Battery technology is still 10 years away from what they need right now. Obama seems to think that the the electric car is like the space program. But the basic science for space travel was available in 1920. So it boiled down to an engineering problem. Not so the electric car, which is why real advancement died on it about 1920.
“Obama seems to think that the the electric car is like the space program.”
No, you miss the point with their energy strategy. They know FULL WELL that pretty much all of these new technologies suck, but they serve an interim purpose.
Their ULTIMATE GOAL is to stop us from driving our own cars, they ABSOLUTELY HATE IT. So they, smartly, concluded that the only way for the public to accept such a drastic change in lifestyle is to trick them into thinking it won’t be so bad...because we have another option that’s nearly as good. So, for transportation, it’s electric cars, for coal plants that they want to shut down, it’s solar power, etc.
So the strategy buys them time, while they dismember the basic components of a society that they DESPISE.
It's always been 10 years away.
10 years or 10 000, the laws of physical chemistry don't change.
The "electric car" will NEVER exist in the sense its promoters talk about.
Battery technology is ALWAYS “10 years away” on this problem.
And oddly enough, it never seems to ever be “10 years later.”
That’s because the electro-chemical reactions in a battery can’t be made to scale like the size of gates on a wafer. Too many people keep thinking that all the strides we made in chip gate density are mirrored in other aspects of electrical engineering.
We’re not going to see any huge breakthroughs in battery power density without some huge breakthrough in physics and chemistry. The barrier to huge energy densities isn’t within the power of us EE’s to fix - it’s something that’s going to require real ground-level science research to achieve, as you indicate.
This entire scam shows the public ignorance of the difference between a scientist and an engineer. They’re not the same. The Obama administration, being staffed with a bunch of Ivy League, liberal arts academics... can’t see the difference. Which is why we’re pouring money down ratholes that need to be plugged with blue-sky research...