White House hopes to power up American battery factories with $3.5B fund

The Biden administration is splurging $3.5 billion to recharge the American battery industry and increase its manufacturing output, with the Department of Energy handing out the cash. In a funding notice announced by the DoE Wednesday, the dept's Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) said it was seeking …

[elsergiovolador]

Child labour

So the White House is throwing $3.5 billion to juice up battery factories? I bet the line for those contracts is already as long as the search for ethical mining practices.

How are they going to compete with the rest of the world without using slaves and child labour?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Child labour

>How are they going to compete with the rest of the world without using slaves and child labour?

Same way they compete in chip design, software, aerospace and high speed pizza delivery ?

[Dave791]

Re: Child labour

The same way US government always does: taxpayer-subsidized corporate welfare. Never mind it's unsustainable, you!

Fascinating isn't the right word for how Democrats go off on Republican's support of business, but when there's taxpayer $$$, or better yet debt, to give away they can't give it away to businesses fast enough. Appallingly hypocritical is more accurate.

[vtcodger]

Not oppossed, but ...

Compared to paying for development/procurement/deployment of dubious weapons systems (B-1 bomber, F-35, Littoral Combat Ship, etc), funding rural broadband that never happens, and proping up a variety of unsavory governments because ... well I'm not sure why we do that ... this is cheap. And Lord knows, ANY improvement in battery technology is probably a good thing. But I would point out that the US already spends a lot of money on this very thing. The Internet tells me that $92B (!!!!) has been spent on the "battery supply chain" since Biden took office 3 years ago. And I'm by no means sure that's all the government spending in place for batteries.

[blackcat]

Re: Not oppossed, but ...

"ANY improvement in battery technology is probably a good thing"

This is funding for manufacture, not research. So more of the current stuff.

When did we go from companies coming up with 'next big thing', getting it to market ahead of the competition and making money to companies sitting around whining about lack of govt handouts?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Not oppossed, but ...

We need to give help to the struggling domestic cotton industry so we aren't dependant on the British Empire.

[Dimmer]

Re: Not oppossed, but ...

Rural broadband -

Massive money has been allocated to deal with this so why has it not been done?

Even when Starlink is excluded as a provider, the way the government classifies unserved rural areas it is almost impossible to get funding for the homes that truthfully can’t get it.

Providers that are trying to get funding have to contest every single address and prove the home can’t get it. There is very little activity unserved rural areas left.

https://lightbox-tx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=37cb56b9f648449191c2a37e3eb2fb1a

Take a look. The areas supposedly served is bs.

Where did they get the info? Millions were spent to compile it and was paid for by broadband grants. Those millions spent for incorrect info is now blocking funding going to people that need it.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Not oppossed, but ...

Improvements in battery technollogy are bad, it will only encourage MORE dependency on cars and MORE wasted unproductive time sitting in traffic.

[Snowy]

From the start

Make them batteries recyclable!!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: From the start

Or at least rechargeable, it's annoying when the kids get a new Tesla for xmas and you are out of AA batteries by lunchtime

[Gene Cash]

Re: From the start

My kids are going to be disappointed that I'm giving them cybertrucks. They wanted real toys.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: From the start

Get them the cyber-quadbike

And you get some free time while they're in hospital

[Snowy]

Re: From the start

I wonder what the down vote is for?

[DJO]

Good times to be a battery manufacturer

So your predecessors spend years building up an operation, made a bit of profit.

Current management move production offshore and cut domestic production - more profit.

Take government handout to undo last step - even more profit.

Rinse and repeat until you are richer than Croesus.

When will they work out that offshoring critical and/or strategic production is never a good idea.

[Snowy]

Re: Good times to be a battery manufacturer

When you off shore manufacturing you also off shore any pollution it creates. Then you can shout about how the off shore country needs to do better on climate change.

[Whitter]

"Now that's the kind of current affairs we're into..."

Exceptional!

A pint in your honour!

[MachDiamond]

One tool in the box

The US government, Federal Division, only knows to throw money at things. If it was economic to produce batteries in the US rather than elsewhere, somebody would be doing it. Those that are manufacturing in he US tend to be captive in that the batteries are being made for a specific customer. While there may be good deposits of raw materials, it will be years or as long as a decade to get permissions to start mining and even longer to add refining operations if the processes for them haven't already been banned on some level. All that may be needed is for the Department of <fill in the blank>/National Laboratory to do some research into reducing waste output for concentrating piles of dirt into ore and then into useful materials which could be fairly expensive, but that data and the techniques would be publicly available rather than the same money just being handed to some company that turns around and files for bankruptcy in a couple of years locking up all of their IP the money was spent developing. If there is too much red tape and hot/cold running regulatory agencies constantly making them shut down for inspections so they can find things to issue fines over, that's just going to continue making companies choose to locate elsewhere in the world and pay the cheaper import tariffs. All levels of government need to all agree on a plan and besides to giving companies money, they need to find way for it to be an advantage to manufacture in the US. Been there.

[shfy70]

I am a real battery PhD scientist at SUNY

Based on my experience and knowledge, these efforts won't work well because the EV battery business is a very low-margin ($100/Kwh is just way too low), high risk business. The key to success is to expand production quickly to REDUCE cost and MAINTAIN quality, but the US won't be able to do these because the smaller batteries ( iPhone, laptop, these are 2-5X the cost of your EV battery based on $/Kwh) have large volume and lower QC standard mainly supplied to Asian manufacturers (producing them in the US and send to Asia is just not viable), . The US-China trade war also impedes a lot of cost-cutting efforts. Lastly, these $$$ comes from US Government, there are a lot of strings attached ( Employee whistle-blower protection, LGBT gender anti-discrimination, cost-sharing scheme).

I once worked on project funded by DOD/ARL, I was forced to change my work in order to spend all of the $$$ granted (I could do a far better job with only 30% cost, but YOU CAN'T DO THAT, YOU MUST SPEND ALL THE $$$).

The Korean battery manufacturers are literally being stoned to death by the Us auto industry, it amounts to looting by the US.