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US Corps Want $1B From Gov't For Battery Factory
tristanreid writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a consortium of 14 US technology companies will ask the Federal Government for up to $1 billion for a plant to make advanced battery technology, as a part of the broad fiscal stimulus package that Pres. Elect Obama is planning. The story quotes a report by Ralph Brodd, which suggests that while existing battery technology was developed in the US, the lead in development is now held in Asia. From the WSJ story: 'More than four dozen advanced battery factories are being built in China but none, currently, in the US.'"
Maybe Congress should take a look at why U.S. companies didn't choose to manufacture this technology domestically, and implement policy changes to fix the underlying problems. Otherwise it's just economic Whack-a-Mole.
And no, I'm not a supply-sider. I think the incentives are more complex than "high taxes drive jobs away." Maybe that's part of the answer, but only a part.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Instead we should invest that $1B into researching fundamentally new battery technologies.
Hopefully Obama realizes how many theoretical research salaries can be paid with $1B and chooses to spend the money on this kind of long-term project.
Um, say gents, you can feel free to pool your resources on your own to develop new battery technology. However, there's no need for the government to pony up my tax dollars on this endeavour, especially considering how eager you folks are to outsource jobs overseas left and right, mm-kay?
i say give it to them. it's a wise investment.
that is, of course, so long as:
we need improved/cheaper battery technology to boost the development & adoption of electric vehicles.
Yeah, but China's natural environment is, to quote Zero Wing, "on the way to destruction." If a country takes absolutely zero environmental precautions (like China is doing currently,) then that country is going to get fucked six ways from Sunday eventually.
Nature has a way of squaring any debt you might have with her.
I think a battery design firm would be a good investment with those rules. I don't think a battery factory would be a good investment under any circumstances. What's the advantage to building them in the U.S.? It's not like it will create more than a dozen jobs---those sorts of plants are all pretty much automated anyway.
Besides, most manufacturers build their products in Asia, so a component plant in the U.S. is likely to have a hard time selling any products, particularly given China's stiff import restrictions.... You'd have to make the products a lot cheaper than they can be made in China, which seems dubious at best. Otherwise, no manufacturer in their right minds would go through all the hassle and expense of buying batteries from an American plant, shipping them to China to be assembled into a product, then shipping them back to the U.S. for consumption....
See why this is a silly idea?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yes but the people in charge today will be dead when nature/Gaia/God-Almighty/FSM decides to smite them for abusive assholes.
It's their children—and quite possibly ours—that are getting shafted by it.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
If so... no battery stimulus for you. And BTW.. they can fuck off and die.
How do you plan on changing the cost of living so you can pay workers $1/hour?
There are a lot of people who could be working for the betterment of humanity on research. Because there is no profit in research(unless you make a breakthrough), it is basically a field where you can't support yourself. Research is something that could be funded by the government like public roads.
God spoke to me.
What's the advantage to building them in the U.S.?
Comes time to build electric (or hybrid) replacements for Humvees and the like, (as well as various robotic systems), you really don't want to be beholden to other countries for your battery supply. (Even if the manufacturing company is an ally, you have to worry about supply-line disruption.)
For that reason alone (and there are others), this is worth some government up-front money.
-- Alastair
China is for a large part a kind of capitalism gone wild, uncontrolled and unregulated. Corporations there build factories without looking at how their workers fare, without looking at the environment, without looking at anything else than profits.
If you want to work for $1/h or less while living on the streets and travelling all over the land looking for work, without any health insurance or any protection against work-related accidents (lost a hand? You're fired!), look to China and its capitalism.
And that nothing will ever be made, ever again.
Paging Captain Obvious! People ingest lithium when they want to feel better!
Sigh. So much misguided thinking to correct, so few mod points.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
When you drink a 64 oz glass of your own urine each day, spend an hour each day in a room filled with nothing but your exhalations and flatulations, and have your feces sprinkled over your food, then you can make the demand you made in your original post. Until then, you're totally unreasonable. Any useful process creates waste, and the process of "cleaning up" that waste is both unlikely to make that waste actually consumable, and generates waste of its own.
it's pretty simple:
if you institute environmental regulations that force each company to minimize their environmental impact--using scrubbers, wastewater treatment, dust collection, etc.--then the cost of producing the product (material costs, manufacturing costs, and environmental costs) will all be paid for by the manufacturer and product consumers.
but if you don't employ any such regulations, then most industrial corporations will simply ignore their environmental responsibilities to save money. and in this situation the environmental cost of producing the product is being paid for by everyone in terms of the environmental degradation caused by the industrial pollution.