McCain Offers $300 Million for Battery

[FL_Prius_Driver]

Originally Posted by joe1347

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.

While the government has been working on CAFE standards, they have directed all the big bucks research money to Fuel Cells, not batteries. California has done much better, they insisted on zero pollution vehicles, not a specific techology to get there. Yes, research is needed, but the government invarible sends all the major research money to very big corporations (GM, Boeing, Lockheed, etc.), not companies like Tesla, (who have a production electric vehicle with no significant government funding).

Originally Posted by joe1347

For another line of thinking, why not look outside the USA for relevant examples....

I agree with that. Germany and solar for example. But Asia has picked a lot of losers. All attempts to displace Intel have failed, and all efforts to make the biggest supercomputer have not yielded much cash flow.

Originally Posted by joe1347

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.

I "overagree" with that. I want to minimize the PHEV phase and go to total electric ASAP.

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

The wisdom was learned based on a huge number of examples. I only provided a few. There have definitely been some good government choices, but the total scorecard is rather clear. I support government funding, but the government making the engineering decision of what technologies get funded and what technologies get ignored, and what big company gets the big money often are often staggeringly poor.

Originally Posted by chogan2

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......

Yes.

Originally Posted by chogan2

......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).

Yes, but the first drop is the most important. I do not know how influential the first Prius Tax Credits are, but it is clear now, than this credit is not needed to make the Prius a best seller(...and we are well beyound the first drop stage.) 60,000 Hymotion owners saving big bucks on gas will spread the wisdom of this path far and wide.

Originally Posted by chogan2

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 -- ....

Yes.

Originally Posted by chogan2

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.

It should be clear that I support government funding. It's that history has shown successes and failures in how this funding is executed. Unfortunately, too many ignore history completely to expound on something that sounds good (tax holiday) but wastes money.

Thanks to all who bring good comments to an important subject.