Biden Administration Begins $3 Billion Plan for Electric Car Batteries (nytimes.com) 143
The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy "the greatest peace plan this world will ever know." Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world's processing and refining of those critical minerals.
Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to "reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain," according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.
Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States "can become a dominant force in energy storage technology" and has a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment." Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.
Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to "reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain," according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.
Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States "can become a dominant force in energy storage technology" and has a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment." Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.
Not sure why this is so controversial... (Score:5, Insightful)
A battery grant can only help things, because the world is moving this way anyways, be it the fact that only electric cars will be sold in most of the world by the end of this decade to being able to use renewables for base loads and not just peak loads. There are far worse things to spend this money on.
Hopefully some of it can go to battery research. Dr. Goodenough, the guy who invented the lithium battery has a patent on a glass battery which will go a ways to help with making batteries cheaper, uses sodium, have a better operating temperature range, and have more energy density per volume than lithium batteries. If we can get batteries with an energy density with an order of magnitude of fossil fuels, then everything can change.
No one has infinite money (Score:3, Insightful)
A battery grant can only help things,
Tell that to people who can't afford to feed families a year from now due to inflation.
You can't create more and more money out of thin air forever.
It's great to encourage more manufacturing of EV's in the U.S. but not by just helicopter dropping buckets of money on your favorite campaign donors.
Re:No one has infinite money (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no macroeconomic reason for these grants to increase inflation because government spending isn't funded by *printing* money, it's funded by *borrowing* money. That means every dollar that is injected into the economy is taken out of the economy. These grants have no effect on the money supply, although that doesn't mean they can't be a bad idea for other reasons.
The main drivers of recent inflation are (1) energy prices, (2) global increases in food prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (3) Covid-related rebound in demand, and (4) disruptions in supply chains, particularly those which are connected to China.
Few would suggest the US should become an autarky, but less dependence on Chinese supply chains might be a good thing for price stability, or just stability period. Things are looking very dicey over there.
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The main drivers of recent inflation are (1) energy prices, (2) global increases in food prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (3) Covid-related rebound in demand, and (4) disruptions in supply chains, particularly those which are connected to China.
The main driver of recent inflation is corporate profits [substack.com]. Like, half or more.
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In economics all companies will charge the price that maximizes their profit. Every company would charge more for its widgets if it *could*, except that they reach a point where increasing sales price is offset by decreasing sales volume --- the equilibrium price.
Prices rise when conditions allow companies to raise prices without losing volume -- for example when supply chain disruptions prevent the total number of widgets entering the market from increasing.
Re: No one has infinite money (Score:4, Insightful)
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Take money off a physical standard, and unchecked inflation is what you reap. This mechanic is really not that hard to grasp.
The much harder mountain to summit here is the understanding of what unbound currency inflation really means for a modern economy. If lower stature wages don't rise to compensate overall inflation, then the wage gap increases and populace animosity will increase. But, if low paying jobs also increase wages appropriately, then the status quo is maintained (or improved if wages increase
Re: No one has infinite money (Score:5, Insightful)
The world other than the US moved off the gold standard much earlier.
The problem with pinning your money to a physical, limited commodity is your economy can't grow without either spiraling deflation - which makes saving money impossible and debt absolutely fatal - or revaluing the commodity to increase money supply. However, since you can own a physical commodity, this revaluation makes anyone who owns said commodity insanely rich pretty much instantly with no effort.
For example: All the gold known to exist in the world (in an accessible way, e.g. not including gold that might be in the planet core) is today worth about US$14.6T. 244 million kilograms at ~$60,000 per. That's only half the size of the US economy, so to go back to the gold standard we'd either need to double the price of gold or cut the economy of the US in half... and that's if the US owned ALL the gold in the world. Including other things like silver or platinum or literally anything else just delays the problem.
And since a commodity standard makes anyone who owns the commodity insanely rich, it makes the "buy custom legislation in their favor" problem far worse. The only remedy for that is to outlaw private ownership of the commodity, but that doesn't really solve anything either.
This is why nobody uses the gold standard anymore, and a typically small amount of inflation is the price we pay for the ability to actually have a functional modern economy. Could things be managed better? Possibly, but at least they're manageable.
=Smidge=
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This is why nobody uses the gold standard anymore, and a typically small amount of inflation is the price we pay for the ability to actually have a functional modern economy.
You can't even have a functional economy without inflation, it discourages cash hoarding. The problem for the poor only arises when wages aren't tied to inflation.
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It's not [google.com] that simple.
Throughout the period under which the United States had a metallic standard, paper money was extensively used. A variety of bank notes circulated, even without being legal tender. Various notes issued by the Treasury also circulated without being legal tender. This use of paper money is entirely consistent with a gold standard. Much of the money used under a gold standard is not gold, but promises to pay gold. To help ensure that the paper notes theretofore issued by banks were honored, the government created the national bank system in 1863. In 1913, it created the Federal Reserve System to help ensure that checks were similarly honored. The creation of the Federal Reserve did not end the gold standard.
The gold standard ended in 1933 when the federal government halted convertibility of notes into gold and nationalized the private gold stock. The dollar was devalued in terms of its gold content, and made convertible into gold for official international transactions only. Even this quasi-gold standard became difficult to maintain in the 1960s. Over the period 1967-1973, the United States abandoned its commitment to convert dollars into gold in official transactions and stopped trying to maintain its value relative to foreign exchange. Despite several attempts to retain some link to gold, all official links of the dollar to gold were severed in 1976.
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Take money off a physical standard, and unchecked inflation is what you reap
Not necessarily. And specie-backed currency is equally as manipulatable; you can easily change the quantity of gold-backed dollars by raising the price of gold. In any case the idea that specie-backed currency is inherently more stable is easily disprovable by looking at historical inflation rates. Between 1914 and 1933, inflation ranged from -10% to +18%. In the past 20 years, inflation has run between -0.4% and 4.7%. If fiat currency were inherently more unstable we should see greater variation, not
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No, there absolutely *is* printing money without borrowing it. We just don't do that.
The way it would work is the government would tell the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to print more dollars, and then it would pay its bills with pallets of freshly minted cash -- not necessarily transferred directly to vendors mind you; usually it'd be shipped to banks and credited to the vendors' accounts.
This is the way many Americans evidently think the government pays its bills, and if it *did*, it would be as catas
That's exactly what you can do (Score:3, Interesting)
We've long since had enough food to feed everyone on the planet let alone everyone in the country. If people can't feed their families that's because of a failure of policy not economics.
The problem you're seeing with inflation is that the elites are finally flexing their muscles after decades and
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How do you think we grow the economy?
How do you think "we" grow the economy?
It's pretty simple, it's done by producing goods and services the rest of the world wants.
Trade deficits are at record highs, we are not producing anything. Printing more money is not "growing" anything, except for how many dollars it takes to buy anything.
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The cunts you are arguing with think that money is wealth.
We both know that wealth is goods and services. They dont. They wont. They refuse to know that. It interferes with their selfishness.
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You left out this part of what rsilvergun said:
We've been off the gold standard for a very long time. Money is fake. If you don't print more of it as your economy grows then your economy is artificially constrained.
(emphasis added)
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Also 96% peaceful still inflicted billions in damage but hey, don't let that stop you pal.
You're on the wrong side of the class war. [epi.org]
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You can't create more and more money out of thin air forever.
I mean that's *literally* what every single central bank does, including all the ones that don't control for inflation effectively, and all the ones that do.
But if you think this particular $3bn is the straw that's going to break the camel's back, or indeed have any discernible macroeconomic effect, you'll need to lay out your reasoning a bit more fully.
As for poor starving families: you're a GOP supporter. They couldn't give the tiniest of fucks about poor starving families, and you damn well know it.
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The causes of poverty are mostly structural. This money is providing for those people's futures, creating jobs for them.
The Democrats seem kinda useless. They aren't doing much to tackle those systemic issues. Obama at least managed to get Obamacare through. Now it looks like they have failed to codify Roe v Wade too, which will drag more people into poverty.
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And no, Roe v Wade did not reduce poverty. Just our labor pool.
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Tell that to people who can't afford to feed families a year from now due to inflation.
You do realize the inflation we're seeing now is the result of the previous administration, right? The one which handed out money like candy to those multi-billion dollar companies who didn't have six months of emergency cash on hand. The same ones know who are seeing record profits because they raised prices while at the same time saying they can't afford to give raises to their employees because it might cause inflatio
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No, but only because I am sane and pay at least the slightest bit of attention.
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You do realize the inflation we're seeing now is the result of the previous administration, right?
No, it's the result of both. Trump is responsible for more of it, partly due to the huge amount of COVID stimulus handed out and partly due to the big tax cuts, but Biden bears responsibility for the extra round of stimulus he decided to do. The infrastructure bill is another big chunk of change Biden injected, but that isn't likely to have much impact, partly because of the way the money will actually be spent over years, and partly because of what it will be spent on.
The fed could have counteracted this
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You do realize the inflation we're seeing now is the result of the previous administration, right?
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/h... [eia.gov]
I'll leave this link here so you can educate yourself. I'll also leave this link:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri... [whitehouse.gov]
which shows why that price went up when it did.
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You do realize the inflation we're seeing now is the result of the previous administration, right?
And yet, inflation was mostly flat until this admin took office...
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d have done: - Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could - Blocking oil and gas pipelines - Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions - Cutting U.S. military spending - Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran. You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Biden.
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If we can get batteries with an energy density with an order of magnitude of fossil fuels, then everything can change.
What?
They announced they are literally giving away $3.1 BN now, and are mandating through law that consumers buy cars with batteries in them in the near future.
I really wish it was either/or, not both - either give them money or give them a monopoly, not both.
Re: Not sure why this is so controversial... (Score:2)
But âoetheyâ already have both.
Corporations control policy, the parties, your elected officials, the goods you are allowed to purchase, and the duration and purposes for which you are allowed to operate them.
The remedy is unlikely to ever be applied, based on the indolence and complacence of the people.
Article: Patent mentioned in the parent comment (Score:2)
Quoting: "John Goodenough, the part winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-inventing the revolutionary lithium-ion battery has now filed a new patent for glass battery which he claims can help in overcoming the price barrier associated with EVs."
Comparison with lithium-ion batteries -- Wikipedia (Score:3)
Quotes:
"Braga and Goodenough stated they expect the battery to have an energy density many times higher than current lithium-ion batteries, as well as an operating temperature range down to -20 C (-4 F); much lower than current solid-state batteries.
"The battery's design is safer than lithium-ion batteries, as the use of a flammable liquid electrolyte is avoided."
"The battery can also be made using low-cost sodium instead of lithium."
"The authors claim the
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Sounds great. Where's the commercial prototype?
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Sounds great. Where's the commercial prototype?
They are literally working on it right now [ieee.org]. Prior prototypes had problems with the electrolyte cracking during thermal cycling but they said they think they have that problem solved. We'll see, but fingers crossed eh?
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Possibly, or they ran out of funding or it was just a bust.
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Good. Glad to see it isn't just another patent sitting in a portfolio somewhere, never to see physical implementation outside of some lab experiments.
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It is controversial because there are a lot of idiots that go deeply into fear on any "threat" of changes. These are the people that cannot even make tiny steps unless forced to.They then come up with all sorts of bogus "arguments" to not have to admit that they do not actually understand what is going on, but fear it nonetheless. I am sure we will see quite a few of these bogus claims here.
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From the article, it sounds like a lot of this money is going to subsidize recovery of lithium from existin
Re:Not sure why this is so controversial... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its controversial because Tesla is already building millions of batteries domestically, and did so with zero government grants. They did the investment on their own.
Ford, GM, and Stellantis would not need these grants, if they were not running shoddy businesses. The free market should be allowed to choose winners and losers in the EV race.
This is basically a way to funnel taxpayer money to Biden's union base. I guarantee Tesla will be excluded from these grants.
It's frankly ridiculous.
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Tesla's US battery tech was developed by Panasonic (a Japanese company). Tesla partnered with them to build the factory.
Their Chinese battery factory is also a partnership with CATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer. The batteries made in China have proven to be even better than the Panasonic ones.
It seems the government would like there to be some home-grown battery technology.
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It seems Tesla figured it out, unless there is some looming environmental review I somehow missed with their factories. Granted, the new battery factory is in Texas, so the environmental laws may be different there.
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Except that what I was replying to was about manufacturing, not mining.
I have been reading about some lithium production being worked on in the US, but this article, and this thread were not about mining.
Re: Not sure why this is so controversial... (Score:2)
It's because everyone has seen what a mess the government makes of everything. We know this is just more billions down the hole.
Handouts = massive corruption (Score:1, Flamebait)
China Biden and all of his benefactors are already shopping for new yachts.
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At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul
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> When your only news source if Tucker Carlson
Is he the only reporter who covered Tony Bobulinski? That seems unlikely. Or is this just a reflexive anti-populist, pro-corporate take?
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Why do you keep posting that at anyone who criticizes Biden? Are we not allowed to believe that he won the election if we rightly criticize his terrible policies?
It seems that you are the one bringing up Trump every time someone criticizes Biden, not many in this thread even used his name.
You can do it President Biden! I know you can! (Score:5, Funny)
Why would a predominantly working class politician (Score:1, Flamebait)
Of course the CEO of Tesla is actively lobbying against those changes in order to ensure that tax incentives go to his cars and nobody else's.
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Re:Why would a predominantly working class politic (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind of guy who wants to vote for ole Joe isn't going to have $80,000 lying around for a Tesla.
The cheapest Tesla model is $35k and will save thousands on gas over its lifetime, and the vast majority of new car purchases are financed. I get your point, kinda, but your numbers are made up.
Guys like that, guys like me we're waiting for Congress to change how the tax incentives work so that affordable electric vehicles will be made.
Guys like me are waiting for them to get cheap used. That takes only time, and conversely, only time will do the job.
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Guys like me are waiting for them to get cheap used. That takes only time, and conversely, only time will do the job.
I'm pretty sure that pumping money into the system [wikipedia.org] and increasing the supply [wikipedia.org] will decrease the price too.
And faster than just sitting by the river, waiting.
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How's about just paying workers decently so they can afford stuff? That's the only sustainable remedy to these problems.
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How's about just paying workers decently so they can afford stuff? That's the only sustainable remedy to these problems.
I'm all for that but RIGHT NOW the supply of the "stuff" is simply not there, affordable or not.
Both Tesla [thedriven.io] and Ford [caranddriver.com] have year+ waiting lists for "take my money NOW" buyers.
Supply chain has a choke point, and as long as that doesn't get cleared, prices can't go down.
And as the main topic IS governmental subsidy of US production of batteries, widening that choke point by pumping money in IS the best place to put said subsidies so the availability WILL go up and prices WILL go down.
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You can't buy a $35k Tesla, they sold it for a few months and then discontinued it. It was a compliance car, to comply with Musk's promise to release one at that price point.
There are plenty of affordable EVs with decent range on the market though. MG, Nissan, Chevrolet, Kia, Hyundai, VW, Renault, Seat, even Mini/BMW. I'm sure I forgot some.
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You can't buy a $35k Tesla, they sold it for a few months and then discontinued it.
Yes, but rsilvergun's $80k number is clearly disingenuous. The correct number (at present) is $47k, up from $45k
they sold it for a few months and then discontinued it. It was a compliance car, to comply with Musk's promise to release one at that price point.
No, they stopped selling it because hardly anyone was buying it, and it makes more sense to sell the more expensive and higher-margin vehicles until demand at the higher price point is satisfied. They should actually raise their prices again, because they still have a nine-month waiting list. There must be some reason they're not doing it, but the the sensible thing is to charge what the market w
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To buy the $35k Tesla you had to call them up, and they would heavily up-sell. It wasn't even really a $35k Tesla, it was the more expensive model with some stuff disabled in software. They really didn't want to sell you one so they made it as inconvenient as possible.
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To buy the $35k Tesla you had to call them up, and they would heavily up-sell. It wasn't even really a $35k Tesla, it was the more expensive model with some stuff disabled in software. They really didn't want to sell you one so they made it as inconvenient as possible.
Cite?
I recall going most of the way through the order process for one, and it really looked like I could just click "Order" and submit the order.
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The "$35,000" Tesla Model 3 was basically vaporware. It was a stripped-down special order that you couldn't get from Tesla's website.
Most Tesla Model 3's started around $38,000 when they were new, and they start around $45,000 now for the base model.
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And if you think the tax structure is why electric cars are expensive... Well, you'll never have a solution for anything. They are expensive because of economic realities that are unaffected by tax policy. You can't legislat
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You can't legislate resources into being.
Why not? Can't we just find some sodium that identifies as cobalt?
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> Promote the production of luxury cars is base can never hope to afford?
I mean, you can buy a 2022 Nissan LEAF for $27,400 MSRP, so depending on where you live that could be as cheap at $15K (before fees and other bullshit of course).
I mean the whole point of these kinds of plans is to help get the price down, so it's not exactly clear what the basis of your complaint is to begin with... but as others pointed out, EVs are aimed at the mid-high tier market because that's where the sales are happening. Th
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Are you saying that there are any Tesla Motors factories that are unionised?
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Just more mouth moving from Biden (Score:2, Flamebait)
Investment is not needed. Demand exists. The problem is the Federal regulations and environmental groups that prevent domestic mineral extraction. The Federal government does not need to hand out more money it does not have, it just needs to streamline the process, remove all the red tape, and tame the environmental groups that both demand more "green energy" while also putting up roadblocks to making it happen.
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$3.1 BN to folks that want to make better batteries (think Solyndra, only batteries), and $60M for recycling the batteries.
It will be interesting to discuss the political donations made by these hopeful battery manufacturers that are getting FREE money - not a loan guarantee, they are giving them grants, AKA free money.
But then again, the Former Senator from Delaware has never been in the pocket of Big Business - now his son, Hunter, that's an entirely separate thing, totally unrelated to anything his fathe
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Solyndra was a complete and total failure They got wiped out by Chinese competitors after walking off with around $535 million in public money. You want a replay of that? Only $3 billion this time around? I'm sure Biden won't mind.
Re:Just more mouth moving from Biden (Score:5, Insightful)
Solyndra was one failed company out of hundreds that got grant funding under the Energy Department loan guarantee program.
Despite the widely reported failure, the program as a whole turned out to be profitable [npr.org].
So yes, I'd like a replay of the loan program, please - even if we get another Solyndra debacle along with it. Still a net gain both financially and technologically, and it incubated entire industries.
=Smidge=
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The problem with Solyndra is that the investment in their company didn't pass the sniff test. They were beset with too many problems for it to make sense. This doesn't make it all super-corrupt like Reps like to claim, but it was still dumb and the problems were simply hand-waved away without sufficient diligence.
I'm not against technology investment, but it has to be 1) necessary and 2) useful, and looking a little more closely into Solyndra's financial situation would likely have revealed that even with e
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Solyndra had some pretty good technology at the time - their panels would have been superior if they had been able to manufacture them in high enough quantities. I guess if you bet on a lot of companies, not all will pay off, but the alternative is adding even more paperwork
Re:Just more mouth moving from Biden (Score:4, Insightful)
> The problem with Solyndra is that the investment in their company didn't pass the sniff test.
They were thoroughly vetted and past the scrutiny of two presidential administrations, had secured roughly $1B in private venture capital, and had reported a 40% growth in sales the year prior to getting the DoE loan. While no investment is ever a guarantee, at the time there was nothing to suggest Solyndra was an especially bad or risky investment either.
There are allegations that the financial claims they made were at best misleading, but the investigations did not result in criminal charges. That's only something we could have learned after the fact, though.
Nevertheless Solyndra became a lightning rod of criticism of the Obama administration and government spending in general - especially spending on alternative energy. There is a LOT of misinformation about the company and what happened out there, because it's politically advantageous to spread that misinformation.
Note that none of this has any bearing on the validity and effectiveness of the product itself; that's an entirely different matter...
=Smidge=
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Solyndra was one failed company out of hundreds that got grant funding under the Energy Department loan guarantee program.
Despite the widely reported failure, the program as a whole turned out to be profitable [npr.org].
The NPR article neglects that Solyndra has failed more than once so what happened to the $1.5 B in private equity on top of the $584 MM in tax payer guaranteed loans that disappeared into Solydra the last time they failed. What has to happen is a tariff to keep the PRC from constantly undercutting solar otherwise US tax payer guaranteed loans will continue to finance solar production in the PRC as various solar concerns move production there to avoid being clubbed to death by the PRC solar industry undercutting them. This would of course, drive up the cost of solar though.
So yes, I'd like a replay of the loan program, please - even if we get another Solyndra debacle along with it. Still a net gain both financially and technologically, and it incubated entire industries. =Smidge=
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> The NPR article neglects that Solyndra has failed more than once
That's irrelevant, though; We're talking about the loan guarantee program as a whole, not Solyndra specifically.
Solyndra by itself was a total writeoff, but the program as a whole was a moderate success.
=Smidge=
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No, kenh was talking about Solyndra specifically.
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And yet kenh specifically brought up Solyndra rather than those "hundreds" of other companies that got "grant funding under the Energy Department loan guarantee program".
Perhaps if he had brought up those "other companies" or even knew them by name, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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Well yes but also no. Their criticism was of the program as a whole, and they just used Solyndra as an example in an attempt to frame the whole thing is a scam set up by by political donors, or at least a waste of taxpayer money.
And as a counter-point, I cite that Solyndra was the exception and that the loan guarantee program was overall a success.
Read kenh's post carefully. Or just read it, 'cause I don't think you did to begin with...
=Smidge=
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I was quite aware of what he said.
Not really bright of him to single out the worst part of that grant program, hmm?
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Perhaps if he had brought up those "other companies" or even knew them by name, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Perhaps if he had anything meaningful to say, ever, there would be a point in having this conversation.
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You don't know what you are talking about and anybody bringing up Solyndra is showing their ignorance and probably their gullibility from thinking Fox was News and Putin is righteous.
Re:Just more mouth moving from Biden (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is the Federal regulations and environmental groups that prevent domestic mineral extraction.
Federal regulations and environmental groups do not prevent domestic mineral extraction, period. They only make it more expensive. But since you can't do it safely without making it more expensive, anyone complaining about that is essentially saying "fuck you all" to the whole wide world. Well, fuck you too.
There was a time when even Republicans understood that destruction of environmental resources represented a loss of value. And that time was when Nixon created the EPA. It's been a downhill ride in a log flume filled with diarrhea ever since.
I don't see how giving taxdollars to (Score:2)
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Activist, Donors and Rich Lefty Elites is going to do much in the world of batteries.
Hunter needed a new job.
start using the existing solar plants first (Score:2)
Better to first make sure enough solar power is generated.
Massive existing solar plants like
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
are not being used because they are not economical, but they do not have to be economical, they only have to generate power.
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Nonsense. The article is behind a paywall, but I assume it's not PV, but one of those old mirror/heat solar plants that appears to be a dead-end technology for now. And EVs are still a huge help even if all power is generated by natural gas. An EV powered by natural gas has vastly lower net emissions than a legacy vehicle. And a gas power plant is far less polluting than car tailpipes for non-CO2 pollutants.
So while building more solar is also something we need to do, stop using it as an excuse to avoid
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I assume it's not PV, but one of those old mirror/heat solar plants that appears to be a dead-end technology for now
Yes and no. [wikipedia.org]
It IS a concentrated solar thermal power plant.
It is NOT really dead-end tech. It's just that photovoltaic and wind are quite a bit cheaper now. [wikipedia.org] On the other hand - it keeps generating electricity during the night.
It's basically the answer to "But what about clouds/night?" followed by "But batteries bad for environment and expensive!"
It's pumped-storage but all solar and built in the desert.
Let's just remember (Score:2)
....that about 1/4 of the US budget is borrowed against assumed future growth.
So roughly speaking this "$3.1bn" largesse is at least $800 million taken out of the hands of your children, plus interest.
At a certain point, you start running out of other people's money.
Grants (Score:2)
These are grants. You can be well assured that the target is not batteries but social justice. We are going to see a lot of grants to "minority-owned" and "women-owned" "battery" businesses, and others will have to show their bona fides in Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, for which the acronym is W.O.K.E.
false (Score:2)
1) They don't wait until they exist, it no woke get out of bed in time too bad.
2) Same process is applied to everybody; however, all things being equal the minorities get chosen. Given that minorities do not get chosen even when they are slightly better, this is not really a problem.
3) The professional grifters are far more talented than most attempts to curb their success. This is why so many of the same biz win all the time despite bad history - their talent is winning gov contracts not delivering anythin
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Why would Musk be pleased?
Tesla as it stands in 2022 has basically paid off all its government loans for assistance, And is selling its cars without federal bonuses.
Their battery technology is highly vertical integrated and mostly propriety to Tesla.
Tesla will still be Tesla with or without the economic battery plan. They started the industry with limited help and support, and they don't need it now after being successful at it.
This would help out the other Auto makers, who are floundering to get EV's on t
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Who said anything about Trump, Biden is the way he is, acts the way he acts, and does what he does all on his own.
You seem a little over-defensive about Biden's win, maybe you should ask your therapist to help you explore that in the coming weeks.
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Re:Trumpfags seething endlessly (Score:5, Informative)
Not Tesla plants
Biden and Musk hate each other. When the White House hosted an EV summit last August, Tesla wasn't invited despite manufacturing more EVs than all other automakers combined.
Biden's vision is a green economy based on big government programs, and Musk is the antithesis of that. He's solving the problems with capitalism and getting filthy rich in the process.
But it's unlikely that Biden has the power to exclude Tesla from funding.
There will be UAW language in the bill
The bill has already passed. Senator Manchin refused to support the section making funding available only to unionized manufacturers, so it was removed from the final bill.
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You do know the latest EV batteries use no cobalt, right?
Re: No matter how much you suck Trumps dick.. (Score:2)
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Ah, democracy. Where our morons get to vote, just like your morons get to vote.
Ron Howard voice: He didn't.
Ron Howard voice: It wasn't.
Unfortunately we select presidents through voting, not though rally attendance. I have attended zero rallies ever, and voted in every electi