'U.S.Air Force Official Raised FaradayF Spying Concern'
http://kalw.org/post/vallejo-hopes-plug-electric-car-market#stream/0 Vallejo hopes to plug into the electric car market 2016/08/16 Max Pringle [image http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kalw/files/styles/medium/public/201608/KALW_Vallejo_TWITTER.jpeg This abandon navy base could be the next home of an electric vehicle manufacturer / Max Pringle audio http://cpa.ds.npr.org/kalw/audio/2016/08/WEB.FutureFaraday.mp3 ] This abandon navy base could be the next home of an electric vehicle manufacturer. If you’re a former Navy town that’s been navigating rough economic seas since your base closed 20 years ago, a high-tech electric car assembly plant may just be the thing you’re looking for to turn your fortunes around. At least that’s what many Vallejo officials and residents are hoping a proposed Faraday Future electric car plant can be for them. When the Mare Island Naval Shipyard closed in the mid-1990s, Vallejo lost its largest employer. Two decades later, enter the Los Angeles-based startup electric car company Faraday Future. The company has entered into exclusive negotiations with the city for the right to build an assembly plant on the northern tip of the old Naval Shipyard. The North Bay city is hoping to make the switch from a military town to a player in California’s rapidly growing electric car market. Mare Island is a peninsula located just across the Napa River from Vallejo’s waterfront. There’s nothing on the northern edge of the island now but derelict Navy dormitories and grey graffiti-tagged abandoned warehouses. Broken glass litters the pavement and weeds sprout up from the rubbish strewn courtyard. “It looks like what happens when nature starts to take over,” says long-time Vallejo resident Charles Bartlett who was recently showing me around the northern tip of Mare Island where Faraday Future, backed by Chinese investors, is looking to build a 157-acre assembly plant. “We’re looking at everything green growing around it.” Bartlett thinks the Faraday Future facility could revitalize Mare Island and the local economy. “The potential is for it not just to create jobs, but high-paying jobs,” he said. “That’s key – because for so long Vallejo has been sort of a service economy. There’s no shortage of fast-food places, restaurants, retail, movie theaters and all of those are minimum wage jobs. When the Navy left, it took hundreds of high-paying middle-income jobs with it. A Department of Defense study at the time estimated a $500 million annual hit to the local economy. In 2008, the city became the first city of its size to declare bankruptcy because of the mortgage crisis and public service pension costs it could no longer afford. City officials and residents have been looking for ways to fill the gap left behind when the Navy left. Bartlett says Faraday Future could have a ripple effect as other businesses grow up around it. “There’s going to be a network of suppliers that build up around Faraday. Some of them could be far away, but many of them will be local,” said Bartlett. Faraday Future says the Vallejo facility will include a showroom and test track where people can come to see and test drive the cars, which are now in the concept phase of development. Early concept drawings show a car that resembles a high-performance sports car similar to a Lamborghini, or Bugatti. In May, the City Council unanimously approved the exclusive bargaining agreement with Faraday Future. “This could potentially be the biggest thing to happen in Vallejo in many many years,” said Vallejo City Manager Daniel Keene at a recent City Council meeting. Keene says Vallejo wants to be at the cutting edge of a fast-growing industry in California. “We’re very excited that the council is supportive of us moving forward with negotiations with this company. They promise a lot of things that are important to this community, particularly jobs and investment.” According to Keene, Vallejo residents are also excited about the prospect of an environmentally conscious company. “We see this as an ideal type of company for Vallejo and the Bay Area because of the green nature of it,” he said. “We’re going to manufacture electric cars here in California. I think it’s pretty easy to say California is the hotbed of where people want to buy and see electric cars.” The city says it would cost more for the environmental cleanup and infrastructure upgrades needed on the land than what the land is currently worth. Many of the old buildings contain lead paint, asbestos and other materials that the company would have to remote. But Faraday Future spokesman Ezekiel Wheeler says the Bay Area location makes it a bargain. “Vallejo is of interest to us primarily because of its location in the Bay Area,” said Wheeler. Wheeler says you can’t beat the Bay Area for technical know-how. And the electric vehicle, or EV industry would benefit from it. Industry observers say Californians make up about half of all registered EV owners nationwide. California once had five car manufacturing plants, now that number is down to one, and that’s the Tesla electric vehicle plant in Fremont. The state has offered numerous incentives for EV drivers including, a $2500 rebate and access to the carpool lane for solo drivers. “We have offices in Silicon Valley and utilizing those resources and talent and the EV enthusiasm that follows in the Bay makes it a prime location for us,” Wheeler continued. The company has paid a $200,000 fee for the exclusive right to bargain with the city for use of the land. Wheeler says the company is willing to pay for the development costs on Mare Island whatever the cost because it’s a win for the company and the city. “We’re really excited to bring economic development to the city of Vallejo in the form of our monetary investment as well as bringing jobs -- really good jobs for the great and capable workforce you find here in Vallejo,” said Wheeler. Faraday Future would like to compete with Tesla as an electric car maker. Tesla operates a vehicle production facility in Fremont and is one of the state’s largest private employers. The company recently started work on a $1 billion manufacturing facility near Las Vegas. And It hopes to open its Vallejo facility in a couple of years. Still, some Vallejoans are taking a guardedly optimistic view of the Mare Island proposal. They’re urging the city not to jump on the first offer from the company and to keep its options open for other, possibly better, offers which may present themselves. “They have to analyze how much they’re going to get long term, the city is, and the risk of having all their eggs in one basket fail,” says Steve Souza. Souza grew up in Vallejo and owns property in the city. He says the city has considered other Mare Island development proposals, including a casino and a cement plant. “If it goes in, it’s going to go right into Mare Island where the civilian and military workers used to be and it seems like a good fit to replace those nuclear submarines with electric cars,” said Souza. Negotiations are expected to continue for the next few months. If approved, Faraday Future says their facility could be completed in two years. [© 2016 KALW] ... http://blog.sfgate.com/kalw/2016/08/17/vallejo-hopes-to-plug-into-the-electric-car-market/ Vallejo hopes to plug into the electric car market August 17, 2016 If you're a former Navy town that's been navigating rough economic seas since your base closed 20 years ago, a high-tech electric car assembly plant may just ... ... http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=search_page&node=413529&query=Faraday+Vallejo&days=0 More Faraday Vallejo EVLN items http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2016/08/18/email-air-force-official-raised-faraday-spying-concern/ Email: Air Force Official Raised Faraday Spying Concern August 18, 2016 Filed Under: Faraday Future, Las Vegas, Nellis Air Force Base, Spying [image] The Faraday Future FFZERO1 Concept, a high performance electric vehicle built upon FF's Variable Platform Architecture (VPA), a modular engineering system optimized for electric vehicles, is on display at CES 2016 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (AP) — Documents show an Air Force commander raised questions last year about whether an electric car company moving to North Las Vegas posed a national security risk. The concerns appear in a Dec. 8, 2015 email from the then-commander of the 99th Air Base Wing based at Nellis Air Force Base to officials at Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy’s office. The document raised the question of whether a business affiliated with the Chinese entrepreneur backing Faraday Future was linked to the Chinese government. It also raised the prospect of unauthorized monitoring of Department of Defense communications at the base near Faraday’s site. Hardy has come under fire for raising the prospect of Chinese spying from Faraday. Nevada economic development officials say the Department of Defense reviewed the project and cleared it. [© 2016 CBS Local Media 2016 The Associated Press] ... http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article96467827.html Email shows Air Force official raised Faraday spying concern 20160818 NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEV. Documents show an Air Force commander raised questions last year about whether an electric car company moving to North Las Vegas posed a national security risk, although state officials say the project passed federal vetting. The concerns appear in a Dec. 8, 2015 email from the then-commander of the 99th Air Base Wing based at Nellis Air Force Base to officials at Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy's office ... The document raised the question of whether a business affiliated with the Chinese ... ... http://tdn.com/business/email-shows-air-force-official-raised-faraday-spying-concern/article_a088c493-682a-542d-ae8a-de8b34f209a4.html ... Hardy spoke to the Active Republican Women of Las Vegas club last month and characterized military officials as "terrified" of the company's building plan because of its Chinese backing. The comments were captured by a Democratic tracker and first reported earlier this week by political journalist Jon Ralston. "They are sitting here at our Air Force bases all over this country watching things go, watching things come, stealing our intellectual property," Hardy said during a question and answer session on July 21 ... ... https://directorsseries.net/2016/02/11/stanley-kubricks-dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-1964/ Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO ... Feb 11, 2016 ... the Communists are out to steal our “precious bodily fluids” and will most certainly gain supremacy through them ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-roBPhD-G3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKR32ImWYzw https://youtu.be/1gXY3kuDvSU ... http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/military/family-rejects-air-forces-52-million-bid-land-near-area-51 ... the family has decided to decline the final offer that the Air Force made ... the Air Force has threatened to take control of their property through eminent domain on Sept. 10 if the family doesn't accept the offer. ... [the family] said their stake in the combined 400 acres of property and unpatented mining claims is worth considerably more, not counting the reparations they say they are owed by the Air Force and Department of Energy for "abuses and atrocities" that date back to the early 1950s. That's when they said their ore processing mill was fire-bombed by a military jet ... Most recently, when some family members visited the property in the restricted area 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — as the Air Force has allowed them to do about once a month — guards held them at gunpoint, including a 7-year-old girl who was "traumatized" by the show of force, Danny Sheahan said. "It seems like machine guns solve anything on the property out there. That's not the American way," he said. A Nellis Air Force Base spokesman said in an email Monday that the Air Force "is unaware of any evidence to support this claim." ... For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.0catch.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/FaradayF-pays-200k-just-bid-for-abandoned-Vallejo-CA-navy-base-USAFB-spy-cn-tp4683370.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
