'Green' car makers look for boost in second Obama term

Paul A. Eisenstein , NBC News contributor

President Barack Obama’s support for the 2009 auto industry bailout turned out to be critical to his successful re-election bid.

And with Obama re-elected, at least one segment of the industry is breathing a bit easier, as manufacturers of so-called “green” cars count on continued support in the form of federal subsidies and tax credits.

But it remains to be seen how far Obama will go in supporting green cars in his second term. The industry has been struggling for sales in a marketplace that still overwhelmingly supports traditional internal-combustion vehicles, despite volatile gas prices and big federal tax incentives for electric cars.

Even if Obama decides to spend more political capital on the industry, he is likely to run into opposition from the Republican-controlled House.

The Electric Drive Transportation Association, which represents makers of hybrid and electric cars, said it “looks forward to continuing its work with President Obama and the newly elected Congress to advance technology innovation that will diversify our transportation fuels.”

The industry had been caught in the crossfire of the presidential campaign, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney signaling a disdain for green energy championed by Obama, especially if it required financial backing from the federal government. He opposed credits for wind energy and signaled opposition for tougher mileage standards, backed by Obama, that would push average fleet standard to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Pressure from House conservatives all but froze a program intended to help fund the development of high-mileage, alternate power vehicles – especially after the failure of solar cell manufacturer Solyndra, which had received over $400 million in government loans. California-based Fisker Automotive had its low-interest loans frozen, forcing it to delay launch of its second model, the Atlantic, as it set out to raise cash through traditional channels.

Tesla Motors, another Silicon Valley start-up, is under pressure to pay back its government loans as quickly as possible, putting pressure on that maker’s balance sheet even as it struggles to ramp up production of its new Model S battery-electric sedan.

The battery car market has gotten off to a sluggish start, with total sales in the U.S. barely reaching 20,000 units last year.

As for plug-in cars, the Chevrolet Volt has sold about 19,000 units nationwide as of the end of October, meaning it is likely to barely reach half its 45,000 unit target for 2012.

Sales of the Nissan Leaf, a battery-electric model, have declined, with sales of just 6,791 in the first 10 months of 2012, compared with about 10,000 sold in all of 2011.

Recent months have seen a flood of new green entries from makers like Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and Ford, with still more coming to U.S. showrooms by early 2013. That includes pure battery-electric offerings like the Toyota RAV4-EV and Ford’s plug-in hybrid C-Max and Fusion Energi models.

With so many makers struggling for viability in what is still a niche market, Obama’s re-election was “the best thing” possible for the industry, said analyst David Sullivan of AutoPacific.

“If there was a change in Washington, DC we were likely to see less government incentives for (electric) vehicle purchases or charging stations,” said Sullivan. “The barrier to entry would have been that much harder for consumers, making it just that much harder for (the industry) to succeed.”

Battery vehicle sales would all but certainly slide even further were the federal government to eliminate or reduce tax credits worth up to $7,500 on qualifying vehicles. And there is significant hope among industry leaders that Obama will push for the expanded incentives he had proposed earlier this year.

That could include raiseing the maximum tax credit to $10,000. Obama also has proposed providing the tax credit up front, rather than forcing consumers to wait for tax time to get the refund.

It remains to be seen whether the White House will renew the call for expanded incentives or try to renew the low-interest loans for the auto and energy industry – though that seems unlikely in the near-term with Congress and the White House facing the need to address the so-called “fiscal cliff” before year-end.

Even so, there remains guarded optimism that battery vehicle sales will do better in the year to come. The continuing rise in fuel prices – despite occasional downward blips like the country is now experiencing – should lead more motorists to look for alternatives. And with still more products coming to market, the auto industry will be glad to oblige.

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Auto industry helped tilt vote toward Obama

Paul A. Eisenstein, The Detroit Bureau

Even as analysts pore over the data trying to get a clear understanding of what led President Barack Obama to victory on Tuesday, there’s a growing sense that the auto industry played a significant role, especially in the key battleground state of Ohio.


One of the most bitterly fought presidential campaigns in decades revealed significant strengths and weaknesses of both candidates. But as so often happens, external events – such as Superstorm Sandy – and campaign missteps, including “inaccurate” last-minute claims about General Motors and Chrysler, may have had as much of an impact on key voters as the debates, the endless political commercials and the long lists of endorsements claimed by either side.

Perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in Ohio, where voters’ decision in favor of the president was reported by the various TV networks as pushing Obama to re-election shortly after 11 p.m. EST. CNN’s chief political analyst John King, who repeatedly parsed the results from swing states down to the county level, noted that while much of Ohio was “red,” the color assigned to Republicans, “the industrial north is solidly blue” in a corridor that took in automotive manufacturing centers such as Toledo and Cleveland and its suburbs.

Those are traditionally Democratic strongholds, but would the vote have been so lopsidedly in favor of the president’s re-election, or would turnout have been quite so high if the auto industry had not been a central topic in the campaign?

Indeed, did former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney only ensure the loss of Ohio in what many critics have described as a “desperate” last-minute “scare campaign” claiming that Chrysler’s Jeep brand was getting ready to move all of its production from the U.S. to China?

That was the question that popped up repeatedly as TV talking heads watched the returns flood in from Ohio – in particular, the northern Ohio region that reversed earlier, downstate voting favoring the Republican challenger.

NBC News was among many media outlets that examined the claims about Jeep and GM jobs that candidate Romney and his campaign made in the final week. The coverage was harshly critical – and so was the unprecedented blowback from the two automakers. None other than Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne declared “inaccurate” the Romney claims in a letter to employees that was also released to the media.

GM, which was also lumped into the last-minute GOP campaign strategy, went even further, with spokesman Greg Martin declaring that the Republican hopeful was operating in a “parallel universe,” adding that the continued use of a clearly false claim was “campaign politics at its cynical worst.”

It may take weeks to parse the exit data and subsequent polls, but in the hours after Ohio was placed in the blue column, a number of on-air analysts were suggesting the Romney campaign claim about Jeep clearly backfired.

But the auto industry was at the heart of the presidential campaign almost from the moment then-candidate Obama claimed victory the first time, in the November 2008 election. That election came as the U.S. economy was sliding into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression – and as it became apparent that at least two of Detroit’s Big Three would slip into bankruptcy, perhaps transforming a deep recession into a full-fledged depression.

It was Republican President George W. Bush who began the bailout of GM and Chrysler – tapping into so-called TARP funds originally set aside to rescue the nation’s banks when Congress failed to approve an automotive bailout. But the lame-duck Bush left it to his successor to decide how far to go to keep the automakers afloat. And in the months after his inauguration, Obama approved additional funding that would eventually add up to $84 billion.

The new president defended his controversial and widely unpopular move, insisting it was necessary to save at least 1 million jobs and shore up a faltering economy. However, Romney, the man who would become Obama's 2012 opponent, insisted failure was a reasonable option for the two automakers in a series of speeches and op-ed pieces for publications including the New York Times.

In the more than three years since the full bailout was authorized, the topic has remained a controversial one. “It wasn’t right. The government shouldn’t be stepping into the economy like that,” lamented Dennis George, a Florida entrepreneur who lost a significant amount of money on GM stock after the automaker’s 2009 bankruptcy.

Even today, polls show a sizable percentage of Americans agree with claims the bailout went too far, numbers that tend to jump whenever reports suggest the Treasury will likely lose billions of dollars once its final stake in GM is sold off.

But opposition has generally softened, those same polls show, with the rescue effort generally viewed as favorable by a small majority of Americans today. And in key automotive states, it likely worked to the advantage of the incumbent president.

“When you save the jobs and the pensions and the neighborhoods of millions of middle class Americans (like me) they remember,” said GM executive Tom Wilkinson in a Facebook quote following the news of the Obama victory.

The final Electoral College numbers may show that the path to victory would have been complete without Ohio, but winning that state certainly helped the Obama campaign and underscores the way the auto industry has been a central facet in the bitter 2012 campaign from start to finish.

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Obama of Chrysler on eBay - sell for $1 million

President Obama on cruise control in the direction of his party nomination to re-election Tim running, but O'boyle is hoping to Obama the old cruise-Mobile-2005 Chrysler 300 c to benefit

Yes, it has a Hemi in it. That's probably what aspiring Presidential candidate Obama of the muscle car to a Ford Escape Hybrid back 2008 led ditch to support its green credentials in.

These days Obama travels un green in one very armored Cadillac for security reasons (cast aside is like a forgotten friend of Chrysler). But O'boyle has the car, hoping that one of a million dollars on eBay for it is willing to pay Obama enthusiast or history buffs. (I guess you say to "Millions" as Dr. evil, if you have that much money for a car have.)

O'boyle says that he tried to sell a few years back but that the invitation to tender pranksters ran up to $100 million before you shut down the auction eBay cars on eBay. With the campaign heating up, he thought now might be a good time to try again. To keep the pranksters, the auction this time requires a deposit $2,000 faithful and believe to even bid. Who can be interested parties, hunted because in an auction that ended Wednesday, Jan. 25, there were no bidders. Aloysius O'boyle says that he has adjusted it again in the hope that further week should do it.

If not, he could wait until the fall, when the choice is really active.

In the meantime of course want people be sure that owned a car, the value of which is, in the identity of the previous owner by the President was really. Illinois is, if a car is a changes hands, the title again in the State, so the names on it have not the original title with Obama O'boyle, but he copy has made by the dealer, if Obama it in the traded. And if he driving title in his name was not actually because leased it on behalf of "a government agency," was according to O'boyle. But the documentary shows that the car even if, as car leasing, it technically belong to the then Illinois Senator not to Obama has been registered.

However, a piece could be a million dollars. The President one 2000 previous vehicle, Jeep Grand Cherokee, sold for only $26,000, according to the New York Times.

Would you pay $1 million for 2005 Chrysler 300 c? Share your thoughts on Facebook.

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