President Barack Obama said the U.S. government will buy 17,600 new, fuel-efficient vehicles from ailing American automakers by June 1.
The president made the announcement Thursday in a statement issued by the White House, saying the General Services Administration will spend $285 million of Recovery Act Funds to purchase the vehicles for the government fleet.
All purchases will be made from manufacturers with an existing contract with the GSA, which are General Motors Corp. (GM), Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. (F). This includes the purchase of 2,500 hybrid sedans that will be ordered by April 15.
“This is the largest one-time purchase of hybrid vehicles for the federal government fleet in history,” according to the statement.
The decision was made to buy the vehicles on the short timetable to help give a boost to the economy, as well as demonstrating the Obama administration’s support of the U.S. auto industry.
“This is only a first step, but I will continue to ensure that we are working to support the American auto industry during this difficult period of restructuring.”
Seriously. They should be dumping a few of those millions on Aptera. Which, I see, was in D.C. recently.
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Spend some money on ACTUAL INNOVATION, not just buying already-failing cars from already-failed automakers in some attempt to un-fuck them. You saw GM’s pussy-ass little attempt at an electric car I blagged about the other day, right? They are 10 FUCKING YEARS behind Aptera, yet they have gotten $20 billion dollars from our .Gov. What could Aptera do with one or two billion to kick start their manufacturing process and get their future-cars on the road NOW. Then sell them to the .Gov (I bet they’re cheaper TCO than ANY.. and I mean ANY other American made car and a lot of foreign ones as well). They could develop a 4 seater, a monoride (bet they could make a fast-ass electric sled smaller than a Smart and faster than shit) maybe an inline 2 seater sports model (enclosed, 3 wheel motorcycle. boo-ya)… who KNOWS what they could do with $billions in capital…. but instead that’s going to FAILED business.
America, we pay to FAIL.