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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.”

Click here to view original web page at www.scientificamerican.com

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Tesla Summon got insanely good in FSD v14.3.2 — Navigation? Not so much

There were two new lines of improvements in the release notes: one addressing Actually Smart Summon (ASS), and another that now allows drivers to choose a reason for an intervention via a small menu during disengagement.

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April 24, 2026

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(Photo: Hector Perez/YouTube)

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.2 began rolling out to some owners earlier this week, and there are some notable improvements that came with this update.

There were two new lines of improvements in the release notes: one addressing Actually Smart Summon (ASS), and another that now allows drivers to choose a reason for an intervention via a small menu during disengagement.

Overall operation saw a handful of slight improvements, especially with parking performance, which has been the most notable difference with the arrival of FSD v14.3. However, there are still some very notable shortcomings, most notably with region-specific signage and navigation.

Tesla Assisted Smart Summon (ASS) improvements

There are noticeable improvements to ASS operation, which has definitely been inconsistent in terms of performance. Tesla wrote in the release notes for v14.3.2:

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“Unified the model between Actually Smart Summon, FSD, and Robotaxi for more capable and reliable behavior.”

As recently as this month, I used Summon with no success. It had pulled around the parking lot I was in incorrectly, leaving the range at which Summon can be operated and losing a signal while moving in the middle of the lot.

This caused me to sprint across the lot to retrieve the vehicle:

Unfortunately, Summon was not dependable or accurate enough to use regularly. It appears Tesla might have bridged the gap needed to make it an effective feature, as two tests in parking lots proved that Summon was more responsive and faster to navigate to the location chosen.

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It also did so without hesitation, confidently, and at a comfortable speed. I was able to test it twice at different distances:

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I plan to test this more thoroughly and regularly through the next few weeks, and I avoided using it in a congested parking lot initially because I have not had overwhelming success with Summon in the past. I wanted to set a low baseline for it to see if it could simply pull up to the place I pinned in the Tesla app.

It was two for two, which is a big improvement because I don’t think I ever had successful Summon attempts back-to-back. It just seems more confident than ever before.

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New Disengagement Categories

This is a really good idea from Tesla, but there are some issues with it. The categories you can select are Critical, Comfort, Preference, and Other.

I think the reasons why people choose to take over would be a better way to prompt drivers, like, “Traveling Too Fast,” “Incorrect Maneuver,” “Navigation Error,” would be more beneficial.

I say this because it seems that how we each categorize things might be different. For example, I shared a video of an intervention because the car had navigated to an exit to a parking lot and put its left blinker on, despite left turns not being allowed there.

I disengaged and chose Critical as the reason; it’s not a comfort issue, it’s not a preference, it’s quite literally an illegal turn, and it’s also dangerous because it cuts across several lanes of traffic and is 180 degrees.

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Some said I should not have labeled this as Critical, but that’s the description I best characterized the disengagement as.

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Categorizing interventions is a good thing, but it’s kind of hard to determine how to label them correctly.

Inconsistency with Regional Traffic Patterns

Tesla Full Self-Driving is pretty inconsistent with how it handles regional or local traffic patterns and road rules. The most frequent example I like to use is that of the “Except Right Turn” stop sign, which has become a notorious sighting on our social media platforms.

In the initial rollout of v14.3, my Model Y successfully navigated through one of these stop signs with no issues. However, testing at two of these stop signs yesterday proved it is still not sure how to read signs and navigate through them properly.

Off camera, I approached another one of these signs and felt the car coming to a stop, so I nudged it forward with the accelerator pedal pressed.

This helped the car go through the sign without stopping, but I could feel the bucking of the vehicle as the car really wanted to stop.

Musk said on the earnings call earlier this week that unsupervised FSD would probably be available in some regions before others, including a state-to-state basis in the U.S.

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“It’s difficult to release this like to everyone everywhere all at once because we do want to make sure that they’re not unique situations in a city that particularly complex intersection or — actually, they tend to be places where people get into accidents a lot because they’re just — perhaps there’s — and like I said, an unsafe intersection or bad road markings or a lot of weather challenges. So I think we would release unsupervised gradually to the customer fleet as we feel like a particular geography is confirmed to be safe.”

This could be one of those examples that Tesla just has to figure out.

Highway Operation

Full Self-Driving is already pretty good at routine roadway navigation, so I don’t have too much to report here.

However, I was happy with FSD’s decision-making at several points, including its choice not to pass a slightly slower car and remain in the right lane as we approached the off-ramp:

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Better Maneuvering at Stop Signs

Many FSD users report some strange operations at stop signs, especially four-way intersections where there is a stop sign and a line on the road, and they’re not even with one another.

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I experienced this quite frequently and found that FSD would actually double stop: once at the stop sign and again at the line.

This created some interesting scenarios for me and I had many cars honk at me when the second stop would happen. Other vehicles that had waved me on to proceed through the intersection would become frustrated at the second stop.

FSD seems to have worked through this particular maneuver:

FSD should know to go to the more appropriate location (whichever provides better visibility), and proceed when it is the car’s turn to move. The double stop really ruined the flow of traffic at times and generally caused some frustration from other drivers.

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Tesla plans to resolve its angriest bunch of owners: here’s how

Since the rollout of the AI4 chip in Tesla vehicles, owners with the last generation self-driving chip, known as Hardware 3, have been persistent in their quest for a solution to their issue: they were told their cars were capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving. It turns out the cars are not.

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3 hours ago

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April 24, 2026

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tesla-asia-model-3
Credit: Tesla Asia/Twitter

Tesla has a plan to make Hardware 3 owners whole after CEO Elon Musk admitted that those with that self-driving chip in their cars will not have access to unsupervised Full Self-Driving.

The company’s strategy is so crazy that it is sort of hard to believe.

Since the rollout of the AI4 chip in Tesla vehicles, owners with the last generation self-driving chip, known as Hardware 3, have been persistent in their quest for a solution to their issue: they were told their cars were capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving. It turns out the cars are not.

During the Tesla Q1 earnings call on Wednesday, Musk finally clarified what the company’s plans are for Hardware 3 owners, what they will be offered, and what Tesla will have to do internally to prepare for it.

The answer was somewhat mind-boggling.

Musk said:

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“Unfortunately, Hardware 3 — I wish it were otherwise, but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD. We did think at one point it would have that, but relative to Hardware 4, it has only 1/8 of the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4. And memory bandwidth is one of the key elements needed for unsupervised FSD.”

He continued, stating that HW3 owners would have the opportunity to trade their cars in at a discounted rate in order to get the AI4 chip:

“So for customers that have bought FSD, what we’re offering is essentially a trade-in — like a discounted trade-in for cars that have AI4 hardware, and we’ll also be offering the ability to upgrade the car, to replace the computer. And you also need to replace the cameras, unfortunately, to go to Hardware 4.”

Obviously, Tesla has a lot of people to work with and make this whole thing right. Musk was adamant that HW3 would be capable of FSD, and now that the company has finally admitted that it is not, there are some things that could come of this.

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There has been open talk about some sort of class action lawsuit against Tesla. The promises that Tesla made previously could be considered a breach of contract or even false advertising, and that’s according to Grok, Musk’s own AI program.

Musk went on to say that Tesla would likely have to establish new microfactories to effectively and efficiently replace HW3 computers and cameras:

…So to do this efficiently, we’re going to have to set up, like kind of micro factories or small factories in major metropolitan areas in order to do it efficiently. Because if it’s done just at the service center, it is extremely slow to do so and inefficient. So we basically need like many production lines to make the change.”

This is going to be an extremely costly process, especially if Tesla has to buy real estate, properties, and equipment to complete this work. Additionally, there was no wording on pricing, but Musk never said it would be free. It will likely come with some kind of price tag, and HW3 owners, after being left hanging for so long, will have something to say about that.

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SpaceX just got pulled into the biggest Weapons Program in U.S. history

SpaceX joins the Golden Dome software group, deepening its role in America’s most expensive defense program.

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13 hours ago

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April 23, 2026

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US Golden Dome space defense system (Concept render by Grok)

SpaceX has joined a nine-company group developing the core operating software for the Golden Dome, America’s next-generation missile defense system. According to a Bloomberg report, SpaceX is focused on integrating satellite communications for military operations and is working alongside eight other defense and artificial intelligence companies, including Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies, and Aalyria Technologies, to build software connecting missile defense capabilities.

The Golden Dome concept dates back to President Trump’s 2024 campaign, and on January 27, 2025, he signed an executive order directing the U.S. Armed Forces to construct the system before the end of his term. The system is planned to employ a constellation of thousands of satellites equipped with interceptors, with data centers in space providing automated control through an AI network.

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, director of the Golden Dome initiative, has described the software layer as a “glue layer” that would enable officers to manage and control radars, sensors, and missile batteries across services. The consortium is aiming to test the platform this summer.

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Trump selected a design in May 2025 with a $175 billion price tag, expected to be operational by the end of his term in 2029, though the Congressional Budget Office projected the cost could reach $831 billion over two decades.

The Golden Dome role is only the latest in a string of military wins for SpaceX. As Teslarati reported, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $178.5 million task order on April 1, 2026 to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, covering two Falcon 9 launches beginning in Q3 2027. That came on top of more than $22 billion in government contracts held by SpaceX as of 2024, per CEO Gwynne Shotwell, spanning NASA resupply missions, classified intelligence satellites through its Starshield program, and military broadband.

The accumulation of defense contracts, now including a seat at the table on the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history, positions SpaceX as the dominant infrastructure provider for American national security in space. With a SpaceX IPO still on the horizon, each new contract adds weight to what is already one of the most consequential companies in aerospace history, raising real questions about how much of America’s defense architecture will depend on a single private operator before it ever trades publicly.

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