates the seat portion, backrest portion, and hinge into a single component — eliminating the need for separate structural parts and mechanical joints typical in conventional seats.
  2. Integrated Flexible Hinge. Rather than a traditional mechanical recliner, the hinge is built directly into the continuous frame and is designed to flex, and allowing the backrest to move relative to the seat portion. The hinge can be implemented as a fiber composite leaf spring or an assembly of rigid linkages.
  3. Thermoformed Anisotropic Composite Material. The continuous frame is manufactured via thermoforming from anisotropic composite materials, including fiberglass-nylon, fiberglass-polymer, nylon carbon composite, Kevlar-nylon, or Kevlar-polymer composites, enabling a molded-to-shape monolithic structure.
  4. Regionally Tuned Stiffness Zones. The frame is engineered with up to six distinct stiffness regions (R1–R6) across the seat, backrest, hinge, headrest, and bolsters. Each zone can have a different stiffness, allowing precise ergonomic and structural tuning without adding separate components.
  5. Linkage Assembly Hinge Mechanism. The hinge incorporates one or more linkage assemblies consisting of multiple interlocking links with gears, connected by rods. When driven by motors or actuators, these linkages act as a flexible member to control backrest movement along a precise, ergonomically optimized trajectory.
  6. Multi-Actuator Six-Degree-of-Freedom Positioning System. The seat uses four distinct actuator pairs, all controlled by a central controller. These actuators work in coordinated combinations to achieve fore/aft, height, cushion tilt, and backrest rotation adjustments simultaneously.
  7. ECU-Based Controller Architecture. An Electronic Control Unit (ECU) and programmable controller manage all seat actuators, receive user input via a user interface (touchscreen, buttons, or switches), and incorporate sensor feedback to confirm and maintain desired seat positions, essentially making this a software-driven seat system.
  8. Airbag-Integrated Bolster Deployment System. The backrest bolsters (216) are geometrically shaped and sized to guide airbag deployment along a specific, pre-configured trajectory. Left and right bolsters can have different shapes so that each guides its respective airbag along a distinct trajectory, improving occupant protection.
  9. Ventilation Holes Formed into the Backrest. The continuous frame includes one or more ventilation holes formed directly into the backrest portion, configured to either receive airflow into or deliver airflow from the seat frame — enabling passive or active thermal comfort without requiring separate ventilation components.
  10. Soft Trim Recess for Tool-Free Integration. The headrest and backrest portions together define a molded recess, specifically designed to receive and secure a soft trim component (foam, fabric, or cushioning) directly into the continuous frame, eliminating the need for separate attachment hardware and simplifying final assembly.

 

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Elon Musk’s xAI plans $659M expansion at Memphis supercomputer site

The new building is planned for a 79-acre parcel located at 5414 Tulane Road, next to xAI’s Colossus 2 data center site.

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43 minutes ago

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March 5, 2026

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Credit: xAI

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has filed a permit to construct a new building at its growing data center complex outside Memphis, Tennessee. 

As per a report from Data Center Dynamics, xAI plans to spend about $659 million on a new facility adjacent to its Colossus 2 data center. Permit documents submitted to the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development show the proposed structure would be a four-story building totaling about 312,000 square feet.

The new building is planned for a 79-acre parcel located at 5414 Tulane Road, next to xAI’s Colossus 2 data center site. Permit filings indicate the structure would reach roughly 75 feet high, though the specific function of the building has not been disclosed.

The filing was first reported by the Memphis Business Journal.

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xAI uses its Memphis data centers to power Grok, the company’s flagship large language model. The company entered the Memphis area in 2024, launching its Colossus supercomputer in a repurposed Electrolux factory located in the Boxtown district.

The company later acquired land for the Colossus 2 data center in March last year. That facility came online in January.

A third data center is also planned for the cluster across the Tennessee–Mississippi border. Musk has stated that the broader campus could eventually provide access to about 2 gigawatts of compute power.

The Memphis cluster is also tied to new power infrastructure commitments announced by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. During a White House event with United States President Donald Trump, Shotwell stated that xAI would develop 1.2 gigawatts of power for its supercomputer facility as part of the administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”

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“As you know, xAI builds huge supercomputers and data centers and we build them fast. Currently, we’re building one on the Tennessee-Mississippi state line… xAI will therefore commit to develop 1.2 GW of power as our supercomputer’s primary power source. That will be for every additional data center as well… 

“The installation will provide enough backup power to power the city of Memphis, and more than sufficient energy to power the town of Southaven, Mississippi where the data center resides. We will build new substations and invest in electrical infrastructure to provide stability to the area’s grid,” Shotwell said.

Shotwell also stated that xAI plans to support the region’s water supply through new infrastructure tied to the project. “We will build state-of-the-art water recycling plants that will protect approximately 4.7 billion gallons of water from the Memphis aquifer each year. And we will employ thousands of American workers from around the city of Memphis on both sides of the TN-MS border,” she said.

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Tesla wins another award critics will absolutely despise

Tesla earned an overall score of 49 percent, up 6 percentage points from the previous year, widening its lead over second-place Ford (45 percent, up 2 points) to a commanding 4-percentage-point gap. The company also excelled in the Fossil Free & Environment category with a 50 percent score, reflecting strong progress in reducing emissions and decarbonizing operations.

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12 hours ago

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March 5, 2026

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla just won another award that critics will absolutely despise, as it has been recognized once again as the company with the most sustainable supply chain.

Tesla has once again proven its critics wrong, securing the number one spot on the 2026 Lead the Charge Auto Supply Chain Leaderboard for the second consecutive year, Lead the Charge rankings show.

This independent ranking, produced by a coalition of environmental, human rights, and investor groups including the Sierra Club, Transport & Environment, and others, evaluates 18 major automakers on their efforts to build equitable, sustainable, and fossil-free supply chains for electric vehicles.

Tesla earned an overall score of 49 percent, up 6 percentage points from the previous year, widening its lead over second-place Ford (45 percent, up 2 points) to a commanding 4-percentage-point gap. The company also excelled in the Fossil Free & Environment category with a 50 percent score, reflecting strong progress in reducing emissions and decarbonizing operations.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement came in the batteries subsection, where Tesla posted a massive +20-point jump to reach 51 percent, becoming the first automaker ever to surpass 50 percent in this critical area.

Tesla achieved this milestone through transparency, fully disclosing Scope 3 emissions breakdowns for battery cell production and key materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite.

The company also requires suppliers to conduct due diligence aligned with OECD guidelines on responsible sourcing, which it has mentioned in past Impact Reports.

While Tesla leads comfortably in climate and environmental performance, it scores 48 percent in human rights and responsible sourcing, slightly behind Ford’s 49 percent.

The company made notable gains in workers’ rights remedies, but has room to improve on issues like Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Overall, the leaderboard highlights that a core group of leaders, Tesla, Ford, Volvo, Mercedes, and Volkswagen, are advancing twice as fast as their peers, proving that cleaner, more ethical EV supply chains are not just possible but already underway.

For Tesla detractors who claim EVs aren’t truly green or that the company cuts corners, this recognition from sustainability-focused NGOs delivers a powerful rebuttal.

Tesla’s vertical integration, direct supplier contracts, low-carbon material agreements (like its North American aluminum deal with emissions under 2kg CO₂e per kg), and raw materials reporting continue to set the industry standard.

As the world races toward electrification, Tesla isn’t just building cars; it’s building a more responsible future.

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