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Monday, June 16, 2008

Only $30 million for our energy future?

The U.S. spends $30 billion a month on oil imports, but only ponied up $30 million (with an 'm') to research plug-in hybrid cars, our best chance to reduce our reliance on oil.

Hmm. Nothing to do but count the days.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We got in this mess by leaving it up to the market to figure it out. The wisdom of that policy may be argued, but now that we are here it seems the market will get us out of it.

Surely the automakers can read the writing on the wall. There is money to be made in alternatives to oil.

According to the linked article "$30 million", the research money is intended to make plug-in hybrids viable by 2016. However, notes the article, this is an interesting target considering that "GM and some of its competitors plan to have plug-in electrics on the road by 2010."

Is that really an argument that we should be giving them more money?

jff said...

There's still plenty of research to be done on improvements in battery life, weight, efficiency, charge cycles, charge times, and all-electric vehicles. I'd say that's reason enough to invest more in plug-in basic research. Especially since supply/demand fundamentals for oil suggest that we've yet to explore how much liquid fuel will cost.