Workers at Chevy Volt battery plant built with federal money paid to do nothing for months
he bankruptcy of electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems earlier this week turned a spotlight on the struggles of the Obama administration's push for green jobs of the future around electric cars, which has fallen short in employment and production. Now a new report says in one Michigan plant, built with $151 million in federal money to assemble battery cells for the Chevrolet Volt, workers have been paid for months to do nothing. According to WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., the 300 workers at the LG Chem plant in nearby Holland have yet to ship a single production battery cell since the plant opened late last year. While employees have built battery cells for testing, those were shipped back to LG Chem's home labs in South Korea months ago, leaving workers to do odd jobs around the factory, volunteer for community projects or just sit and play Monopoly. Several say training also stopped months ago, leading some employees to quit in frustration.


The $300 million plant was launched by President Barack Obama in July 2010, at a bipartisan ceremony where Obama hailed the LG Chem plant and similar efforts by A123 as "jobs in the industries of the future," saying it was key for the United States to build not just more electric vehicles and hybrids but their batteries as well. The LG Chem's plant initial contract called for workers to build lithium-ion battery cells, 288 of which are used in every Chevy Volt -- and which are now made in South Korea and shipped to a GM plant in Michigan.

At the time, General Motors was still expecting to sell as many as 60,000 Volts a year worldwide, but after demand failed to match those expectations, GM cut back production. The automaker's on track to sell about 20,000 Volts in the United States this year, and has declined to offer future production estimates; the Cadillac ELR coupe version of the range-extended electric car will go into production next year, but isn't anticipated to be a huge seller. At one point, the plant was also expected to supply batteries to the electric version of the Ford Focus, but LG Chem provides those cells from South Korea as well. Ford has only sold 228 Focus Electrics so far this year, and its sales plans for the$40,000 Focus seem limited to meeting California emissions rules.

In fairness, the Volt's slow growth rate has mirrored that of the Toyota Prius after it was launched; Toyota only sold 15,500 Priuses in Japan in its second full year of production, before the Prius became the world's best-selling hybrid. The auto industry has made scaling battery factories more difficult by demanding customized cells for every low-volume EV model -- only the Tesla Model S uses an off-the-shelf design. And every auto industry insider expects plug-in hybrids and lithium batteries to become standard on vehicles in the coming years, thanks to tougher fuel economy regulations around the world. But paying people to do nothing is the weakest form of economic stimulus, and the idle plant highlights how big government bets on where and when the future will arrive often go bad -- or leave a few lucky people plenty of time to practice pinochle.

I thought this was common practice with the farming industry and the housing industry? some of it spilled into the auto industry too?

interesting,,,

except farmers and construction workers don't get paid while idle.

actually, farmers do, and so does the housing (housing units sit empty while receiving government subsidy to house people)

When Obama made the announcement of this grant, I posted that the money was actually going to help a South Korean company, LG.

Last week I posted that this plant was bankrupt and was being sold to the Chinese, apparently for pennies on the dollar.

There are no parallels to farming or anything else. The US taxpayer got fleeced with the overt help of the Obama administration.

Gonna' take years for the stench of Hussein to get washed out of the US.
The stain will never get washed out.

how is there no parallel?

the money for housing is paid to someone isnt it? even though its not doing anything but sitting empty

the money for farmers is paid to farmers to NOT farm....

why isnt that also 'fleecing'?

Do I need to post for you again the meaning of a "straw man" argument?

The money did not go where it was meant to go and did not help who it was meant to help. Your argument is garbage.

And this is how we balance a budget. GO DEMOCRATS! Turn us into an insolvent mess like Greece!

ABC reported: ‘Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright, new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs.’ Those jobs didn’t materialize—at least not in America. … Two years after the loan was awarded, the Washington Post stated that Fisker ‘has missed early manufacturing goals and has gradually pushed back plans for U.S. production and the creation of thousands of jobs’… Now, in 2012, Fisker Automotive is laying off staff in order to qualify for more government loans. So, President Obama’s ‘green’ energy stimulus was supposed to create jobs; now it’s destroying jobs so that companies can get more stimulus?