The biggest economic push for electric vehicles (EVs) appears to be to move them out of dealer inventory lots despite government subsidy perks.

EVs are now some of the slowest sellers on dealership lots. In September, it took retailers over two months to sell a plug-in, compared with around a month for gas-powered vehicles and only three weeks for a gas-electric hybrid.

The slowdown is also problematic for taxpayers and car companies that are plowing billions of dollars into new battery plants and factories to build more profit-losing EVs. These investments were made when many of those models were in high demand and had long wait lists.

One of the companies that we taxpayers generously subsidized ungraciously took the money and ran overseas.

Some may recall a politically-connected automotive startup named Fisker that then-Vice President Joe Biden heralded with $529 million in government loan guarantees as a” bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs” to develop an “affordable” gas-electric family car providently named “Karma.”

Image: Creative Commons via Unsplash

Part of that money was used to help purchase a shuttered General Motors plant in Biden’s home state of Delaware, where it was predicted that one day it would employ 2,000 workers.

Bad karma should have come as little surprise when, a couple of years later, Fisker suspended U.S. production, laid off 26 employees and 40 contractors, and moved operations to Finland to build an entirely different car.

As Henrik Fisker explained at the time, “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle. They don’t exist here. We’re not in the business of failing; we’re in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business. That’s why we went to Finland.”

DOE froze its Fisker loan following production delays due largely to car fires and other problems caused by faulty batteries supplied by A123 Systems.

A123, in turn, suffered a big setback when Fisker decreased orders and pink-sheeted 125 employees after receiving $249.1 million from the federal government plus $141 million in State of Michigan tax credits and subsidies under then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who now heads the U.S. Department of Energy.

Granholm notably supported every failed government-subsidized green boondoggle the Obama-Biden administration threw in her lap, whereby the Mackinac Center, a Michigan think tank, reported that only 2.3% of the hundreds of millions of handouts for favored start-ups in her state during her governorship from 2003 to 2011 met their advertised job creation promises.

Fast forward to another case of bad karma (or perhaps car-ma) when DOE Secretary Granholm took a four-day cross-country EV promotion road trip last summer from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., not expecting anyone to call the cops on her caper.

Between stops, Granholm’s EV entourage — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and a Bolt electric utility vehicle — had to grapple with range limitations.

Big problems arose after her advance team realized that there wouldn’t be enough fast-charge stations for the caravan at a planned stop in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia, with one broken and the three others typically occupied, prompting a DOE staffer to reserve a spot by blocking it with a gasoline vehicle.

That publicity ploy didn’t go well when a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they called the police.

My wife, Nancy, observes similarly that EV charging stations at a local grocery she frequents have been removed altogether due to altercations that occur when people tie them up for excessive periods while shopping.

Meanwhile, a once-hot market for EVs appears to be losing its charge altogether.

Ford has temporarily cut one of the production shifts for the electric pickup and has paused construction of a $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan.

Some automakers, such as Hyundai and Ford are currently offering cash rebates as high as $7,500 on some models, while others, including Volkswagen, are resorting to aggressive lease deals that offer cheaper monthly payments or shorter contract lengths to attract buyers.

Ford Motor has also marked down its Mustang Mach-E SUV at least two times this year, and, with falling demand, has pushed back a plan to produce 600,000 EVs annually to late 2024 instead of the end of this year.

According to Ford CEO James Farley, his company lost nearly $60,000 on each EV it sold during the first quarter of this year largely due to high battery costs.

And Fisker’s future?

Following bankruptcy and having burned through $627 million over the past year and very recently moving its headquarters back to the U.S. — Manhattan Beach, Calif. — the tiny reborn company plans to begin deliveries of about a dozen $70,000 Ocean SUV models at prices discounted by $7,500 in response to “competitive realities.”

Since their vehicles are produced in Graz, Austria, Fisker’s vehicles don’t qualify for a federal tax credit because they are built outside the U.S., and their Lucid Air sedan model is too expensive for American markets.

Nope, it seems that by bad karma, nary a one of those 2,000 Delaware manufacturing jobs Biden predicted would occur after all.

This piece originally appeared at Newsmax.com and has been republished here with permission.