The Department of Energy announced it was throwing some money at the electric car dream yesterday. They'll spend "up to $30 million in funding over three years" on three projects they hope will produce a viable electric car by 2014. Wow, that's a whole $10 million a year! The DOE is funding three projects they hope will produce an electric car that can go 40 miles on a charge, enough for 70% of daily commuters. They made the announcement at a conference on Plug-in Electric Vehicles 2008: What Role for Washington? Apparently the Energy Department decided the role was to make a token amount of funding and let other countries take the lead. The plan is to split the cost 50-50 with industry. General Motors (NYSE:GM) is going to work on a Lithium-Ion battery. Ford (NYSE:F) will work on a way to speed up mass production of electric cars. And General Electric (NYSE:GE) will try to figure out a two-battery, 40-mile system.
I'm sure everyone's working on all sorts of other projects, but this one just seems tiny, especially in context of the current oil crisis and the $40.1 billion requested Department of Transportation budget for FY2009. As cNet's Elsa Wenzel helpfully points out, Toyota (NYSE:TM), working with Matsushita Electric Industrial (NYSE:MC), thinks it can mass market an electric car by 2010.











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-13-2008 @ 5:56PM
John Palazzini said...
We are wasting billions of dollars on a war we can never win, on people who are living in the stone age, on people who don't want us there and don't want our brand of government or lifestyle. All because a few neocons had an idea that turned out to be horribly wrong. If we put all those billions into energy independence, our children wouldn't be dying and our great-great-grandchildren's money wouldn't be spent. This country is big trouble.
6-13-2008 @ 6:49PM
Mike Sanders said...
Uhhh, I think that Tesla Motors already has an electric car... The body is made by Lotus (overseas), but it doesn't look half bad. I'm going to wait until it's been out for a couple years, though, just to be safe (and to save $$$).
6-13-2008 @ 11:15PM
fincar64 said...
quantum technologys together fisker automotive has already made a car called the fisker karma. It can go 50 miles on a full charge,when the batteries lose juice it has a small gas motor that starts and carries 1 gal of gas.this small motor charges the batteries and allows the car to go an additional 400 miles! Thats 450 miles per gallon.This car is already in production,the technology is already here!! google quantum technologys can read all about it
6-14-2008 @ 12:18AM
D Russell said...
Wait... what year is this? 1990??? Haven't we already done this, before? GM spent over a billion dollars (not to what mention the other carmakers spent) developing the EV-1 -- which went up to 150 miles on a charge. THEY'VE ALREADY DONE THIS! They need to stop pretending that the technology does not exist and that they have to "start from scratch" to develop these cars.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_S-10_EV
6-14-2008 @ 8:52AM
Bob Fry said...
WHEN WILL A POLITICIAN STEP FORWARD WITH THE COURAGE TO PROPOSE A MANHATTEN-STYLE PROJECT TO DEVELOP ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES? nO MATTER, THE DEMOCRATS WOULD OPPOSE THAT, TOO.
6-14-2008 @ 7:53PM
Keith said...
"Our" government is still willing to give oil companies 17 billion (17,000 million) dollars in tax breaks over the next 10 years, and only 30 million from DOE? That 17 billion needs to be well allocated (not given away) beginning with funding development and then subsidies of the cars themselves with a priority to the highest mileage drivers getting the heaviest subsidies or grants. The government should be leasing these cars to the public so that there is a future return on the investment by the 5th or 6th year. There is no reason the government can't start being run like a business who's job is to help while making money at the same time.
6-15-2008 @ 12:15PM
Heather said...
Did we learned nothing from the 70s fuel crisis? oh wait, that's when the japanese automakers broke into the US market in a major way. Today, only one of the top 20 fuel efficient vehicles are made by a US automaker. why are we giving money to these same companies to solve the next problem? Let's give the money to the companies to already know how to build fuel efficient vehicles. oh wait, apparently lots of us are, therefore lots of US layoffs... ummm, vicious cycle...
6-15-2008 @ 10:32AM
Randy C. said...
The DOE is a bunch of big dopes! We had viable electric cars in 1997 they were driven by actors, congressmen, they were available for rent etc. In fact by 2003 over 5000 of them had been built. They were taken from loyal customers and destroyed by the greedy car makers that made them. Why, because the car makers (plus the oil companies) thought they would loose money. Now the DOE wants to spend $30 million to reinvent something that existed in 1997. What am I pay taxes for? It looks like I'm paying for idiots.
The car makers created so much confusing rhetoric that nobody realized the cars existed, they were viable, they emit 96% to 100% less pollution, and most important of all DID NOT REQUIRE ANY IMPORTED PETROLEUM. See the film "Who Killed the Electric Car" for all of the sickening details.
6-17-2008 @ 1:20AM
Hugh E Webber said...
I drove the fast and sexy GM EV1 in early 2000; I've been agitating to buy one (or the equivalent, since they've almost all been crushedby GM) ever since. I'm a member of the Electric Auto Association and maintain a guest blog (as EVolution) on EVWorld.com in order to debunk all the disinformation about electric vehicles (EVs) subsidized by the oil and auto industries.