Taxpayers footing the bill for next generation of electric car batteries

Fox News ^ | December 5, 2012 | John Brandon

[jazusamo]

Whether you like it or not, you are an investor in the electric vehicle (EV) battery of tomorrow.

Late last week, the Department of Energy announced plans to spend $120 million to establish a major battery research center at the Argonne National Lab outside of Chicago. The stated goal: to create a new “Manhattan Project” that will develop an EV battery in the next five years that lasts five times as long and costs one-fifth as much as current EV batteries.

And they say it’s all in the interest of national security.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) will become a think tank for multiple government entities like the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, in addition to private companies like Dow Chemical and Johnson Controls. Even General Motors is an affiliate – and likely future licensee of the technology.

“The taxpayer is an investor, so what can we do that pays the investor back? The answer is security – to do our best to use energy inside the boundaries on our soil,” says Jeff Chamberlain, the deputy for development and demonstration at JCESR. Chamberlain says the U.S. imports a billion gallons of oil per day. But if even 5 percent of drivers switched to EVs, that could mean $100 billion in battery purchases that would be powered largely by domestically produced energy.

~snip~

“This is the definition of a money hole,” says Rob Enderle, an analyst who has studied battery innovations. “They aren't going to the Moon, they are just making something that exists better and setting goals that can't be achieved in a reasonable time.”

[Tucker39]

The instant I saw Chicago is the site for the “research” I knew that a max of $20 million would ever make it to the project, and most of that will be pizzed away on meaningless pipedream silliness. The $100 million will find it’s way to numerous Illinois politicians; and I’d bet dollars to doggie-doo that a good slug of it finds its way into some offshore account designated to BHO.....as did tons of $$$ of porkulu$ and Tarp and other sources. You don’t think the $40+ million for his new pad in Hawaii fell out of the sky.....or, for that matter, that it came out of his own pocket, do you? These are bigtime, teflon-coated wheeler dealers we’re talking about!

[dalebert]

yup and who will pay for the dump clean up?