John McCain, Battery Booster

This is a fantastic idea, and I wish all government R&D was handled this way.

It's estimated that the $10 million Anasari Xprize for suborbital space flight generated $100 million in R&D efforts.

Could this prize generate $3 Billion in R&D efforts into what is arguably one of the most important foundational technologies for the advancement of other up and coming technologies?

Still, I'd rather see a $100 Billion dollar prize for cold/room temperature/solid state/whatever portable fusion.

While it's important to recognize the need to have a better battery solution for our cars, wouldn't it be better to have this money set aside to develop mass transportation solutions that run on

A) A Cool grid-tied battery system
B) A light rail system that runs off the grid-tied battery system
C) A battery system that stores vast amounts of cheap energy that can be created off peak load like night time, and then fed back into the power grid or used as a back-up system for our next great black out?

Mass transportation could be great for our economy by employing millions of Americans like the rail systems did in the early part of the century - till cars came along that is.

Smaller battery's can be used in single family commuting systems like the family sedan.

I know! How about if we build trains that run only on electricity, with overhead wires that the trains will connect to continuously as they move! No gas needed!

!zap!

Oh yeah, we tried that in the early part of the 20th century, and it flopped there, too.

Carry on!

Like both our prez candidates, this idea is about as
dumb as they come.

If someone develops such a battery they will become
about as rich as Bill Gates and will have no need
of 300 million dollars.

Never ask a politician to solve a societal problem.

50 million dollars is peanuts.  Single company IPOs are more than this. Even 300 million is not nearly enough for this type of effort.  How much is spent per year on ICE engine research? Compare 50 million to a single days defence spending. The Iraq war alone costs 200 million a day. Also compare it to the 18 billion in oil subsidies that were not taken away in a time of record profits.  A single semiconductor research center in my area(Albany nanotech) has a few billion dollar budget. Any number has to be placed in context to have meaning.  10s or 100s of millions sounds like a lot to the average person but when compared with other government outlays it isn't that much.  The president's "solar America" program was similar.  It was touted publicly as a great effort. With about 150 million of founding, its better than nothing but a joke.


The funding for batteries(energy storage) should be in the billions and provided to do research and speed deployment. The free market is great at profit maximization for individual companies.   Problems that effect the whole country like climate change need government incentives and regulation. The free market then provides a optimal solution within constraints that are of benefit for the whole country. The production of suvs is a classic failure of the a pure free market.(profitable for ford but for society)  A 10 mile per gallon car produces 20000 lbs of CO2 per year while a 20 mile per gallon car produces only 10000. The technology is readily available to easily make 30 mpg cars. The economic cost of externalities like co2 need government intervention.
 
There seems to be a difference between using an x prize for things like getting video from the moon where there is no profitable market and something like a cheap battery where a huge market exists already.  X-prizes enhance motivation where it doesn't exist already but don't provide up front capital for R&D and building new factories. Why reward after the problem has been solved?   If it makes some since to have prizes like this it should only be a fraction of the effort.

Its a worth while read to go to both candidates web sites and do a line by line comparison of there energy policies. I wish they were published in the NY times or covered i n detail on TV rather than requiring individuals to seek them out.
 
The rest of my rant moves outside of the point of this article and to my opinions on funding energy research as opposed to measures that deal with the consequences. Spending money on energy research helps mitigate climate change and staves off a future resource conflict over fossil fuels.  Both of which remove systemic causes for future conflicts.  Funding wars, homeland security, and defence is like putting an ever more expensive band aid on a gangrenous wound. The fossil fuels limb needs to be lopped off. The new york times ran an article a few years back plotting defence spending, basic science spending, and energy spending over the last few decades.  Defence spending experienced exponential growth while energy research and basic science were constant or experiencing slight decline. We seem to place more resources on things we are afraid of than what seems likely to return the most benefit from a rational perspective.  45,000 people die a year in auto accidents but only a few thousand tragic deaths caused by a fringe group gets a response that cost trillions and kills a hundred thousand. Coal mining kills more people than terrorism.  The predictions for what global warming may do far exceed the suffering from past armed conflict and provides fuel for future conflicts. Why can't we put our resources to a use that is likely to return a higher standard of living and prevent future conflict.  China alone is predicted to have as many automobiles on the roads as the us by 2025. Add in growth in India and it becomes apparent a new solution is needed.
Recently we have been knocking china for increased military spending even though its a fraction of our budget, might they be doing this in reaction to the country that spends more than all others combined on military. 

To develop a diversified renewable energy supply quickly we need a huge government, consumer and business driven collaborative effort.  At our current product of consumption and population we are losing species at a rate comparable to the dinosaur mass extinction and on a collision course for future resource conflict.       

hey it would be great if more people took just the fraction of a second it takes to give ratings to more of these posts, don't you think?  thanks.

Anyone who will make advanced battery technology available to ANYONE not just OEM!!! tinajuarez

Seems to me that Tesla Motor's has already produced a car with a battery capable of competing with gas engine cars. Their website claims that the car gets 220 miles per charge and that the cost of recharging equates to less than $0.02/mile compared to $0.15-$0.20/mile with gas engines.

The folks over at Tesla should be asking McCain for some details so they can claim the prize! :-)

Two comments:  Electric trains are common in Europe.  The Milwaukee Road was a electric route between the midwest and the west coast that ran into the mid 1970's.  Electricity was stored in the system, not the engines, with trains rolling down slopes essentially pulling others up mountain passes.  No batteries involved.

Secondly, it is rare to find discussions of how/where the electricity will be generated in articles about batteries and electric vehicles.  An increased demand for electricity will largely come, in the next couple of decades, from coal strip mining and generation, agravating emmisions and global warming.  Where is the solution in that?

I would propose that we couple electric vehicles with PV or Wind generation systems.  On a residential scale that might be an electric car plugged into a PV system on the roof.  Both technologies are maturing and will be economical in the forseeable future.

I agree that a prize after the fact does little. It doesn't solve the need for R&D money. It could even interfere with cooperative efforts and knowledge exchange.

What we truly need imho is a concerted government effort to bring together the best ideas and to provide the funding to create an advanced battery. We've been doing it piecemeal, yet it is such an important goal that we need to set a goal of getting it done in five years.

DARPA has had great success with other technologies. A DARPA-like initiative should be implemented with full funding. There are enough ideas out there, but they need to come together.

First, I have seen some wonderful comments here and am quite impressed. The basis for my thoughts are centered on the premise that decentralizing our energy infrastructure (at least somewhat) could improve efficiency, security and dependability of the system as a whole. IMHO, in order to take advantage of the alternative energy options like wind, solar, etc.. we need viable storage options at both the small scale(local) level and at the large scale(regional) level. i.e. you can't charge your car at night with your solar panels. 

I think there were several really good ideas surrounding tying renewable energy infrastructure to the plugin hybrid or all electric vehicle sales, using that money to build the infrastructure to support all those vehicles. It should be based on the efficiency of the vehicle along with a minimum # of miles\year or they could purchase even more if they so choose.  I think then that those people, get a credit for electricity for the amount of KW production they pay for each month.

I don't believe as some have said that the "battery problem" has been solved yet. I think there is still a long way to go to produce a battery that can give us 300-400 miles without a recharge, like our gas tanks do now and not make a $20,000 car cost $40,000. Those of us in more rural areas sometimes just can't get to work and back on 40 miles of electricity.

I think the general research and development needs to be spurred by government subsidies. Is $300 Million enough?  Absolutely not!

If we could become completely energy independent, with cheap electricity, continued breakthroughs in battery technologies and a huge reduction in coal and oil consumption then much of the money spent on defense (and wars) could be channeled into other more useful areas.

That's just my opinion, for what it's worth.

Gary Birch  

Here's a scenario that's been bouncing around in my head for a while:

I have a large south-facing roof in the Chicago area (approx. 2800 sq. ft.).  If I fill that space with solar panels, could I not use that power to generate enough electricity to hydrolize sufficient amounts of hydrogen to feed a fuel cell to run my home, using any surplus to drive a fuel cell automobile on my 50 mile-per-day commute?  I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm having trouble coming up with numbers that could support or refute this plan, but it seems viable.  The upsides are many: My house goes off-grid, potentially selling electricity back to the local utility, 24-7 energy from the stationary fuel cell, zero emissions from a fuel-cell vehicle powered by a zero-emission energy source (post manufacture, of course), and negligible fossil fuel transportation.  Of course the downside is build-out cost, but with every rise in the price of oil and utility electricity, that cost is defrayed.

A battery-powered auto still fits nicely into this scenario, potentially recharging it off the stationary fuel cell each night. 

A new kind of battery is only a bandaid fix to a growing global problem. With peak oil capping off our ability to meet up with ever growing demand, the real problem is finding a source of energy that is self-sustaining and will never run out as long as the Earth is around. One such source is the sun, or solar, but the other untapped source is the Earth herself. It is like a gigantic rotating magnetic energy field that has all the power we could ever use or need within, just waiting for us to tap into her. Problem is, big oil, big power conglomerates don't want us to know about it because that would mean them going broke. So all of humanity suffers because corporate greed trumps doing the right thing for everyone. OK, now you can pay me for that idea, but no one will. I dare the big power companies to use thier profits to create what Nikola Tesla was going to do!