How US is Losing the Plug-in Race (Part 1 of 2) - Washington Giving Japan Technology Developed with US Taxpayer $
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
“At the moment, GM is ahead of the Japanese on plug-in hybrids because it is the only company with a production date,” Felix Kramer, one of America’s foremost advocates of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), last week told EnergyTechStocks.com.
But even though U.S. taxpayers may soon have to pay for a car industry bailout in part to keep General Motors in the plug-in race, Washington recently licensed to a Japanese firm a technology that is expected to enhance both the performance and safety of the lithium-ion batteries that will go into PHEVs.
“It probably took a lot of (taxpayer) money” to develop this key technology, Michael Millikin, head of the authoritative web site Green Car Congress, told EnergyTechStocks.com.
So why give it to the enemy?
“That’s what we do,” Millikin said with a wry laugh.
The technology in question was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. It utilizes a composite of nickel, manganese and cobalt that Argonne has patented.
Last March, Argonne reportedly gave a free transfer of its patented technology (called lithiated nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide, or high-capacity NMC) to Toda Kyogo Corp. of Japan. According to a Toda Kyogo official, high-capacity NMC “are the materials of the future,” materials that “will solve many of the performance issues we see today in lithium-ion batteries.”
Why did a U.S. government laboratory decide to transfer a valuable patent to a foreign firm when strategic interests would seem to dictate keeping it at home? Based on what an Argonne official said at the time, it would appear that U.S. energy officials have no idea of the global race the U.S. is in – a race it already is losing – for dominance of the coming generation of environmentally-friendly cars and trucks.
How else to explain this Argonne official’s statement: “Our agreement with Toda Kogyo is an important step toward bringing to market key advanced lithium-ion battery technologies that are being developed at Argonne with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.”
The more that U.S.-developed PHEV technology is licensed to foreign firms, the more likely it is that foreign – not American – workers will build plug-in vehicles and the batteries that go in them, dashing President-elect Obama’s goal of creating millions of new “green” jobs.
Such ill-advised technology transfers are only one reason Americans should fear they are about to lose the plug-in race, as we’ll see tomorrow in Part 2 of this Special Report.
