Fox News' Eric Bolling falsely claimed that the success of Tesla was an anomaly among Energy Department loans and that most loans were a failure. 

Bolling appeared on the April 1 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor to debate host Bill O'Reilly's claim that Tesla and other electric cars would be beneficial to the environment and American economy. During the segment, Bolling attacked the Department of Energy program that provided a loan to Tesla, claiming that, although Tesla repaid the money, most loans given out by the program were failures, invoking the solar energy company Solyndra as an example:

While Bolling and other members of the right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the DOE's Loan Guarantee Program is a failure, the truth is exactly the opposite. In congressional testimony, Jonathan Silver, the former executive director of the DOE's loan program, explained the success of the program:

While not every investment will succeed, the portfolio is in good shape. The funds represented by investments that have failed represent less than 3% of the total portfolio. This is a record the private sector would consider remarkable, but is particularly impressive for a portfolio of technologically innovative projects being built at a commercial scale for the first time anywhere.

A recent article from the National Journal quoted Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz discussing the successes of the loan guarantee program, noting that the overall loan portfolio is performing well and “has been a major success” at advancing technology:

He noted that in the main, the $30 billion loan portfolio--which includes a number of green power-generation projects and loans to automakers for green-car development--is performing well.

“Any rational view of that portfolio is that it has been a major success in doing exactly what it ... is designed to do in terms of first-movers of technologies at commercial scale,” Moniz said.