THE MORNING RANT: Taxpayer-Subsidized “Clean Tech” Ventures in Support of the “EV Transition” Are Starting to Fold

Early in the Biden administration, the EV bubble reached its apex, and a vast array of politicians and investors bought into the hype. Southern Republican governors dove in deep, seeking to make Dixie the land of EV plants surrounded by suppliers providing the batteries and related components necessary to build EVs.

Under the leadership of Governor Brian Kemp (R), Georgia became ground zero for the EV hype. With the enemies of freedom committed to vanquishing gasoline-powered vehicles, Brian Kemp made it clear that no governor was more committed to their agenda than he was.

At the same time, the Biden administration was also steering obscene amounts of money to all the EV-adjacent promoters. To a certain extent, a lot of these companies were not much different from startups seeking investment money from venture capitalists and angel investors. But when government is the angel investor, the process is no longer capitalism, and rather than focusing on revenue as a source of cash, the focus of these enterprises quickly turned to keeping the government grants, incentives, and “loans” flowing in.

But with the EV fad having peaked, and with the election of Donald Trump, the music has just stopped for all the hustlers and their EV-related schemes. The over-hyped and highly subsidized ventures are starting to fail, and unsurprisingly, Georgia is at the center of the collapse.

Aspen Aerogels

In early 2022, a company named Aspen Aerogels announced plans to build a massive plant near Savannah that was allegedly going to employ 250 people and produce thermal barriers to suppress EV fires. The plant would be financed by taxpayers, of course, but it has just now been cancelled.

“Despite $671 million federal loan, EV supplier stops construction on Georgia plant” [Atlanta Journal Constitution – 02/13/2025]

A company that produces special materials to contain fires in electric vehicles has ceased construction of its partially built Georgia factory, jeopardizing a project that promised to employ 250 workers.

Executives at Massachusetts-based Aspen Aerogels said Thursday during an investor call that the company is indefinitely halting construction on its 500,000-square-foot factory near Register, which is about 12 miles outside of Statesboro.

The factory had already broken ground and received approval for a $671 million federal loan to assist with construction last fall. The loan was part of a flurry of construction financing approved for clean tech projects in the waning months of the Biden administration.

Of course, Gov. Kemp and fellow Georgia leaders threw taxpayer dollars at Aspen Aerogels to incentivize it to build the plant for an industry that didn’t actually exist at the time.

Reading the financial statements of these companies entertains me, and a quick glance reveals that over the past four-full years, Aspen Aerogels has never turned a profit, losing a cumulative $187 million. Its stock is down 85% from its peak in 2021. This is the kind of company in which Joe Biden and Brian Kemp like to “invest” taxpayer money.

Freyr Battery

Here’s another…

In a 2024 interview praising Joe Biden’s “Inflation reduction Act,” the CEO of Freyr Battery explained that his company’s purpose is as follows: “We’re here to decarbonize transportation systems and storage systems by making the world’s most sustainable battery. That’s what we do.”

Freyr Battery’s much-hyped, multi-billion dollar plant that was going to employ 700 Georgians has just been scrapped.

“Clean-energy company Freyr Battery says it’s abandoning plans to build a $2.6 billion factory in Georgia, which would’ve created 700 new jobs” [Fortune 02/07/2025]

The factory would have built batteries to store electricity produced by renewable sources and release it later, company officials said. It would have been the second-largest battery factory worldwide when it was announced in 2023. But Freyr, a startup founded in 2018, never began construction on the 368-acre site.

Freyr Battery is a start-up company with the stated goal of “decarbonizing transportation systems,” so of course Brian Kemp and the state of Georgia threw taxpayer money at it. Why wouldn’t a Republican governor give taxpayer money to a start-up whose goal is the elimination of gas-powered vehicles, and the freedom that comes with them.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development said the state conveyed a $7 million grant to buy a site for Freyr in Newnan, about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta. Department spokesperson Jessica Atwell said the state and company are “working together” to ensure the money is “repaid expeditiously.”

Good luck getting “repaid expeditiously.” Freyr Battery has lost $83 million through the first three quarters of its current fiscal year, and it lost a combined $173 million over the previous two full years. Its stock price has collapsed by 85% since its peak in 2022.

Rivian

The granddaddy of all the bad Georgia EV investments, Rivian, is not dead yet, but the Georgia plant that was supposed to be building electric vehicles by 2024 is still just an empty field.

Although Rivian keeps getting financial lifelines from suckers such as Joe Biden and Volkswagen, it still has no path to profitability, and it just released its fiscal year end 2024 financial reports yesterday. It was another financial bloodbath for Rivian, with a loss of $4.7 billion. This is somehow being reported as good news, because the prior year’s loss was $5.4 billion, but no company can consistently burn that kind of cash and survive long. Even worse, annual sales have plateaued at about 50,000 units, and that was with all the Biden-era tax incentives which are likely going away soon.

Rivian’s existing plant in Normal, IL has a capacity of over 200,000 units per year. With Rivian maxed out at 50,000 sales per year, there is no possibility that the empty field in Georgia will someday have a plant spitting out 400,000 vehicles per year, as promised when Brian Kemp gave Rivian over a billion dollars in incentives back in 2021.

Rivian’s stock is down 92% from its peak, and it remains the highest profile participant in my EV Death Pool.

Novonix

Just up the road in Tennessee, a company named Novonix has received a great deal of hype and taxpayer money for its promised role as a supplier of graphite to the “burgeoning” EV manufacturing industry. Unfortunately for Novonix, the EV industry never burgeoned, and it’s not altogether clear that the company even has a product to sell to EV manufacturers.

According to its website: “ NOVONIX is developing innovative, sustainable technologies and high-performance materials to service the electric vehicle and energy storage industries.”

The key words here being “is developing…” Production has always been at some date in the future. The current target date for full production is now 2028. Elsewhere on its website, Novonix states that it has a “proprietary synthetic graphite process” for which it is “currently scaling commercial production…”

While Novonix is “developing” and “scaling,” it also keeps hitting up taxpayers for more money. Here are just a couple of headlines from within the past year.

“Novonix secures $755 million DOE loan for Tennessee synthetic graphite facility” [Manufacturing Dive – 12/19/2024]

“NOVONIX to receive $103 million in tax credits to support production of critical battery materials in Tennessee” [4/04/2024]

Of course, Novonix is also now hitting up the locals too. It is less than ideal timing for Novonix, however, as it just announced major layoffs, while concurrently requesting property tax incentives to support future growth.

“Novonix leaders talk layoffs as Chattanooga mulls tax deal” [Chattanooga Times Free Press – 01/14/2025]

The day before Novonix, an Australian battery manufacturing company, went before the Chattanooga City Council to ask its members to support a $54 million net tax incentive deal, its leaders laid off about a fifth of its Chattanooga-area employees.

And…the awful financial report: Novonix has lost $28 million through the first two quarters of its current fiscal year, after losing $46 million in the previous full year. Its stock has collapsed by 94% since peaking after its public offering in 2022. And the cherry on top is that Novonix’s CPA is warning that “These conditions give rise to a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt over the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern.” This is CPA talk meaning the company’s financial health is very bad, with a dire prognosis.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be getting such pleasure from the failure of these ventures, but each of these failures is a significant victory in both the culture war and the overall battle for economic freedom. Central planners such as Joe Biden and Brian Kemp decided to choose “winners” that could only economically succeed if our freedom of choice was exterminated. The central planners lost, and freedom is winning.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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