Saturday, September 29, 2012

Batteries Get Three Strikes Out at Bat





I wrote this piece for Breitbart.com earlier this week.
Much of the policy, if you can call it policy, of the Department of Energy under Secretary Chu and President Obama has been based on plug in vehicles. The underlying assumption that Chu espoused and Obama naively believed was that lithium ion batteries would come down significantly in cost and that with mass production levels of economies of scale the plug in vehicles would be affordable.



Dr. Chu should have listened to what Thomas Edison said in London in February 1883. My friend John in Switzerland pointed this out to me. Yes in February 1883 old Tom wrote the following for The Electrician:

"The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catchpenny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies. The storage battery is one of those peculiar things which appeals to the imagination, and no more perfect thing could be desired by stock swindlers than that very selfsame thing ….

Just as soon as a man gets working on the secondary battery it brings out his latent capacity for lying ….

Scientifically, storage is all right, but, commercially, as absolute a failure as one can imagine.”



Dr Chu you got taken three times on lithium ion batteries! Actually we the 53% got taken three times as the wasted money is ours. We have all heard of the demise of Ener1 and A 123 but now we are witnessing the third strike at bat for this battery chemistry. The third strike is occurring in Holland Michigan at a company called Compact Power (CP). Compact Power is owned by the large Korean Conglomerate LG Chem. LG Chem supplies lithium ion batteries produced in Korea to Chevrolet for the Volt. The plan was to produce these batteries in Holland Michigan. Approximately $150 million was given by Obama via Chu to Compact Power and approximately 200 people were hired. Now the workers are on a 75% furlough and layoffs continue.



It has been reported that no batteries for Volts have ever been supplied from the Holland Michigan plant and all the batteries to date simply have come from LG Chem in Korea. I wonder what 200 people working at a 75% rate are really doing in Holland, Michigan? What is certain is that LG Chem was promised by Chevrolet and Ford that they would supply many sets of batteries for plug in cars in the USA that Obama and Chu estimated would total 1 million vehicles by 2015.



I was playing around with the letters in Ener1, A 123, and CP and came up with a six letter word that is Reaper. Thomas Edison knew in 1883 that storage batteries were a sensation and a mechanism for swindling that will result in commercial failure. In 2010, one hundred and twenty seven years later, Dr. Chu and Mr. Obama brought upon us the lithium ion battery powered grim economic reaper.

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