Sen. John McCain's recent proposal to establish a $300 Million prize competition to develop a new battery package for electric vehicles is actually a lot worse than it looks. This light bit of pandering to environmentalists and the high tech community would have much more sinister implications if he were to actually fund and launch such a competition as President.
This is not a question of stimulating the establishment of a new industry where there was none before. Its not about creating incentives for particularly risky and expensive Research & Development, where a market for the end product is uncertain or might fail to materialize. This is about capturing the future of transportation for the same people you're driving on right now.
Technology prizes have a rich and successful history (it was the Orteig Prize which drew Charles A. Lindbergh across the Atlantic), and the Ansari X-Prize has in fact birthed a new commercial space tourism industry. So, where's the problem with McCain's Assault on Batteries?
