GM Asks for Government Support on Battery Development
General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, appearing on Capitol Hill, called on Congress to support advanced-battery development in the U.S., which he said lags far behind the government-supported development efforts in Japan and South Korea.
Over the past decade, Japan’s auto giants have been teaming up with its electronics companies, which have dominated global battery manufacturing for laptop computers, mobile phones and other products. Now the American auto companies are playing catch-up.
Securing an adequate supply of batteries over the next few years has become a growing concern for auto makers everywhere. The U.S. industry is leery of depending too heavily on foreign battery makers allied with Japanese auto makers, for fear those suppliers would give priority to filling the orders of their Japanese partners.
“Moving from imported oil to imported batteries” wouldn’t address the nation’s energy-security concerns, said Mark Fields, head of Ford Motor Co. operations in the Americas, speaking recently in Washington. “Bold and dramatic incentives are needed to accelerate the commercial development of high-energy power batteries right here in the U.S.”
For now, some U.S. auto makers are seeking supplies from Japanese battery makers. GM recently announced plans to buy lithium-ion batteries for 100,000 hybrids from Japan’s Hitachi Ltd., and Sanyo Electric Co. supplies batteries for Ford hybrids.
But Japanese companies continue to invest in their own facilities. Nissan and partner NEC announced in May that they will build a factory that has capacity to make 65,000 lithium-ion batteries a year by 2011, as the car maker aims to become the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles.
Unlike the U.S., Japan has made fuel efficiency a top priority for years. While Detroit has focused on highly profitable large trucks and SUVs in recent years, Japanese auto makers have continued to concentrate on smaller, fuel-sipping vehicles, including hybrids. This strategy has paid off, and left American automakers scrambling to adapt to the changing market.
Source: Wall Street Journal
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“Unlike the U.S., Japan has made fuel efficiency a top priority for years. While Detroit has focused on highly profitable large trucks and SUVs in recent years, Japanese auto makers have continued to concentrate on smaller, fuel-sipping vehicles, including hybrids. This strategy has paid off, and left American automakers scrambling to adapt to the changing market.”
Is that why Toyota and other Japanese makers have to close their new large truck/SUV plants after only getting a few years of production out of them?
I think us car company suck make hydraulic hybrids. They are cheaper than electric hybrids.
“Is that why Toyota and other Japanese makers have to close their new large truck/SUV plants after only getting a few years of production out of them?”
Yes indeed. The demand for trucks and SUVs is plummeting and the automakers are converting some manufacturing plants from assembling these large vehicles to instead manufacturing smaller cars like the Ford Focus.
Huh???!!! $25,000,000,000.00 for a battery????
You’ve got to be kidding, sounds like a sneaky way to get a bailout tucked into the deal. I think that that car had better fly for that amount of taxpayer money. Fuels cells have been around since 1870, so what’s been keeping automakers from developing something different since then? There are plenty of free enterprise resources out there that are being ignored or suppressed by special interests that have been able to hold onto to their market share. Let’s be sane and let free enterprise compete in the normal way and keep government subsidized research in fields that lack multitrillion dollar industries.
It’s disgraceful just how far behind Detroit is in some many areas of next generation vehicles that consumers are demanding. In the area of batteries, it seems the U.S. will be behind for years to come as we buy from Japan and they turn around and invest it into the tech thus leaving us further behind.
Seems everyone is looking for a hand out now days! WTF man!
Jiff
http://www.privacy.cz.tc
Asia’s better batteries have nothing to do with our crappy car industry. Yes, we need them now, and yes, maybe, if GM had invested in electric cars for longer they may have developed the Lithium Ion instead of Japan, but the truth is Asian governments invested in battery technology for laptops - not cars.
Korea and Japan were hurting, and so they put out government incentives to revive their economies, and it paid off in spades. Korea also made Internet access a human right and provides free wifi to the country - everyone uses wifi phones there instead of cellphones, and they do so free of charge. It’s driving technological innovation while America is still baffled about how to get the internet to half of Kansas.
In addition to smart government incentives, Japan and especially Korea have weaker environmental laws than we do, and fewer of them - so you can get away with more in terms of manufacturing, which makes it a lot simpler and cheaper to manufacture something that contains poisonous materials like lithium.
So the American car industry sure sucks, but Asia owning the battery industry isn’t their fault. If you want to say someone screwed up here, it’s the US government not paying attention to these incentives and competing with its own.
That actually does not sound so much like a government bailout when they put it this way. Lately the US government has failed us in health care, education, Iraq, gas prices, home values, disaster relief…
It sounds resonable for the US to support local industry the way that asian dovernments support their local industries.
Maybe the government can get this right, but I doubt it.
ummm… i don’t think so.
if any government support goes out it should certainly NOT be to those clowns. give it to the companies who earned it. companies who manufacture nothing more than pure 100% electric vehicles like goss132, tesla etc.
would be great if goss132 could make oh… say millions of those midsize sedans and save the rest of us moms a ton of money on gas while we run to the grocery store, or high school. my gas bill is eating into my daughters cheer funds, and my sons baseball!
an ev would be great for people like us! you go goss132!
If GM wants better batteries, why can’t they buy them overseas if they’re so expensive to produce. Private companies shouldn’t be crying to the government to pay for their inefficient production process. The market is telling GM that they aren’t producing what the customer wants, and their profits have sunk. If they don’t want to buy from Japan, they should use their own capital and to create a more efficient process, rather than using our taxes. If they really just want a handout, why don’t they ask the populace?