FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
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From Page One Obama on board with electric-car batteries, but demand trails battery from A1
electric cars in the United States. Hybrids, though they have been around for a decade, represent less than 1 percent of the nation’s roughly 250 million-vehicle fleet. “The battery story is highly questionable,” said Menahem Anderman, the founder and chief executive of Total Battery Con- sulting. “Basically, there’s really no proven market, neither elec- tric vehicle nor plug-in hybrid electric vehicle — and there’s really no battery company in the United States that has a verified product.” Although U.S. battery makers
could export their products, the global market is glutted, accord- ing to analysts. Anderman said global capacity to build car bat- teries in 2014 will be three times greater than demand that year. Even some of the U.S. compa- nies that have received the feder- al grants express concerns that their capacity to build parts for electric cars is far outstripping consumers’ demand. The largest single recipient is
Johnson Controls, which won $299 million to build U.S. plants
“Basically, there’s really no proven market.”
— Menahem Anderman, Total Battery Consulting chief executive
and help develop the industry. By company estimates that were presented to Congress earlier this year, in 2015, the domestic capacity to build batteries will be more than twice the demand. “The ramifications will be, in
our view, very clear,” said Mary Ann Wright, a vice president at the company. “Not everybody is going to survive.” Without the federal incentives, the company probably would have built its factory in Europe or Asia, she said, and she lauded the effort to incubate an electric- car industry inside the country. But to ramp up the lagging de- mand, the company is pushing the federal government to buy more electric and hybrid vehicles for its fleets. “This is not unlike President
Kennedy saying, ‘We’re going to go to the moon,’ even though we didn’t know how to get there,” Wright said. “It unleashes the in- dustry and the national labs to go out there and start innovating.” During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama pledged to put 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. Now, even aside from the $2.4 billion in grants, the federal government is mak-
Obama on the stump: Touting stimulus bill, blasting its opponent
by Anne E. Kornblut
holland, mich. — Four months before the midterm elections, President Obama is trying to lock onto an economic message to convince voters that the 2009 government stimulus package was worth it — and is working. The stakes are especially high in Michigan, where severe unemployment and the hard-hit automotive industry have made the economy an even more potent issue than usual in this year’s campaigns. Obama inserted himself into
one Michigan race Thursday, taking a shot at Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Obama welcomed Hoekstra during his opening remarks at the car battery plant here. At the same moment, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sent a note to reporters pointing out Hoekstra as a “great quote opportunity!” in the audience. Hoekstra has been a vocal critic of the stimulus package — which provided funding for projects like the battery plant. “There are some folks who want to go back, who think we should return to the policies that helped to lead to this recession,” Obama said later in his comments honoring an advanced car battery factory being built by the company LG Chem. “Some made the political calculation that it’s better to obstruct than lend a hand. They said no to the tax cuts, they said no to small-business loans, they said no to clean-energy projects. It doesn’t stop them from coming to ribbon-cuttings — but that’s okay.” Hoekstra, interviewed
afterward, called Obama’s remarks “unpresidential.”
kornbluta@washpost.com
ing a huge investment in electric cars. The administration has pro- vided nearly $2.6 billion in ad- vanced technology loans to Nis- san, Tesla Motors and Fisker to establish electric-vehicle manu- facturing facilities. To stimulate demand for electric cars, which are more expensive than their conventional or hybrid counter- parts, the government is offering consumers a $7,500 tax incen- tive. Even advocates of federal sup-
port for the industry express grave doubts about expanding battery production capacity so far ahead of the demand, at the expense of other investments. Es- timating that by 2015 the U.S. share of the world market will be no more than 10 percent, Ander- man suggested that the United States delay efforts to broaden capacity and use the money for pilot projects and research in- stead. The plant in Michigan that
THE JULY
Obama visited Thursday is con- trolled by a subsidiary of LG Chem, whose South Korean exec- utives were on hand for the event. The ceremony had a Ko- rean flair: LG Chem passed out hand fans in the colors of their flag, and scores of South Korean reporters flew in to cover the ap- pearance, interviewing members of the company in Korean. “For years, we’ve heard about manufacturing jobs disappear- ing overseas. You are leading the
way in showing how manufac- turing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America,” Obama told employees and executives. In a diplomatic flourish, Oba- ma dropped a line from his speech, included in the prepared remarks, about jobs being creat- ed in Michigan “instead of South Korea.”
When completed, the factory
is expected to be able to produce 15 million battery cells per year.
Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
So far, its only announced cus- tomer is the Chevrolet Volt from General Motors. The automaker is predicting that in 2012 it will produce about 30,000 Volts; if each requires 288 battery cells, as reported, GM could account for less than 60 percent of the plant’s production.
kornbluta@washpost.com whoriskeyp@washpost.com
A5
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