The Obama administration is pouring a big dose of economic stimulus money, $2.4 billion, into developing and subsidizing production of next-generation plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and fully electric vehicles. Of that total, the Department of Energy (DOE) has handed out $1.5 billion in grants to US-based manufacturers to help them develop and produce the advanced batteries and other electric components that will be needed to meet the administration’s goal of putting 1 million PHEVs and EVs on the road by 2015. Most of the grants are going to manufacturers who have been lured to Michigan by tax breaks and other incentives offered by the recession-ravaged state.
But a recent report by a National Research Council (NRC) committee has cast doubt on hopes that PHEVs and EVs equipped with lithium-ion batteries could make a big dent in the US automobile market and, hence, a parallel dent in US petroleum consumption and...
