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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
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.
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.
Can someone tell us what the stimulus *will* actually do?
It *will* increase the deficit.
Other than that, the jury is still out.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
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.
- 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
So other than racism do you have any comment you wanted to make?
The reality is dumping in China or in California will impact everyone. Do you know where rivers end up going? We can and should set standards on environmental cleanliness. Then to ensure that our companies are not at a disadvantage all products imported to this nation must be produced in a way that meets those standards or its cost should be increased via tariffs to prevent abuse of the commons.
The reality is dumping has a cost, but it is externalized. A tariff would merely internalize this cost.
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
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.
There are only three ways to finance a deficit: taxes, debt, and inflation. Add this trillion dollars to Bush's trillion dollars, and the inescapable conclusion is that payment will be large, painful, and unlubed.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
If you finance with debt, and spend the money borrowed on something that makes you markedly more productive, in the end it can be far cheaper than never going into debt at all. Let's say I'm selling firewood. If I borrow to buy a chain saw and a mechanized log splitter I'm going to be able to produce 20 times the firewood in the same amount of time, with the same amount of labor. That log splitter pays for itself in the first year. Smart debt is like that.
The whole point of "capitalism" is capital - specifically borrowing it through various mechanisms so it can be employed to produce efficiencies that more-than-pay-it-back. A system without such mechanisms of debt isn't capitalist at all. Not all uses of debt work out; but when they do it's the very genius of the capitalist system.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton