McCain Offers $300 Million for Battery

[MikeSF]

Originally Posted by KayakerNC

Maybe Chevron can win....but I don't think they need the money.

Yeah was going to say, does this exclude all the battery companies & technologies the oil companies have but won't release to the market?

[Bob64]

Hah. Someone should slap a yellow sticky note that says:

"Earth to McCain: We already have the technology, but we can't use it because of patent trolls".

[miscrms]

Originally Posted by stevecaz

The only battery really in the process in Lithium Ion, and thats just Ok technology.
Give me a battery with a 300-400 mile range, and a 1/2 charge time. That is an instant oil stopper. The batteries coming out around 2010 will not rapidly wean the US off oil. It will be the technology after that which I think this government "X-Prize" is geared towards.

The funds are supposed to come from stopping some of the gross total pork spending he has his eyes on to eliminate. It is still our money, but as the greatest threat to our country is foreign enemy oil dependence, this is money well spent over a bridge to nowhere or studying the mating habits of catfish. Meanwhile, Obama will not stop pork spending simply because it will hurt the feelings of Senators and Congressmen; and because he's a socialist.

This message brought to you by John McCain for President. I'm John McCain and I approve this message. LOL.

Remember in the 90s when Clinton gave the automakers $1.25B of our tax dollars to develop efficient vehicles? They all went out and developed 80mpg diesel hybrid sedans, and then did virtually nothing with them. We need incentives and investment, but $300M isn't going to magically solve any problems.

When one of the candidates proposes an all out Apollo or Manhattan Project scale national effort to end our dependence on oil I'll be impressed. We're talking about putting every brain in the DOE, DOT, NASA, EPA, DOD and whatever other acronyms they've got rattling around down there on the job. We're talking about mobilizing the civilian sector to conserve every drop of fuel possible, regulation or even state control of the oil industry, and federalization of patented technologies to end the exploitation of the American public at the expense of national security and the environment.

When that happens, let me know. In the mean time I'll be driving my Prius as efficiently as possible, and figuring out how to pay for a plugin conversion and solar array.

Rob

[joe1347]

Silly PR stunt to distract the publics attention from the hard work and difficult political decisions needed TODAY.

By difficult political decisions, I'm of course implying that the US Government needs to dramatically raise auto fuel efficiency standards starting now. 50mpg in a few years is a good start - followed by 80mpg not that many years later. Also starting now, the US Government needs to start 'creating' the engineers and scientists needed to make the technical breakthroughs by funding research at the University level. By funding, I'm also referring to the US Gov't picking up the cost of tuition and providing stipends in addition to providing funding to build and equip the best battery research labs in the world. Silly PR stunts might get press - but creating a highly skilled workforce of the best battery R&D engineers and scientists in the world along with a bold committment to raise fuel economy standards is what will get results.

[FL_Prius_Driver]

A lot of posters are providing "shoot from the hip" responses from a "shoot from the hip" proposal. It is not very hard to look at history and figure out what has worked and what has not when it comes to technological acceleration.

FAILURES:
1) Having the govenment decide what technologies to fund. Think of all the money wasted on fuel cell vehicles and H2 developments. In this particular case, why are capacitors left in the lurch...or any other energy technology that could ultimately store energy due to an unexpected breakthrough. The name of the game is non-oil based transportation, not who has the best battery at some given date.
2) England provided a prize for an accurate clock. However, it took John Harrison most of his remaining life to collect the prize long after he met all the requirements. In the meantime, he made his living making chronometers, not collecting prize money. With 300 million, the government usually requires rights to what they pay for. If a battery meets the goals stated, the company that develops it will make a lot more money keeping the rights and selling it themselves.
3) DARPA held two prizes for unmanned vehicles to navigate the desert. Nobody won the first prize (1 million). The second prize was awarded (2 million). It's not clear how the taxpayer benefitted from this competition.


SUCCESSES
1) Tax Breaks, properly legislated. The PURPA legislation ultimately resulted in the US have most of the worlds solar powered utility stations by 1991. The cancellation of these credits ended the development of CSP stations.
2) Regulations, properly legislated. The CARB was instrumental in getting vast pollution improvements to occur in vehicles. It was also instrumental in getting electric vehicles on the road....and off the road when CARB failed to perform their job.

Again, look to history for realistic answers.

[joe1347]

Originally Posted by FL_Prius_Driver

A lot of posters are providing "shoot from the hip" responses from a "shoot from the hip" proposal. It is not very hard to look at history and figure out what has worked and what has not when it comes to technological acceleration.

FAILURES:
1) Having the govenment decide what technologies to fund. Think of all the money wasted on fuel cell vehicles and H2 developments. In this particular case, why are capacitors left in the lurch...or any other energy technology that could ultimately store energy due to an unexpected breakthrough. The name of the game is non-oil based transportation, not who has the best battery at some given date.
2) England provided a prize for an accurate clock. However, it took John Harrison most of his remaining life to collect the prize long after he met all the requirements. In the meantime, he made his living making chronometers, not collecting prize money. With 300 million, the government usually requires rights to what they pay for. If a battery meets the goals stated, the company that develops it will make a lot more money keeping the rights and selling it themselves.
3) DARPA held two prizes for unmanned vehicles to navigate the desert. Nobody won the first prize (1 million). The second prize was awarded (2 million). It's not clear how the taxpayer benefitted from this competition.


SUCCESSES
1) Tax Breaks, properly legislated. The PURPA legislation ultimately resulted in the US have most of the worlds solar powered utility stations by 1991. The cancellation of these credits ended the development of CSP stations.
2) Regulations, properly legislated. The CARB was instrumental in getting vast pollution improvements to occur in vehicles. It was also instrumental in getting electric vehicles on the road....and off the road when CARB failed to perform their job.

Again, look to history for realistic answers.

You're missing one key point with regards to Government funding. Public Policy (laws) goes hand in hand with directed research. For example, if the Government doesn't dramatically raise CAFE fuel economy standards, the market for a better PHEV or EV battery developed using Gov't funding will be limited.

For another line of thinking, why not look outside the USA for relevant examples - especially given the track record of the current administration. Asian Governments have massively subsidized high-tech and guess what, almost all of the high tech jobs have gone to Asia. Nothing wrong with picking winners based on what's best for the USA instead of promoting a hidden agenda such as the Bush Admin did with Hydrogen. Namely using the hydrogen car smokescreen to quickly kill off a good technology that would have dramatically and immediately increased fuel efficiency (i.e, hybrids) and substituting it with a loser dead end technology (i.e, hydrogen cars) that had no prayer of going anywhere. Americans were (and still are) suckers to fall for it.

Unlike hydrogen, 80+ mpg Plug-in hybrids are clearly the near term future to dramatically increase fuel efficiency of the US fleet and quickly reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

[PriusSport]

With all due respect to the man, McCain's act is wearing thin. He needs to provide some real answers to real problems soon--not the same old Republican line that hasn't worked and the mainstream doesn't buy anymore.

Auto companies, by the way, don't make batteries, John. They are made by hi-tech companies who sell the batteries to car companies. Car companies make cars.

[Sufferin' Prius Envy]

Originally Posted by PriusSport

Auto companies, by the way, don't make batteries, John. They are made by hi-tech companies who sell the batteries to car companies. Car companies make cars.

Tell the whole truth!

Oil companies buy up patents on large format batteries (good for EVs) and sit on them.
Consumer Reports ignores NiMH, taken in by GM, Chevron

[clett]

Originally Posted by PriusSport

Car companies make cars.

BYD are one of the biggest and most technologically advanced lithium-ion battery manufacturers in the world.

They also produce cars (including some amazing PHEVs from next year onwards).

[chogan2]

I don't think you can decide the wisdom or lack of wisdom of subsidies based on a few examples. For example, I think at least part of the underlying technology of the internet was an outgrowth of DARPA's funding of the development of ARPANET/Milnet and TCP/IP. And Commerce still quietly funds the internet backbone. There's a nice capsule summary of that here:

06-05-98 DNS Statement of Policy

One home run makes up for a lot of strikes. Anyway, we could toss anecdotes around, but that decides nothing.

For two reasons, I'd say that if you're going to spend the money, it would be smarter to pay for the end product, via the consumer, than to pay directly for R&D.

The first reason is that I agree with Clett -- at least one battery is pretty much already there, in terms of making a convenient EV and being suitable for the harsh use a PHEV would give it. And there are a lot of promising competing formulations.

In that case, there are a lot of things wrong with funding R&D directly. One, that does nothing to get this existing product out into the field. Two, it provides competitive advantage to those who didn't already invest in the R&D. In other words, it effectively punishes the market leaders by giving the market laggards free R&D. That's unfair and in the long run its an inefficient policy (hey, let's wait and see if Uncle will pay for it.) Three, it punishes early adopters (who presumably are going to pay the capitalized cost of the R&D for what they buy) relative to the laggards (whose product prices will be lower due to the subsidized R&D).

That last one hits home here as I'm signed up for the Hymotion conversion. Not that I necessarily give a hoot about a federal handout. And I sincerely hope later adopters get a better price than I'm going to get. But it would pain me if later adopters got a better price because Uncle decided to pick up part of the tab -- but only for those who waited.

Providing consumer-level subsidies, on the other hand, would boost use of the existing, capable technologies; reward market leaders for their (sunk) R&D investments; and, at least in principle, provide incentives for private R&D investment.

But of course, consumer subsidies have two very big problems.

The first of which is consumers. Many of whom, you may or may not have noticed, are not all that smart. But you solve that with good, enforced standards as to what does and does not qualify for the incentive. Which, in the case of a highly regulated product like cars, should not be an issue.

The second of which is the cost or bang-for-the-buck angle. To put this in perspective, spending the entire $300M on subsidizing half the ludicrous cost of the Hymotion conversion would only put 60,000 PHEVs on the road. Nice, but a drop in the bucket. So while I favor the consumer approach, I acknowledge that you could plausibly get better leverage on the money by judicious direct R&D investment (per my home run comment above).

The second reason I'd favor paying for the product rather than for the process (R&D) is that you'd like this to be technology neutral. You have a well-defined outcome -- reduced petroleum use for private vehicular transport. You can even, if you wish, narrow that down to passenger cars and light trucks. And electrical. Then, if you know what you want, pay for it. Sometimes there is a need to have the government attempt to choose the optimum technology. Fighter jets, say. That is clearly not the case here -- we are talking about a retail consumer product. All the government really needs to do is set a standard. Any vehicle meeting the current standards for being a passenger car or light truck, and is pure EV, gets umpty dollars. A PHEV or PHEV conversion that is expected to displace Y% of the gas miles with electric gets Y% of umpty dollars. Or any reasonable variation of that.

Anyway, IMHO you can't say "gas tax holiday" and "EV R&D" and be taken all that seriously. So I don't see much coming out of this anyway.

EDIT: And it's also worth noting that at least some of the front-runner battery companies (and front-runner PV companies, for that matter) have already gotten significant federal grants to get up and running or to further their research. Nanosolar in particular (they of the 1GW/year PV printing press) got several large grants from DARPA, NSF, and the like as seed money. AltairNano got some funding from NSF for development of their electrodes. So it's not like Uncle isn't already a major player in this game. It has just gone on quietly and intelligently, as opposed to how campaigns are run.