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.'"

Comments

I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Wonko the Sane]

Unless, of course, they develop Mr Fusion

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[lysergic.acid]

i say give it to them. it's a wise investment.

that is, of course, so long as:

• any battery technology developed is released into the public domain. (if you want public funding, you need to make your research results public as well.)
• there are government price controls to ensure the public isn't getting reamed on products they're subsidizing. and every 2-3 years the government and industry representatives get together to renegotiate the prices. (this is similar to how health care is run in Japan as a hybrid between privatized and socialized medicine.)
• small companies/start-ups also have access to the plant, and it's not just a handful of major corporations that are benefiting from this federal aid.

we need improved/cheaper battery technology to boost the development & adoption of electric vehicles.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[dgatwood]

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?

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Tiro]

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...

That's how a lot of US turkey is produced--shipped to Asia for processing then returned for sale. Of course the difference is that turkeys are labor intensive to process and consumers would avoid foreign-raised meat.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[gnick]

...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....

Yes, most manufacturers build their products in Asia. But this is about car batteries. The auto makers (the folks that TFA focuses on as the main consumer for next-gen batteries) aren't in China. Most vehicles bought in North America are assembled in North America. No round-trip necessary for these batteries.

You are correct about the price - American-made batteries would likely cost more than batteries made in China. Probably even after factoring in the shipping on those heavy suckers. However that would be largely due to China's lax environmental restrictions rather than labor costs (a typical culprit). So, while we'd save some money by just abandoning the battery industry and letting China take it, every time a consumer bought a "green" car, they'd be making an excessively nasty dent in the environment. (Battery production would be messy here too, but a helluva lot cleaner than in China.)

All that said, I'd really prefer to see private investors step up for factories and tax-dollars only used for public-domain research...

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Presto Vivace]

I dunno, it strikes me as shake-down financing. If it is commercial viable, they should come bleating to government.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Luthair]

How do you plan on changing the cost of living so you can pay workers $1/hour?

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Score Whore]

Easily solved.... the CEOs, boardmembers, stakeholders and major profit earners of these companies have to live adjacent to the factory. On a daily basis they have to 1) drink a nice 64 oz. glass of any waste water that may exist, 2) they have to sit for an hour in a room fill with any exhaust gases, and 3) any solid waste is ground up and sprinkled over their food.

You can bet that any byproducts will be clean or the guilty parties will receive their just rewards.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Rei]

Besides, battery technology is not the most effective way to power cars. They are too volatile, have too short a life expectancy, and produce too much nasty chemical waste (both during manufacture and disposal).

False.

1) I don't know what you mean by "volatile", but if you mean "catching fire", that's mainly just a problem for traditional li-ion. The phosphates, titanates, and stabilized spinels don't do that because they don't get lithium metal plating and the like. The worst you can say for the advanced li-ion cells is that the electrolyte is often flammable, and that if you had both a puncture and a spark (puncture alone won't cut it), you could get fire. But you know what? So is gasoline. At least the electrolyte is isolated into a bunch of small containers that would, worst case, fail individually.

2) The life expectancy notion is way off. Let's start by busting the basic premise -- that all batteries inherently have to have short lifespans. Jay Leno's early-20th century Baker Electric still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries. Decade-old RAV4EVs are still running fine on their original NiMH packs despite heavy usage. It's simply a myth that there's something inherently about being a battery that means you must have a short lifespan; it all depends on the chemistry. And getting to the advanced li-ion types being looked at -- the various olivine and spinel cathodes and titanate anodes -- they're incredibly stable. Assuming you keep the temperature in the packs from getting ridiculously hot, you're good for the lifespan of the car. A123 and Valence's LiPs, for example, are good for about 7,000 cycles at 1C before losing 20% capacity. AltairNano's titanates take tens of thousands of cycles to lose that much.

3) What nasty chemicals do you think are involved here? The worst you can say is that the titanates, like traditional li-ion, have a LiCoO2 cathode. But that's only mildly toxic. Phosphates and spinels, you can literally throw straight into the trash in some places. The worst thing in them is that the electrolyte is corrosive. Manufacture is no worse. Phosphates, for example, traditionally have their cathodes made from phosphoric acid, iron powder, and lithium carbonate, with a carbon binding from burning sugar. The anodes are just graphite. The separator is just plastic.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[russotto]

Easily solved.... the CEOs, boardmembers, stakeholders and major profit earners of these companies have to live adjacent to the factory. On a daily basis they have to 1) drink a nice 64 oz. glass of any waste water that may exist, 2) they have to sit for an hour in a room fill with any exhaust gases, and 3) any solid waste is ground up and sprinkled over their food.

You can bet that any byproducts will be clean or the guilty parties will receive their just rewards.

And that nothing will ever be made, ever again.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[DarthJohn]

What sort of "nasty substances" do you think are "involved" in, say, lithium iron phosphate cells?

um... lithium for one?

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Rei]

Lithium is not a "nasty substance", and it's not found in raw form, either in production or in the batteries, anyways (they use lithium salts, like lithium carbonate, a common red colorant in fireworks, for that). Try again.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[An Onerous Coward]

Paging Captain Obvious! People ingest lithium when they want to feel better!

Sigh. So much misguided thinking to correct, so few mod points.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[Rei]

You're just digging yourself into a deeper hole.

1. I don't just mean catching fire, but sure, let's go with that. Lithium cells don't stop burning until the contents are power. Lithium can burn through steel. Even gasoline fires won't do that. Lithium also can reignite after you put the fire out. I'm assuming Lithium because quite frankly no other battery tech has enough energy density to really be viable, last time I checked.

Lithium ion batteries contain no metallic lithium. Now, traditional li-ion batteries have a defect, where when they age significantly or are charged in sub-freezing temperatures, metallic lithium can plate out. This ruins the batteries. This effect does not happen in the advanced li-ions that are being considered for use in EVs. *There Is No Metallic Lithium In Them*.

2. Yes, lots of batteries last a long time. Let's put that in perspective. Those advanced Li Ion batteries are still only rated for a couple of decades.

That's a great point, because as you know, the average person keeps their car around for about 4,000 years. ;)

Also, the Rav4 EV had a maximum range per charge of roughly a third what is expected from a consumer vehicle, and requires five hours to charge, which is also unacceptable for most people.

Which is, of course, completely unrelated to the topic of how long batteries take to charge, but if you'd like to talk about that, that'd be golden! :) The more the range an EV has, the *longer* its battery pack lasts. Each cell goes through fewer cycles per mile travelled. As for charge times, phosphates and stabilized spinels can fully charge in 10 to 20 minutes. Titanates can fully charge pretty much as fast as you can cool them down; individual cells have been charged to 80% in under a minute, while pack charging times are more in the 5 to 10 minute range due to cooling. The titanates are capable of such fast charges and are so stable in doing so that they're being promoted for grid stabilization, where the grid feeds megawatts of power into them or pulls it out of them depending on its needs, with cycle times on the order of 5 to 10 minutes, over and over nonstop for decades.

3. Sure, it's not as nasty as some stuff, but if you're just throwing these things in the trash every few years---even every twenty years---that's a significant amount of metal salts leaching into the soil.

Lithium is not a heavy metal. It's not toxic. Heaven forbid that the average person throw away, say, LiPs, which are made from about 1kg of lithium carbonate per kilowatt hour, so ~30 kg for a ~30kWh pack, once every couple decades, when I dump that much sodium salts on my driveway every couple years. Much better is to burn a hundred kilograms of gasoline straight into the air every year, right? Mmm, I love the smell of VOCs in the morning!

Disposing of these batteries is a nothing environmental consequence. The metal in the car's frame poses more of an environmental consequence as the batteries (hey, ever looked what's in alloying agents?). The plastics in the interior probably pose more environmental consequences. So do the tires. Heck, the *single* lead-acid battery in a conventional car is probably ten times more of an environmental risk than an entire EV LiP battery pack. Or antifreeze for that matter. LiP battery disposal is simply not an issue.

I'd be concerned about the health effects if that much of these chemicals end up in our water supply.

You do realize that mineral water contains 0.05-1mg/l of lithium *already*? Lithium isn't exactly rare. And seriously, do you *really* want to try and avoid lithium? Better boycott lithium greases! Better boycott air conditioners! Better boycott glazed glasses! I could go on for days. Lithium is used all over the place.

I would also add that the biggest problem with batteries is charge time.

You have a problem with 5 to 20 minute charges every 2-3 hours of driving? Because that's *current* tech. Let alone what we'll have in five years.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[russotto]

I get it from the idea that someone that creates noxious fumes, toxic solid waste, and poisonous wastewater should clean it up before releasing it into the environment.

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.

Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars

[lysergic.acid]

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.

If the advanced technology comes from China...

[SirGarlon]

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.

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The reason US Companies didn't choose to manufacture this technology domestically is because Wall Street only cares about projects that turn a profit in 4 months. The answer? Do away with Wall Street's drag on R&D, fund it directly. Or better yet, add a 5% consumption tax on all stock transactions to fund Japanese style industry research cooperatives.

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[AKAImBatman]

The reason US Companies didn't choose to manufacture this technology domestically is because Wall Street only cares about projects that turn a profit in 4 months.

While that probably does have some effect, there are three words that come to mind when I think of battery development:

Environmental
Impact
Statement

That right there will kill any power generation or storage technology before it's even a glimmer in an scientist/engineer's eye.

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[internerdj]

Like how US workers demand to be paid something for their work? How they demand not to work in places that are deathtraps? With all the horror stories of what it is like to make clothing, I can't imagine what it would be like to work in a Chinese factory whose products contained large amounts of caustic chemicals...

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[John Whitley]

Enivonmental Impact Statement

Duh, what? Yes, requiring industry to figure out what it's going to dump on us before it does so can be a "burden". So be it. At the same time, it drives innovation into avenues that don't dump pollution on the rest of us. And as more people get into the act, "green" approaches previously not up for consideration are discovered to often yield better results (more efficient, cheaper, etc.). The more baseline work that goes into sustainable industry, the easier it gets for everyone.

Also, take a walk on the other side for a minute -- a friend visited Shanghai a few weeks ago. The air pollution was often so bad that he could barely see a block ahead from the brown haze. Quote, "my lungs feel tanned." Look also at the environmental disaster zone that are the former Soviet states. One Russian I spoke to put it this way: many people there know that excessive smoking and drinking aren't good for their health, but do it anyway out of the belief that it won't really matter because of everything else they're exposed to.

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[greg_barton]

Environmental
Impact
Statement

I'll see your three words, and raise you one:

Melamine

Re:If the advanced technology comes from China...

[Shotgun]

No, but you can imagine what it would be like to buy clothes that are made there.

The facts of the matter are that people hate pollution just enough to legislate it out of their immediate neighborhood, but not enough to pay more for the stuff they buy if they can find the same stuff cheaper. Businessmen with money to invest usually aren't stupid, else they wouldn't have money to invest. All the factories have left the US, because the produce pollutants and the labor is cheaper overseas.

Why play catch up?

[critical_point]

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.

Battery development on my tax money??

[Eggplant62]

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?

Re:Battery development on my tax money??

[dk90406]

Given the current economical environment, government aid may be needed. But *if* money are granted, they should be considered an investment, so the government (and US taxpayers, in the longer turn) should be given stocks appropriate to the investment size.

Government: do not give 1BN gifts.

Re:Battery development on my tax money??

[Smidge204]

So what you're saying is: you'd rather leave scientific development in the hands of private finance, where practically nothing will get done unless someone sees a very straightforward and profitable outcome to the research within a few year's time and the distribution can be effectively suppressed with copyright and patent laws.

Congratulations! You have just created the pharmaceuticals industry, which gave us a dozen meds for erectile dysfunction but no actual cures for important things like AIDS or cancer.

The alternative is to let the government fund science, and historically speaking the government is not afraid to spend money on purely theoretical and/or nonprofitable research. Even more so if the technology can be used for a military edge - and new battery tech is definitely something the military wants.

Electronic computers? Satellite communications? GPS? The Internet? Nuclear power? Jet powered aircraft? All born of government funded projects.

Of all the things government pisses away money on, science is the last thing I'd complain about.
=Smidge=

Re:Battery development on my tax money??

[billcopc]

I believe the GP answered with a question, ideally for you to answer.

Many of you Americans are quick to bash socialism (for reasons I do not know), even while the "American way" is crashing down and ruining your so-called lives.

Tell me, what good does it do to give money to corporations, if they don't do anything for you in return ? Pure socialism only works on a small scale (think remote islands with no outsidevisitors), it is indeed quite fragile, but applying some aspects of socialism to a handful of areas can be quite beneficial to society at large.

If there is a product or service that can benefit the great majority of people, I think it should be owned and controlled by the government (thus the people) and turned into a non-profit. I'm not sure batteries are such an essential need, maybe later... but for many other things the socialism model leads to greater efficiency and no greedy bastards skimming off the top.

If anything, recent history should have taught you that corporations will take any funding and spend it in the most irresponsible way they can think of, usually by giving their top brass lavish bonuses for "bringing in the dough". I personally don't think one person's work in a management position can impact society in a way that justifies multi-million dollar bonuses, but I'm one of those goddamned socialists! What the hell do I know, right ?

Re:Battery development on my tax money??

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... Sorry to refuse to be the whipping boy here, but I'm a Pharma guy in a company that's put out 7 new drugs for cancer and cancer related complications in the last 5 years.

You may see lots of ads for viagra, because the drug companies market it at you, Mr. Limp Dick Consumer. For cancer drugs, however, they spend their money educating doctors about treatment options and conducting clinical trials.

Just because you're not a target of the drug company hematology/oncology media spend doesn't mean that advancements aren't being aggressively made in those areas... just that they have no interest in letting you know about them. You're not a doctor and you're not going to "ask your doctor" about a chemotherapy or targeted therapy.

The 2009 Stimulus Package

[JBG667]

... batteries not included

Environmentalism

[Archangel Michael]

I can assure you that one of the biggest reasons we don't build toxic batteries here in the US, is because of Environmental Regulations would make them prohibitively expensive. And China would steal the tech and make them cheaper, and without a care about environmental concerns.

We have effectively regulated the ability to produce anything away.

If I were a manufacturer, I wouldn't make anything in the US either. I wouldn't even consider it.

Re:Environmentalism

[sexybomber]

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.

Re:Environmentalism

[DittoBox]

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.

Re:Environment?

[L0stm4n]

Except China has a metric assload of people. They could power the plants with people used as fuel and still have more than enough for cheap labor.

Re:Environment?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Which is bigger... a metric assload or an imperial assload?

Communism

[nightfire-unique]

Can anyone quantify the difference(s) between communism, and capitalism in which the government hands out tax money, extracted at gunpoint, to various large corporations?

Is it just a question of degree (percentage points) or is there some other major difference?

Re:why isn't this socialism ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple government matrix for the politically impaired:

Who owns the resources?|Who Allocates the resources?|Government type
Private individuals     Private individuals          Capitalism
Government              Government                   Communism
Private individuals     Government                   Fascism
Government              Private individuals          Socialism

But are they US companies building in China?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

If so... no battery stimulus for you. And BTW.. they can fuck off and die.

Re:want $1bn from Govt?

[eln]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but true Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't exist in the real world, and really hasn't since we stopped bartering as cavemen. Arguably, true Laissez-faire capitalism produces an unsustainable economy, as it will tend toward the creation of monopolies which will erect barriers to entry to keep competitors out.

It's generally well understood these days that at least some government intervention is required in order to sustain a healthy economy. Now we just argue endlessly over how much government intervention and what form it should take.

Capitalism?

[sunderland56]

So:

• in China, corporations build factories to make batteries, and profit from their investment.
• in America, corporations whine and plead for the government to build factories for them.

Quick quiz: which is the capitalist country, and which is the communist one?

Re:Capitalism?

[joh]

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.

Research is woefully underfunded.

[CrazyJim1]

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.

I CAN support this use of tax dollars

[AJWM]

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.

Re:ok lets talk turkey

[Wandering Wombat]

I find it much easier to buy a 10 lb chicken from the farm down the road, where I can go and pick out the little sprinter that I want to cook up. I swear, all that running and fresh air makes them so TASTY!

Your turkeys don't get to run? Well, what do they do all day?