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.