Car company says Obama team steered stimulus funds to political favorites An electric car start-up and its sister company sued the U.S. Department of Energy Thursday, claiming Secretary Steven Chu and his federal agency awarded money to politically-favored firms and strung along their firms and others in a "fixed" race for federal funds. The two lawsuits filed in federal court by the fledgling San Francisco companies echo what has become a familiar complaint since 2010 and throughout the presidential campaign: that the Obama administration's signature investment of tens of billions of dollars in the clean energy industry frequently benefited companies who were backed by the president's campaign donors and political allies. In addition to complaints of cronyism, XP Vehicles and its sister company, Limnia, said they have evidence suggesting the Department of Energy improperly shared their patented technology with competing companies who won federal funding. XP Vehicles had sought a $40 million federal loan in 2009, proposing to make a lightweight sports utility vehicle of space-age materials, and was ultimately rejected. Limnia had devised a rechargeable energy storage system that would power the car. The two firms made their complaints of unfair treatment in two separate lawsuits in Washington, in the U.S. District Court and the federal claims court. "XP and Limnia are fighting against the Department of Energy's lack of fairness in favor of politics as well as its flagrant abuse of taxpayer dollars to harm small business and benefit political cronies, " said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, a nonprofit watchdog group that helped the company file its suits. XP and Limnia are now turning to the court for the accountability the DOE failed to administer. The White House and the Department of Energy say all clean energy loan and grants were decided on the merits, and copious records turned over to Congressional investigators found no evidence of political steering of funds to benefit the president's campaign contributors. "While the Department does not comment on pending or potential litigation, multiple investigations spanning almost two years and involving millions of pages of documents show that decisions made on the Department's loan program were made solely on the merits after careful review by the Departments technical experts," said Department spokesman Damien LaVera. XP's suits centers on the $25 billion Alternative Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, a Bush-era initiative given new life by the Obama administration in early 2009 after the financial markets" collapse. The program, which is run by the Department of Energy, invited "green" car makers to compete for huge, low-interest government loans that they could use to ramp up production, inside the United States, of electric and alternative vehicles that would reduce fuel emissions. XP alleges that agency leaders repeatedly discriminated against car companies that lacked a history of large campaign contributions and political patrons, and essentially had two sets of rules: one for its favorites, and one for everyone else.