http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/26friedman.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

Their Moon Shot and Ours
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 25, 2010

China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.

Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan.

This contrast is not good. I was recently at a Washington Nationals baseball game. While waiting for a hot dog, I overheard the conversation behind me. A management consultant for a big national firm was telling his colleagues that his job was to “market products to the Department of Homeland Security.” I thought to myself: “Oh, my! Inventing studies about terrorist threats and selling them to the U.S. government, is that an industry now?”

We’re out of balance — the balance between security and prosperity. We need to be in a race with China, not just Al Qaeda. Let’s start with electric cars.

The electric car industry is pivotal for three reasons, argues Shai Agassi, the C.E.O. of Better Place, a global electric car company that next year will begin operating national electric car networks in Israel and Denmark. First, the auto industry was the foundation for America’s manufacturing middle class. Second, the country that replaces gasoline-powered vehicles with electric-powered vehicles — in an age of steadily rising oil prices and steadily falling battery prices — will have a huge cost advantage and independence from imported oil. Third, electric cars are full of power electronics and software. “Think of the applications industry that will be spun out from electric cars,” says Agassi. It will be the iPhone on steroids.

Europe is using $7-a-gallon gasoline to stimulate the market for electric cars; China is using $5-a-gallon and naming electric cars as one of the industrial pillars for its five-year growth plan. And America? President Obama has directed stimulus money at electric cars, but he is unwilling to do the one thing that would create the sustained consumer pull required to grow an electric car industry here: raise taxes on gasoline. Price matters. Sure, the Moore’s Law of electric cars — “the cost per mile of the electric car battery will be cut in half every 18 months” — will steadily drive the cost down, says Agassi, but only once we get scale production going. U.S. companies can do that on their own or in collaboration with Chinese ones. But God save us if we don’t do it at all.

Two weeks ago, I visited the Coda Automotive battery facility in Tianjin, China — a joint venture between U.S. innovators and investors, China’s Lishen battery company and China National Offshore Oil Company. Yes, China’s oil company is using profits to develop batteries.

Kevin Czinger, Coda’s C.E.O., who drove me around Manhattan in his company’s soon-to-be-in-production electric car last week, laid out what is going on. The backbone of the modern U.S. economy was locally made cars powered by locally produced oil. It started us on a huge growth spurt. In recent decades, though, that industry was supplanted by foreign-made cars run on foreign oil, so “now every time we buy a car we’re exporting $15,000 of capital, paying for it with borrowed money and running it on foreign energy sources,” says Czinger. “We’ve gone from autos being a middle-class-making-machine to a middle-class-destroying-machine.” A U.S. electric car/battery industry would reverse that.

The Coda, 14,000 of which will be on the road in California over the next year and can travel 100 miles on one overnight charge, is a combination of Chinese-made batteries and complex American-system electronics — all final-assembled in Oakland (price: $37,000). It is a win-win start-up for both countries.

If we both now create the market incentives for consumers to buy electric cars, and the plug-in infrastructure for people to drive them everywhere, it will be a win-win moon shot for both countries. The electric car industry will flourish in the U.S. and China, and together we’ll tackle the next challenge: using auto battery innovations to build big storage batteries for wind and solar. However, if only China puts the gasoline prices and infrastructure in place, the industry will gravitate there. It will be a moon shot for them, a hobby for us, and you’ll import your new electric car from China just like you’re now importing your oil from Saudi Arabia.



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At some point we will have to come to terms with the idea that the lives of Afghanistan's citizenry are not worth destroying our future for.

So what's that business about the electric car? He seemed really hung up on that. He was going good, and then he throws out the ludicrous idea that the electric car is what will save America? L-O-L.

We'll get farther pursuing diesel's, natural gas, variable spark timing, variable valve trains, turbo-chargers, and other advancements with the ICE.

The electric car is a unproductive pipe dream. And there are two paragraphs in there where he basically defeats his own argument. Nor does he even give an honest look as to WHY Obama is making like Europe and artificially manipulating the economy with Nudgenomics to promote electric car use.

It's a bad piece, and the talk about Afghanistan is almost a moot point.

A good chunk of those can be crap investments actually. Was it any worth to the USA to throw billions at Amtrak trains?

Here is a good example of the huge bubble that is the chinese construction mkarket:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china- ... ual-engine

While I don't doubt that China has massive built in bubbles, I also do not doubt that trains are a great investment for China. As a developing nation they will have massive demand for such transportation for decades until they become a nation like America where nobody wants to ride the train and everyone owns their own automobile.

100 miles on one overnight charge? What happens if I want to take a road trip?

Friedman has gotten real boring ever since he jumped on the green train a few years ago.

Hence the warning, but I do think its worth reading to remind 'merica that there are goals out there that are more important than a chest-thumping win in Afghanistan, and that some countries are on that path right now.

The other factor is that electrical cars are horribly inefficient beyond 40 mph. And you really can't break the laws of physics to fix their "no torque under high load" problems. Electric cars have their place in the future, but it doesn't extend far beyond the metropolitan area. They'll be a niche for rich people, and nothing more.

and for the record, I was serious with my question. I've been reading alot about all-electric automobile technology, and everything I've read fails to address the lack of ability to travel very far on a charge. I drive over 100 miles just to go see a concert.

Yup, that is an enormous problem in and of itself as well. But this is compounded even more so by the fact that electric cars really only perform efficiently under low speed, high torque conditions. This is what makes a hybrid vehicle attractive in theory. You use the electric car for high torque needs like going from a stop to 30mph where gasoline engines are inefficient, and then use the ICE to take over when the electrical motor can no longer propel the vehicle forward efficiently.

In all seriousness, that 100 mile limit is only if you're driving it in an urban environment. If you take the same car and run it at 55mph under a highway environment you'll be dead in the water in thirty miles.

There ARE people who are willing to make those sacrafices though. So there will be that niche. Just like the Prius (which has a fraction of the torque, and worse gas mileage than a Volkswagen TDI). People will buy them just for status.

Hybrids aren't really ideal either as you basically end up with dual or parallel drive trains. You have two systems for powering the car. Double the complexity, double the weight (which makes you chase your tail and is one reason why the Prius really doesn't get good gas mileage).

Electric cars have their place, but it's small and reserved for the city.

Aren't more and more people going to be living in cities, though? It's not as though populations are becoming less dense. There will be more and more demand for these types of vehicles, especially in hyper-dense environments like the cities of China and India.

I think the whole idea of taxing gasoline is to create a market incentive to address the electric needs. Ideally, you would have "electric stations" replace gas stations where you would go and recharge your batteries.

yes, but say you are on a road trip. Filling up your tank with gas takes ten minutes. How long does recharging your batteries at one of these electric stations take? I'm sure it's hours, not minutes.

Stations would probably be battery swap stations, not recharge stations.


That's not the point of the OP, the point was to compare what different countries do with their wealth and whether or not we are doing something even remotely sane with what little we have left.

but it kind of is the point. If electric cars are only going to be used in metropolitan areas and not for long distance commuters, trips, etc. then why is that one of the things that is a "good" investment? I know it is only one part of it, but I think it is a valid question.

Good luck with this. Research the Prius and the Volt and get back to me on how awesomely unfeasible this idea is.

Providing for the energy needs of metropolitan citizens at least helps those people. But by spending all of our money on blowing up patches of rock and dirt in the Middle East helps the energy needs of NO ONE.

You guys are too hung up on the electric cars bit. Obviously, they are not a 1:1 substitute for gasoline-powered cars. But I doubt there will be a 1:1 substitute once oil runs out, so we better start investing now in a complex and vast infrastructure for our energy and transportation needs, because those take a while to put together. Otherwise people are going to have to deal with some sudden and massive lifestyle changes once we've dried up all of our oil. And giving up road trips will be one of the least of our troubles.

How many more years will gas be a mere $3 a gallon?

How many years can we have $3 per gallon natural gas?