subject: Battery And Put Alternative Energy Development On A Back Burner [print this page] One hundred years from now, historians will probably date the beginning of the fall of the American Empire to 1986. That is the year President Ronald Reagan ordered Jimmy Carters solar panels torn down from the White House roof, and when Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping launched his secret 863 program to make his country a global technology leader.
Some 34 years later, the evidence that China is winning this final battle is everywhere. China dominates in windmill power, controls 97% of the worlds rare earth supplies essential for modern electronics, is plunging ahead with clean coal, and boasts the worlds most ambitious nuclear power program. It is a dominant player in high speed rail, and is making serious moves into commercial and military aviation. It is also cleaning our clock in electric cars, with more than 30 low cost, emission free models coming to the market by the end of 2011.
Our only entrant in this life or death competition is the Tesla, little more than a rich mans toy. At $100,000 per vehicle production is capped at 1,000 units a year. Its cheaper S-1 sedan isnt coming out for two more years. General Motors (GM) pitiful entrant in this sweepstakes, the Chevy Volt, only just became available in limited numbers, and wont see true mass production for at least a year. By then it will be easily overtaken by superior, cheaper technologies offered by multiple Chinese models, Japans Nissan Leaf, and a third generation Toyota plug-in Prius.
This is all far more than a race to bring commercial products to the marketplace. At stake is nothing less than the viability of our two economic systems. At the moment, Chinas state directed socialism is winning. By setting national goals, providing unlimited funding, focusing scarce resources, and letting engineers run it all, China can orchestrate assaults on technical barriers and markets that planners here can only dream about. And lets face it, economies of scale are possible in the Middle Kingdom that would be unimaginable in America.
The laissez faire, libertarian approach now in vogue in the US creates a lot of noise, but little progress. The Dotcom bust dried up substantial research and development funding for technology for a decade. A ban on government funding of stem cell research, for religious reasons, left us seriously behind in that crucial field. An administration that believed that global warming was a leftist hoax, coddled big oil, and put alternative energy development on a back burner. Never mind that the people supplying us with 2 million barrels of crude a day are trying to kill us through whatever means possible. But Americans are finally figuring out that we cant raise our standard of living selling subprime loans to each other, and that a new direction is needed.
