GM-backed electric car company folds, slams DOE loan process
Written By John Voelcker
Published February 29, 2012
High Gear Media
Startup plug-in vehicle maker Bright Automotive announced today that it is closing down.
While General Motors had invested $5 million in the company, Bright had relied on the hope that the U.S. Department of Energy would grant it low-interest loans under the advanced-technology vehicle manufacturing program.
A letter from its CEO and COO to Energy Secretary Steven Chu notes that the Indiana company has waited more than three years for a DoE verdict on applications it submitted in December 2008.
'Unacceptable to us and our investors'
"Last week, we received the fourth 'near final' Conditional Commitment Letter since September 2010," Bright CEO Ruben Munger and COO Mike Donoughe wrote In the letter, which withdraws its loan application.
"Each new letter arrived with more onerous terms than the last."
"The first three were workable for us," wrote Munger and Donoughe, "but the last was so outlandish that the most rational and objective persons would likely conclude that your team was negotiating in bad faith."
The two had written a week earlier to Secretary Chu that the DoE's latest terms were "unacceptable to us and our potential investors."
<MORE>
