WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy is getting ready to hand out about $2 billion in grants to create a domestic industry for electric-car batteries, and 122 companies are scrambling to get pieces.
The companies range from small niche firms to giants such as Dow Chemical and Johnson Controls. All are promising a combination of innovation and ability to deliver new products on a commercial scale to prevent the U.S from trading dependence on foreign oil for reliance on foreign-made batteries.
“We’ve had 20 years of bad behavior in the United States in terms of developing ideas into products,” said Mary Ann Wright, chief executive of Johnson Controls’ joint venture developing hybrid-battery systems.
Now policymakers hope that helping domestic battery manufacturers will produce economic savings that often come with large-scale production and which are needed to make electric cars affordable. With funds provided by the stimulus bill in February, the DOE can cover up to half the cost of a battery-related project.
The federally funded battery effort has its skeptics. Grants are expected to focus on lightweight lithium-ion batteries similar to those found in laptops. They are the newest thing in a business that had not changed much since lead-acid batteries were invented a century and a half ago.
But U.S. hopefuls face stiff competition from foreign firms such as Japan’s Panasonic, which already dominate the lithium-ion battery market in tools, laptops and cellphones.
