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Stimulus Could Kickstart US Battery Industry
Al sends along a Technology Review piece that begins "Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries. Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the US in the past few years; but advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia."
My understanding is that battery manufacturing pollutes the environment, and other countries have fewer environmental regulations, making it easier to do whatever you want. Realistically, think about it......do you want a battery manufacturer in your back yard? It may sound selfish, but I really don't. Maybe it would be ok, though.....
Qxe4
Tax the crap outta sweatshopper companies: Nike, Dell... reward companies that keep jobs here!
It's really positive to see things like this coming out of the stimulus package. Yeah there's some serious question as to how well its going to do getting us out of this recession, but that being said, it does have some nice provisions in it for science related improvements, including a nice sized boost to NASA. Long term this is the sort of investment that will help keep our economy moving and on the forefront of innovation.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I find this ironic as I got laid off from a battery company. Too late for me I guess...
Every time I read "grant", "advanced research", and "tax incentive", I see "gift", "white elephant", and "sleaze".
Yes, it's good to spend collective funds on roads, bridges, art, maybe even public fiber, insurance, and banking. But anything the market can do, it should. And I mean a free market, not that fake crony capitalism championed by Bush. In a free market, with proper authority to stop the powerful from escaping the rules, every company is free to compete without barriers. Every subsidy, cheap loan, and grant is a distortion of that market unless it goes to areas that cannot make a profit.
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I don't want another battery, I want something completely new. I hope that the text of the bill doesn't actually use the words "battery" or even "electro-chemical".
I would so much rather a ultra-capacitor or some similar storage device that could conceivably be free of rare metals, and have extremely fast charge times (were the current available)
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
But nobody will be able to afford to buy them when they're ready.
Stimulus Could Kickstart US Battery Industry...
The stimulus *could* do this or that or else...
I am tired of that kind of language. Can someone tell us what the stimulus *will* actually do? Could this or that or else does not say much at all.
is this really the most important part of the stimulus in relation to tech, R+D, and similar things, how about a break down of all the ways it's going to affect anything that is 'stuff that matters' to nerds. I dont mean this as a troll, i would genuinely like to see a full list, new age batteries sound good, but cant be the only thing.
Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced briberies for congressmen and senators and for siphoning off money from government pork to enable the widespread use of luxury homes and lifestyles by politicians. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced bribery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for earmarks and kickbacks, which could help create a market for these briberies. Significant advances in bribery techniques, including the development of new fully off-shored briberies, have been made by corporate legal departments in the past few years. Advanced bribery manufacturing is primarily at the state and federal level, particularly in Washington D.C., but local governments are looking forward to far greater participation.
See this previous story regarding the initial request for funds.
-t.
- Stimulus Could Give Battery Industry A Jolt
- Stimulus Gives Battery Industry a Jump Start
- Stimulus Gives the Battery Industry A Gift That Keeps Going and Going and Going...
- Battery Industry Charged Over Stimulus
Sorry, you can't have it. There's always going to be some set of people that don't want to live up to the same environmental standards as you. Some people might not care about a 1-million chance of getting cancer, but you might. What right do you have to hold them back, in a Democracy?
I say, keep the asians out, but let each state do its own thing. I would add though, as an aside, if a state is blocking economic development due to environmental laws, and have to come crawling to the feds for a loan (say California), then maybe they should quit trying to enjoy nature on everyone else's dime and do some work for a change.
We can only borrow so much government cheese money (stimulus) from the Chinese.
This is my sig.
and i want jessica biel in my bed
in the meantime, reality unfortunately dictates you are stuck with batteries, the bus stop, and an empty bed
of course batteries suck. it is not good enough for you to want something better than what we all realize is an awful compromise
so stop stating the braindead obvious and go out and go out and make what you want real. you will find out what we all have found out already: current technology makes it incrediby difficult to do better than heavy weak slowly charging nasty batteries
your capacitors and flywheels, for instance: not as stable as batteries
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a cell, unless you've got more than one in series, in which case it becomes a battery.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
This stimulus won't jumpstart anything. Batteries are made in Asia because the US environmental laws make it economically impossible to do it in the US. This sitmulus will do a nice job of stimulating jobs in China.
If the stimulus bill were to wave the environmental laws, then it would do some good.
those companies once had millions to develop new battery tech and nothing came of it. Ovonics goes and invents the NiMH, partners with GM and sells a majority stake in the patent and then GM sells that to the oil industry who won't let anyone make large NiMH for electric vehicles. Leave the US auto industry out of this battery industry and maybe something will happen and it'll get a chance to be used in the next-gen autos.
Remember, the EV1 got over 140 miles per charge on the NiMH batteries in the late 90s or very early 2001 period. GM is hardly getting 40 miles per charge of expensive lithium batteries today and nobody is using NiMH for mostly electric or all electric vehicles. It's not because the tech can't handle it. Ask any of the few Rav 4 EV owners out there.
If the US auto industry is tied into this, I give it less than a 50% chance of working out to anything viable.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Some kinds of research have the problem that they require rather large, long-term bets. The only private-sector businesses that can sustain that are very large ones that can average across even large projects, and very large businesses tend to be managed by revolving doors of managers optimizing for stock price (often short-term, medium-term at best; not 30-year horizons). Smaller businesses tend to have managers in it for the long haul, who do what they think is good for their business rather than their career, but smaller businesses have a cap on what size projects they can take on--- despite Boeing being almost certainly crappily managed, there's a reason no startup developed a competitor to the 787.
I'm not sure that's even possible, though. A very large business optimizing for long-term performance, over multiple very large projects, managing thousands of people, is sort of becoming a quasi-government. The only times I can recall it actually working out are times when it more or less *was* a quasi-government, like the golden era of Bell Labs during AT&T's monopoly period.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
wisdom should be rewarded.
a shitty economy to get the US-origin auto mfr's to get "charged up" over the battery issue. And, well-educated and wiser people tell us "an ounce of prevention is worth (more than) a pound of cure" and being penny-wise can make us pound foolish.
Now (according to news i heard this am), one of the big 3 US-origin automakers is so deep in trouble that the management offers to let the unions manage employee benefits is pointless because there isn't enough money for either of them to properly manage things now.
But, to me, it seems these auto companies (most if not all of them globally) operated as if the economy would chugg along without a hitch. At least Toyota smartly gambled and seems to have fared well on the plunge into battery technology despite the naysayers. I suspect Ford got in to avoid being too much of a Johnny-come-lately, and probably wisely realized Toyota HAD to have some insight most US-origin auto makers reluctantly/grudgingly accepted.
And, it seems once again, ecological/environmentally-minded (despite the issues surrounding battery disposal, energy conversion value, etc.) Californians seem to have led the way toward the perceived or real value of using/buying hybrids. Hell, i dare say that if the US-origin and US-based automakers find a way to cut the amount of gas needed without getting greedy and jacking up the cost of car acquisition for consumers, they would AT LEAST not have to shut down so many plants. Hybridize the cars, make the batteries replaceable, and don't obsolete the cars for the sake of forcing new sales.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
a few years ago I bought a currie electric scooter, just for fun. it gets about 10-15 mi range before it runs out.
the idea I would LOVE to see is where there are frequent stops (like gas stations) where you can swap your drained batt for a freshly charged one. they have that idea for propane tanks at supermarkets - you don't have to WAIT to have yours filled; you simply swap your empty for a full one.
why can't the same thing be done for short-distance pure electric vehicles? the issue with these vehicles is distance on a single charge and if you can make the batts swappable (easily and safely) then you have removed the distance limitation.
its a huge infrastructure to implement, but at some point, we NEED to rethink our whole energy plan. this could be one way.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
As an R&D type who has spent way too much time in the business world I can tell you that Obama, despite having thrown gargantuan amounts of money at this, is going to have a hard time making it stick.
Western business has a sickness which one might call "middle man disease". For every $1 put into battery factories, 90c will go on financiers, accountants, marketers, "business development" and whatever else the middle men of today choose to call themselves.
It is folklore that in certain parts of the world nothing gets done without bribing the right people. We have the same thing in the West except its a legalised, lobby-driven, slick form of bribing.
For example in my native UK whenever the govt has some new "initiative" its remarkable how the same usual self-promoting suspects are quick to get around the trough. Despite inventing nothing (and contributing very little) this is where the vast majority if the funding gets creamed off. When the oxbridge/city/public school set have had their fill what little is left is passed on to their mates the next stratum down.
And so on and so forth. On and on, down and down until the likes of you and me see a pitiful salary and a budget so tight nothing of value can be done and under terms and conditions so punishing (think: ownership of arising intellectual property) that nobody in their right mind would even think of getting out of bed to do it.
Its a systemic sickness and Obama needs to get a clue real quick that between his lofty goals and the poeple doing the actual work lurk the layers upon layers of talentless parasites that got us here in the first place.
It makes me mad that ANOTHER generation is lost to the same ivy-league/power/money/military-industrial complex.
400 million for climate research? OK, another 450 for the manned space program (drop in a bucket) but their funds that were going to fix the place got butchered? (50m instead of the 250m they needed)
So out of 789 BILLION NASA gets 1 Billion and that is OK? So, that puts NASA up to 18 billion? Well, who got more?
So, lets see where did the rest go? The bulk of the 20 billion or so is for the NIH to establish a National Health Registry. Actually the figure is about 19 billion of what is allocated to "sciences" for this purpose alone. That is not about advancing science but advancing government. So we will spend more to establish bigger government control over our privacy and choice instead of funding science?
Science, the only real science is where the bill was signed.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No, Batteries will not jump start the economy. Why? It is still cheaper in the eyes of the moneymen to send the R&D to India or some other country. In effect, the stimulus funds will end up benefitting a third world economy. I would only jump for joy over this if there was legislation to ensure that jobs would be created here in the US and that all R&D and manufacturing happens here. I really, really do not want our funds being used to help the Indian or Chinese economy.
Almost all of the stimulus is earmarked for other countries, mostly China.
It will not stimulate any American jobs.
The reason for this is because we do not make anything here. Even the research will not bring sustaining jobs, because once the research is done it will be owned and manufactured by the Chinese.
Lets face it. The USA is done.
I think the best we can do is figure out how to reconstitute the government and how are we going to get rid of all these corrupt people running the country now in a peaceful manner.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
So the American taxpayer is going to take it in the shorts (and the wallet), just so an industry that produces many toxic products (not all, but many) can build more poisonous stuff to support an electric auto infrastructure that doesn't actually exist yet, but we have to pay for it anyway. Meanwhile, trillions of barrels of crude sit under US-controlled ground, where we have the ability to extract it quickly and cleanly (and without taking money out of my wallet!). But we can't get it out because the US environmental lobby is so hopped up about man-made global warming, sorry, climate change and their idea that Big Oil is to blame that they can't (or don't want to) understand that we have absolutely no ability to change the weather patterns in a small region, let alone the whole frickin' planet, and that it's the sun that causes weather and climate changes. Thanks, Holy Obama, for giving us the Change that our great-grandchildren are going to pay for.
"Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here."
Would it really have killed them to use the word "jumpstart" instead of "kickstart" in the title? :)
For bringing back general manufacturing esp. electronics.
as vat on all pollution will. In particular, the cap/trade will only work on single point emissions, rather than distributed emissions. So, what is needed is for countries to do a time incremental VAT that is tied to pollution including CO2. IOW, every region is assigned a value based on their energy pollution as well as what is given from all their inputs (such as mining, transportation, etc). Then the tax is raised over time. If the country does not give information OR if it is found to be lying on various items, then all goods from that country are raised to maximum tax.
This approach will not only solve the global warming and pollution, but would also help level the ground (though not enough).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gosh. There is always my stalker out there, looking to piss me (and others) off.
How the hell is it flamebait? In 1999, there was a battery-powered car that be the latest Porseh or Lamborghini from zero to something like 60, over a given distance. Sure, it petered out after about a quarter mile, but the point was so show that DC motor/battery cars could be used in start/stop traffic for purposes of avoiding wasting gas in the typical jack-rabbit starts.
Now, fast forward to today, where in hindsight, we can see Toyota was NOT making a bad call for offering the Prius. Ford jumped in, probably not wanting to be upstaged by a Japanese company. Hell, after all, the USA has ballistic missile and fast attack submarines in quanties even the Russians (former Soviets) cannot sustain, and the US has gas/special fuel-guzzing NASCAR and other circuit racing (which, you know, either has a good number of foreign participants or has competing events), and has other displays of might, power, speed, and what not.
Now, why someone might take umbrage to my preceding post boggles MY mind. Yeh, it might have PISSED OFF someone incapable of handling the truth. Sure, i get irritated at being marked troll and flamebait, but increasingly, the stalker i have out there is less of an annoyance compared to the crappy slashcode that doesn't reign in troll-markers/flamebait-markers, and doesn't rally others to come in and weight in on a stalker, and code which doesn't show the mod history of a post, but instead shows the final/latest score, which only exacerbates the "follow-the-herd" mentality.
Pathetic.
Anyway, even if a few things in my post are offensive to the stalker, s/he could have taken solace or comfort in the possibility that the stimulus package might help the ailing US-origin auto manufactures not shut down all number of plants. Or, maybe my stalker simply hates that i won't say "US automakers" and "foreign automakers". Hell, when Honda number of years ago surpassed the Ford Taurus in non-fleet sales (after all, Ford, it is easily arguable, CHEATED by using FLEET SALES & LEASING NUMBERS (cars sold to law enforcement, social services, taxi cab companies, or leased to rental companies and the like, which would severely skew numbers and make Ford look better than it was) to dupe the US public when it couldn't match Honda quality for a long time...), Ford and many "Merkuns" were LIVID AS HELL when we heard and saw (obviously/probably dreamt up by the Gardena/Garden Grove/Los Angeles Honda people and aided by one or more marketing companies) with:
"Honda: The number one American-Made car(/automobile)"...
The emphasis was on "American-Made" because Americans in the north -- and maybe by then Canada -- were BUILDING THE ACCORD, which finally/at one point surpassed domestic consumer-based (not FLEET-based) purchases/sales. "American-Made" threw the Big Three into a thrombosis or conniption fit, and because they sat on their asses for too long, laughing along with those who called the Honda Civic/CVCC a rice-burner, and a SoCal Surfer Car, and other disparaging names, the felt they had no competition, even despite the oil crisis of the 70s. But, Honda, Toyota, Mazda, and others (even the Europeans, paying almost 30% to 2x as much as we did/still do for auto fuel) improved on their emissions standards and fuel management better than the US' Big Three did.
Now, my stalker, (and anyone supporting my stalker by not taking him/her to task) as for the batteries, don't YOU think it would be GOOD THING for US-originated automakers to shift as fast as they can to hybridized cars in order to not idle along for too long? What is WITH you anyway. Why respond in knee-jerk fashion? Can't you accept the fact that for far too long people in the USA argued that NASA battery technology was not (easily) adaptable to the US auto market, and that once Toyota upstaged that argument, that it was a "writing on the wall moment" for the US-origin automakers.
Sheesh.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The Ovonics patent is a temporary nuisance rather than a long term problem. Because new Li-Ion batteries that are made from cheaper raw materials are about to make NiMH obsolete. These are also safer than the "classic" laptop Li-Ion batteries.
For instance LiFePO4, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery. This type of battery is already made by several vendors, so I think it is too late to get a patent on it and shut its use down. And while it is a new technology, the performance already exceeds that of NiMH. Except maybe lifetime, but A123 already claims more than 1000 charge cycles for their LiFePO4 cells.
So I think any electric car manufacturer who cannot get NiMH will eventually move to LiFePO4 or a similar new technology. Which will leave Ovonics with a worthless patent.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Oh my God! They were using RATS to fuel these cars?! Now I truly know The Secret of NIMH!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
If you tax behaviors that you want to discourage and give tax credits for behaviors that you want to encourage, then why the hell is there a $1000 tax credit in the stimulus bill for families with children who are too poor to pay any taxes to begin with? Shit, after you add up housing, food, and MedicAid entitlements for the poor, and now actual cash bribes euphemistically labeled tax credits, it hardly makes sense to bother working. Maybe we're the stupid ones, and these welfare bums have it all figured out.
Batteries are slow to recharge, and tricks are done to make it happen. In addition, they ALL have limited recharge. OTH, a capacitor has nearly unlimited lifetime, can charge (and discharge) in large amounts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, my mother invested in my growther early on because it was a log cheaper than synthesizing a living human being from stardust. Does not mean I was funded by grants, loans, and subsidies, any more than my dog taking a shit on the lawn is funded by grants today.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Check out this company: www.indypowersystems.com
Perhaps your stalker is tired OF YOU SHOUTING
To say that the asian countries should be kept out of the USA. To a nation, China, Japan, S Korea, all adopt mercantile trading policies - essentially hoarding dollars the same way 18th century Britain tried to load up on gold. At the same time, they protect their own economies from foreign imports both by encouraging a nationalistic culture that rejects foreigners and foreign things, and also through a use of tariffs. The fact of the matter is, you would be extremely hard pressed to make any reasonable argument that any asian country is interested genuinely in free trade. Go ahead, name me just one. Call me a racist all you want, but the same damn US Trade Office report on Japan's own unwillingness to buy stuff is that.
Trade with asia is like a black guy trying to get a job in the old american south. No matter how he dressed, what degree he had, he was screwed because he was black. The same thing with trade with Asia. They can complain about this feature or that feature all they want to, and then perhaps even bribe some American media whores to defend their points, but the overall thrust is that no matter what the USA makes, or Europe for that matter, there will be no significant free trade between the West and Asia. It's just not going to happen.
Free traders have been predicting a leveling of trade with asia now for 40 years, and I'm sick of waiting. Kick them the fuck out!
This is my sig.
Tens of billions of dollars to kick start an industry that might become a multibillion dollar industry. Except battery manufacturing is already almost entirely overseas. It's not clear to me that batteries are the best technology for automobiles. Synthetic fuel or hydrogen are far more likely to be domestically produced if we had cheap and plentiful electricity (*cough* nuclear *cough*).
The "American made" Hondas are actually kit cars whose primary engineering and most labor intensive components are produced in Japan. People that buy Hondas in America are still traitors, no matter how you rationalize it. The Big Three, for all their faults, created the American class, and also provided the manufacturing know how and expertise to win two world wars, and secure freedom for the world. The Japanese, well, were on the other side.
This is my sig.
and buy treasury notes to fund ballard power
don't YOU think it would be GOOD THING for US-originated automakers to shift as fast as they can to hybridized cars in order to not idle along for too long?
I'm was not aware that hybrids were particularly big sellers. In fact, people were a bit surprised that Toyota made any money at all from the Prius - let alone enough to justify development.
I don't think you deserved to be modded flamebait, but I can see why... your post is full of nationalism and straight-out incorrect information.
Chrysler, for instance, was a German company from '98 until '07 - and yet this supposedly enlightened European company pumped out the HEMI and introduced a pile of new Jeeps. Also, look up the emissions requirements for European diesels. They are less strict than in the US - thus you cannot buy most European or Japanese diesels in the US.
GM developed the all-electric EV-1 back in 1996, but it failed economically. Maybe if they stuck with it... but the fact is that they had a production electric vehicle when no one else did. And to this day, if you want to buy a full sized electric car in the US your choices are: the Chinese "Current", an electric version of the Japanese Scion xB, or the Tesla. The Tesla is an American car, and the Current and Scion conversion are both done by American companies. Nothing available from a European or Japanese automaker.
The Prius was not the first modern hybrid electric car to meet US safety standards - the Insight was. Tellingly, Honda stopped selling both that car and their hybrid Accord due to poor sales. In any event, the US introductions went: Insight (2000), Prius (2001), Escape (2004), and now a trickle of others. I'd say that economics are what is holding back hybrids - not some pigheadedness by American automakers. Why single out the Americans? Where is the European or Korean hybrid? For that matter, where is Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, etc? They are all on the same schedule as GM, who is late to the game but has more models available than most. The fact is that it is the rare driver who can justify the higher cost of a hybrid. Unless you drive a taxi, it is unlikely to pay off for you economically.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...causing starvation and riots in poorer countries that needed corn for food.
You are of course aware that historical achievements mean exactly nothing, right? The world works on the "you're only as good as your last envelope" model.
You know, that's a good point and we can apply that to free trade. What has free trade with asia done for the USA lately? Gee, I'm drawing a blank. Good reason to pull the plug on it.
This is my sig.
My understanding is there is supposed to be a new bill coming forward later for science research funding. While NASA got some nice money on this one, and some money could go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the big money for science is supposedly still forthcoming. At one point on the campaign trail Obama had said he wanted to double NIH and National Science Foundation (NSF) annual budgets (by comparison John Sidney McCain III wanted to freeze both of them).
Though as a scientist myself (and one dependent on NIH grant money) I can tell you it can't come soon enough. Grant renewal payments for FY 2009 from NIH are coming out with a 10% deduction right off the bat; they can't run their own budget into the red. Hence multi-year renewable grants that paid $200,000 last year are paying $180,000 this year. That might not sound like much money to some people, but $20,000 is a full year's salary for a graduate student in many parts of this country.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Once the grants start going out, that site will even have every last contractor, what's going to what congressional district for what projects in that district, and on and on.
And they promise you that - just like Obama promised that you'd have five days to read the bill online before he signed it. Or a bunch of other promises that didn't get met.
Looks to me like more government "picking of winners" and "handing out government money to their cronies". This suppresses any competitive technology developed (or no longer being developed) by people who have to come up with their own funding and then bring it to market in competition with the subsidized stuff.
Let the market pick the winners. It might not be the BEST technology. But it will be a GOOD one.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Since when has asking people to pay for what they use been considered flamebait?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Lest we steer ourselves into a another precarious situation like the current one with fossil fuels, perhaps it would be good to look at the issues with acquiring necessary raw materials, should the current domestic battery market expand by an order of magnitude.
Assuming many of the batteries manufactured still require cobalt, then increasing the demand of that material by 10x would almost certainly place peculiar political demands on the country that provides most of the world's cobalt: the Congo. To paraphrase a commenter on the original article, will we end up "bringing democracy" to the Congo as we just did in Iraq?
What about cadmium? NiCd Batteries already represent the majority of the world's use of cadmium. It's a by-product of zinc manufacturing, and poisonous in high concentration. Following a trend already everpresent the local auto industry, more manufactured cadmium comes from our neighbors to the North and South than from us, even tho we have the largest market of the 3 countries. To what extent would existing environmental problems with cadmium manufacture be exacerbated by the damand increasing 10x?
Finally there is nickel. The company that provides 20% of the world's supply, Norilsk Nickel, also happens to reside in one of the world's most polluted areas. How would both the local environmental damage, AND the US's relationship with Russia, be altered by a 10x increase our demand for nickel?
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2009/02/17/chrysler-takes-away-clocks-lightbulbs-decorations.aspx -- Chrysler has taken down the clocks in its headquarters to save money on batteries.
I would guess that the stimulus boosts the battery industry EXACTLY as much as Chrysler's cutbacks hurt it.
And the end of the stimulus will kickstop the US Battery Industry. There are many examples of subsidized industries that died when their subsidy went away -- and industries that remain subsidized because they lobbily heavily to keep their subsidy (cough ag subsidies cough) (cough mortgage deductibility cough).
Subsidies are fucking stupid. The stimulus is fucking stupid. A trillion dollars later, we'll have tons of jobs -- all of which depend on further borrowing, further taxation, further inflation. Or do you think the US government can spend a trillion dollars without distorting the marketplace?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Traitors?
Wow, do Americans really care that much about where their cars come from? It is simply mind boggling to me to see such strong words used about something as mundane as an automobile purchase. Not flaming here, just astonished that there's such a cultural difference that I never would have realised if not for this thread.
Quite frankly, I don't think anyone in the rest of the world thinks about, cares about, or even realizes where their cars come from. Where I live, you see roughly an even spread of Asian (mostly Japanese or Korean), European (Renault, Merc, BMW, VW) and local makes on the roads (subsidiaries of US companies like GM, but locally designed and manufactured). People decide which to buy solely on price and the products' merits. I don't think country of origin even factors in at all for 99% of people.
You have a good point about why this mentality exists though. The 'big three' US car makers certainly played a huge role in creating much of the wealth the US was built on, and distributing that in such a way that it encouraged a large middle class to develop. So given that history, I can imagine Americans hold quite a bit of affection for their car companies. Elsewhere, a car company holds no more personal attachment for people than, say, a company that manufacturers broom handles ;)
Interesting how -any- new manufacturing industry being created in America is immediately dismissed as protectionist. One could say the same thing about the Asian countries protecting their own manufacturing by devaluing yuan among other things. Apparently, only American can be accused of protectionism.
Your ability to post that comment was created by the government investing billions of dollars in technology research that didn't even have a specific end goal or product in mind, only a mission of "radical innovation".
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Milton Friedman argued that the legal framework is already in place to deal with companies polluting the environment. It all boils down to private property. Few people pollute their own land and few people care if someone pollutes his/her own land.
This *might* work more or less fine as long as wealth and land ownership are more or less distributed evenly amongst people who might have competing interests in property and markets correctly price in all forms of value.
As an example of what could happen if wealth is very unevenly distributed, you might have a small group of property holders in a given community both owning residences, which they rent, and industrial operations. What's to keep them from polluting the residences?
And if the legal system of recourse is distorted by wealth at all, the problem may not really go away even if you have a similar community where, say, 2/3rds of residences are privately owned, unless they've also got additional resources to handle the costs of coordinating a combined formidable response.
Consider also that conservation uses and environmental protection, while arguably important and even economically valuable over the long haul, may be considerably less profitable than uses that have side effects of spoiling the land. Open a preserve over hundreds or thousands of square miles and you may be able to keep it operating in keeping with its original purpose with access fees and guidelines. The same land, on the other hand, might bring millions of dollars of profits to owners willing to develop it for residence, industrial use, or mine its mineral rights. Given this equation, individuals willing to prioritize more profitable uses will naturally become more wealthy than owners who aren't... which leads to the other kind of problem I pointed out.
Markets are pretty fantastic tools, and there may yet indeed be places where we find trading of privately held assets yields benefits where we use a different model now. But it doesn't take too much thought to find real challenges to the idea that these systems always manage the depth and breadth of different interests effectively.
Tweet, tweet.
I'm perplexed. Why is there so much fuss about spending $800bn on at least vaguely useful stuff when the Iraq war has already cost you $600bn and that's not counting ongoing medical care for the 30k+ injured veterans? Serious question guys - I really didn't see people complaining about the cost of the war in the same way as they're complaining about this stimulus bill.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
People toss around words like traitor because it's all they have left. Look at this
http://seekingalpha.com/article/105061-should-we-really-bail-out-the-big-three-automakers-with-73-20-per-hour-labor
The Big 3 pay $73 bucks per hour compared to Toyota's $48. Even Toyota is paying people way above the US average for manufacturing workers ($31). Now if that extra cash bought extra productivity, it would be OK. My guess is that at Toyota, it probably does more than at the Big 3.
In which case the Big 3 have two problems. One is the management, which is famously incompetent and unable to react to trends like more fuel economy. The other is the workers who have essentially used the unions to extort far more money out of the employer than they are worth.
So you end up with with cars that are not ideal for the market and cost way to much to make competing with Toyotas which are better tuned and cheaper to build. At that point, you're pretty much guaranteed to hear things like traitor from the Big 3 unions and the politicians they own. Oh and a request for a bailout.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Do you have any clue how much toxic debt there is circulating out there?
There is far, far more debt than there is money. It can't be paid off. It's pretty clear that the US can't even pay the interest any more.
You can approximate the percentage of people and businesses who may go bust by the credit/debt ratio. Once many of their debts have been written off and the ratio falls, the economy will be ok again for a few years until the debt grows out of hand again. (maybe the system will have been reformed by then, who knows).
Approximate numbers (not quite up to date, but ballpark, they should be worse by now)
US total debt is around 47 trillion dollars. That's national, business, personal.
US total money is around 11 trillion dollars. (M3)
The ratio then is around 4:1
As each dollar of credit pays off one dollar of debt, it vanishes. So you see, any attempt to pay off the debt using credit is completely futile. What America has been doing for the last 40 years is create new credit and debt to pay off the interest on the debt. (Gotta love these Ponzi schemes.) That's what all the "growth" bullshit has been about.
However that assumes that there is someone out there willing and able to take on that new debt. It used to be China, Japan and the UK as the primary holders. The UK is in an identical position to the US. Japan's economy just dropped 12%, so that pretty much leaves China, and they have a billion people internally to take care of.
My, aren't you guys proud of yourselves?
So... I think you'll find the government under Obama beginning to print (not borrow) trillions of dollars. Or rather, the fed will buy newly issued debt with freshly printed dollars. I'm fairly sure this stimulus package will be but the second of several more even larger packages. Obama gets to go on a spending spree of epic proportions. How would you like a 20% raise? What depression? It's going to be the roaring 10s.
This has all been predicted, the system is predictable. Hell, there have been loads of books written about it, maybe you read them. No?
(http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/data.htm)
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That is.
You're imagining that there are dollars outside your system which can come in and pay your debt.
National currencies aren't like that. All the dollars and all the debt are already there inside.
The US is in this position; All it's debts are denominated in US dollars. There are 47 trillion in US debts. There are only 11 trillion US dollars.
How can you pay back the debt? No matter what you do. No matter how efficient you are, no matter how hard you work. There are still only 11 trillion dollars to pay back 47 trillion in debt. Even worse, most of those dollars (90%) are credit, so they simply vanish when they pay the principal on the debt.
The genius of the capitalist system is that it gets you busy working as hard as you can and you simply get deeper and deeper in debt.
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Don't believe me? Look at a working example, the Vectrix scooter. The drive part of the system is compact, in fact it fits in the rear wheel. No chains, no exhaust. The battery part is large, complex and expensive.
Successful batteries mean no longer wasting platinum on catalysts to clean up IC engine pollution. They mean quieter, cleaner cities. They mean much greater supply security. They mean that the Middle East ceases to be the major danger point for world security, as the US stops worrying about oil supplies.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I have been a left-leaning "greenie" since I was a teenager in the 70's. The older I get the more I'm amazed at how easily people from all sides of politics can disengage their brain and drink their particular brand of ideological kool aid with gusto.
I applaud your willingness to put science before ideological dogma and find myself in total agreement with your "ultra-right-wing capitalist" post.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yep, currently battery tech is very nasty on the env.
Stimulus cash in green tech / power creates jobs, with the goal of creating even more jobs with spin off industries. If one of those is a green power storage solution that gives jobs to people in the US, the country that funded the research via Stimulus money how can this be bad?
Lets face it. I actually trust a country like the US to develop a green tech like a friendly env battery over say a North Korea. If the US wants to spend cash to create jobs that are targeted around creating env sustainable tech then how can anyone possibly be against this?
North America spent their way out of the great depression by investing HEAVY into long term infrastructure projects. I don't see the difference here with spending on long term sustainable power technologies.
Personally I think every country on the planet should be investing HEAVY into long term sustainable infrastructure projects. My generation and my parents created this mess we are in, through just plain GREED and SELFISHNESS. It's time to support these sorts of agenda's that have true long term goals. Even if it means that in the short term life is going to suck.
Lets face it. Loose fiscal policy has done much more damage to the planet than toxic batteries. So what if one policy that has the goal of green batteries fails. Then next policy just might work. At least the motivation has you me and the rest of the plant in mind. As apposed to say sub-prime mortgages that allow people to consume ridiculous amounts of the worlds resources cause they can.
Everyone needs to support anything that will
1. create jobs,
2. encourage env sustainable tech,
3. reverse the damage WE have done.
It goes with out saying that some of these efforts are going to be flawed. Can't be as flawed as a $50,000,000,000 or a $8,000,000,000 investment scheme that the Bush style government supported.
( Sorry had a little rant there. :) Can't believe Bush was only mentioned at the end. :) )
You know it makes sense
All the major disposable battery makers (The bunny company, the copper-top company, that discount company with the 50s-scifi name) all make their disposable (eg. alkaline) batteries in the US.
And all of them import their rechargeables (the AA NiCads you use--or should be using--in your digital cameras) from Japan (mostly) or China.
Um, the western lifestyle was more affordable before those products happened. It used to be, before free trade, that a single man could work 9-5 at a steel mill, support a stay at home, a bunch of kids, pay for medical expenses out of his pocket, own his house and have two new cars and a TV, and he could send his kids to college. When he retired, he got a company pension that lasted not only until he died, but until his wife died. Since the emergence of free trade, bit by bit, that standard of living has been eroded and that's what the Democrats are just screaming about while, foolishly, Republicans keep pushing the free trade button despite all the ruin that it caused. Yes, its good on paper, free trade is, but it just doesn't work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It is completely ignorant to act as if no other factors change the economy other than free trade and it alone were responsible. You have the introduction of more and more women into the workplace, and as a two income family becomes more common, so does what they can afford, and so the price goes up. College becomes the new highschool (in both expectation and teaching quality), everyone must have a diploma so they can make more...and thus it becomes the new baseline. We are in a sue happy world where a Doctor churned out for the big $$ makes a mistake gets his pants sued off...and so need insurance against that...and that must come from somewhere. Thats a few that come to mind, and I do not claim that is all.
And for your own information, The Smoot Hawley Act enacted by Hoover (he was president just before FDR) was an anti-free trader measure, and was considered one of the largest contributing factors to the persistence of the Great Depression. Thanks for playing though.
All this talk of battery operated devices is really stimulating my package!
Everyone throws around $78/hour for the price of union labor but that number is wrong. Entry level autoworkers make $14/hour, and the most an autoworker makes is about $30/hour. Costs beyond that are due to health care and that differential is because in most foreign countries the taxpayer pays the health care, but in the USA, companies like GM subsidize everyone else's health care. Had Bush resolved health care expense issues as President, GM would most assuredly not be at the begging table. But the government screwed this up, and the government should fix it.
I find it highly amusing that so many conservatives had no problem dropping two trillion dollars and five thousand dead to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, but balk at spending a few bucks to accept responsibility for their national responsibility to create level playing field with our international competitors.
This is my sig.
Li, with the 3 electrons make pretty good batteries - but there isn't anything that is going to improve them by a factor of 100 that it would take to make them competitive with fuels.
This is NOT for your everyday driving. This is for the 1-4 a year that you drive more than 50 miles. If you do this regularly, then using this car is the wrong one. BUT, the MAJORITY of ppl do not drive that far. More important, think of MOM's. They drive their kids to schools, soccar matches, grocery, etc. That does not require hauling around a motor/generator along with all the associated weight, expenses, etc. More importantly, this approach would give battery/SuperCap tech AND service stations to come about.
Finally, I was not suggesting hauling batteries. I was suggesting hauling a gas generator combo. As to the trailer, yes, they are a pain to back up. As such, the drivers might not want to back up, or be careful in doing it. Finally, a van with a 100 mile range of batteries has MORE than enough weight and power to pull said trailer. I would expect the trailer to be less than 400 lbs, so not a big deal.
BTW, I spent 12 year hauling around boats on trailers. Most locally (under 20 miles), sometimes to a couple of hundred miles. We had a blazer (the real ones) and several different jeep wagoners. The boats were 20' 90 HP IO (heavy), while the race boat was a melges c-scow (half ton; kind of heavy). In addition, we used the scow trailer to haul rocks, lumber, etc. At other times, we used a small flat trailer that hauled 2 motorcycles.
Basically, it comes to, the issue about trailers is overblown.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
well that narrowed it down~
The money to do this is needed, I just wish it wasn't lumped into the stimulus.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh! That's bacon frying!
Pork, by any other name, is pork. Does anyone else here see a slip of logic? I find it hard to believe we have to "stimulate" - i.e., borrow - to finance an industry where, no doubt, there is already tons of research.
Batteries are one of those items where fierce competition has already yielded significant results.
When was the last time you bought a NiCad?
Thank you, someone who finally understands what is going on. People don't understand that even though its "Made in America", the profit goes out of country! We still lose jobs, I don't care what anyone says about jobs in foreign auto plants here in America, you still lose jobs, examples being, as you said the labor intensive positions as well as the brain work such as engineering. People will never learn....
This oversight is unfortunately necessary because the financial sector tends to be overoptimistic in good times (booms/bubbles) and overpessimistic in bad ones (busts/recessions/credit crunches/ depressions).
"Future money" and "current money" are subject to the same laws of supply and demand as any other good, where the price of current money (as measured in future money) is expressed in the interest rate. Central banks targeting an interest rate is exactly the same as putting a price ceiling on current money: it will cause overconsumption of current money (excessive borrowing/consumption -- look at our negative savings rate in recent years!), with the government there to make up for the shortages in supply that would normally result from a price ceiling. I expect that, as an economist, you understand the price ceiling phenomenon pretty well... and I would hope that you don't usually advocate that governments set price ceilings at below-market prices!
This overconsumption manifests itself as "overoptimism," but it is just a rational response to the prevailing interest rate. If that interest rate were the true market rate, it would be the correct response... just "optimism." Unfortunately, the rate is often pushed lower by the central bank, which means the optimism turns out to be unjustified... leading (most recently) to the internet bubble and the housing bubble.
Have you ever priced a project or investment for a company, to determine whether to undertake it or not? I have, and a crucial part of the decision is calculating the present value of the future cash flows in different scenarios. The lower the interest rate, the better a project will look when it involves a cost now for a payoff in the future. There will be fewer scenarios where it loses money. Seen from a different standpoint, the borrowed money to fund the project's upfront costs is cheaper to acquire. That's how low interest rates are linked to "optimism." When the interest rate gets lower, people's rational response is to undertake more of these projects. (These "projects" are not just by large businesses... they can also be individual investments such as buying/building a house. People definitely look at the mortgage rates when deciding whether they can buy a house or not, although they won't generally make the same type of formal calculations that a large business would.)
When the interest rate is artificially low due to a central bank price ceiling, people's rational response to that market signal is to undertake projects that would have been too risky and/or costly otherwise. Those projects eventually reveal themselves to be bad investments, often when the interest rates come back up. The project owners find themselves unable or unwilling to continue funding what is now a money-loser, and they have to do all the things that are typical of a bust: default on their loans because the project didn't pay off, lay off the people who were working on the project, and so on. Nothing about this scenario necessarily involved irrational behavior on the part of the investors... they simply used the market signals that were available. The distortion of those signals is what causes some of the effects of the boom and bust cycles.
I'm not claiming that all business cycles are caused by central banks or fiat currency, but I am definitely suggesting that they make things worse with their active "management" of interest rates, and that you can predict and explain the effects using supply and demand.
Of course there will be inflation when demand picks up, this is why there always will be inflation in a growing economy.
In general, a growing economy with a fixed money supply should see deflation, as the same nominal amount of money will be chasing a greater number of goods... at least, that's how supply and demand would work out. Can I ask why you think otherwise?
The reason why we usually see inflation over the long run is because the money suppl