Taxpayers footing the bill for next generation of electric car batteries

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Whether you like it or not, you are an investor in the electric vehicle (EV) battery of tomorrow.

Late last week, the Department of Energy announced plans to spend $120 million to establish a major battery research center at the Argonne National Lab outside of Chicago. The stated goal: to create a new “Manhattan Project” that will develop an EV battery in the next five years that lasts five times as long and costs one-fifth as much as current EV batteries.

And they say it’s all in the interest of national security.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) will become a think tank for multiple government entities like the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, in addition to private companies like Dow Chemical and Johnson Controls. Even General Motors is an affiliate – and likely future licensee of the technology.

“The taxpayer is an investor, so what can we do that pays the investor back? The answer is security – to do our best to use energy inside the boundaries on our soil,” says Jeff Chamberlain, the deputy for development and demonstration at JCESR. Chamberlain says the U.S. imports a billion gallons of oil per day. But if even 5 percent of drivers switched to EVs, that could mean $100 billion in battery purchases that would be powered largely by domestically produced energy.

“The Chevy Volt sticker price is $40,000. If we can have a battery with five times as much energy [as the one in the Volt] at even a third of the cost, then those vehicles become cost competitive with gas vehicles. If they are competitive on the lot, and they can save on costs to drive, people will buy them,” says Chamberlain.

The plug-in hybrid Volt has a battery-powered range of 38 miles, while most of the all-electric cars on sale today can go less than 100 miles per charge. Only the Tesla Model S can come close to the range of liquid fueled cars, travelling up to 265 miles between charges, but at a cost of $77,400, which is more than twice the average price of a new car today.

“Batteries have made their way into every form of our life,” adds Amy Francetic, an executive director of the Clean Energy Trust based in Chicago, a business accelerator that helps transfer government research to industry. “Any time [something] is critical to our way of life, or an advancement of industry, it should be the role of the US government. It is hard to make those advancements without the US government."

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Because they know what's best for us, so we have to pay for it...

[Geee]

Fox News:

Whether you like it or not, you are an investor in the electric vehicle (EV) battery of tomorrow.

Late last week, the Department of Energy announced plans to spend $120 million to establish a major battery research center at the Argonne National Lab outside of Chicago. The stated goal: to create a new “Manhattan Project” that will develop an EV battery in the next five years that lasts five times as long and costs one-fifth as much as current EV batteries.

And they say it’s all in the interest of national security.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) will become a think tank for multiple government entities like the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, in addition to private companies like Dow Chemical and Johnson Controls. Even General Motors is an affiliate – and likely future licensee of the technology.

“The taxpayer is an investor, so what can we do that pays the investor back? The answer is security – to do our best to use energy inside the boundaries on our soil,” says Jeff Chamberlain, the deputy for development and demonstration at JCESR. Chamberlain says the U.S. imports a billion gallons of oil per day. But if even 5 percent of drivers switched to EVs, that could mean $100 billion in battery purchases that would be powered largely by domestically produced energy.