.

Bankrupting the country with spending like this is cool!!! I like it that children now in grade school will each owe the federal government (borrowed from China) $100,000, plus, when they start working. HA!!! I don't have to pay for it so spend away! Good luck kids.

Praise be to Algore.

.

Bush was only following in Reagan's footsteps.

Often, new money is sent old companies for repeated, nonproductive research.

Nearly all advanced countries consider healthy citizens their greatest resource and national defense.

Other nations just hope their uninsured 50 million citizens won't infect the heartless insured or their children.

Dice anyone?

Mark BC,

With the Patriot Act:

Citizens can be jailed without judge or phone call indefinitely ("under investigation" note each sixty days)

Warrant-less search of all (National Security Letters) communications

Individuals can be declared 'terrorist countries', without rights etc

but it would be illegal to end a patent for national security.

http://www.aclu.org/

HD, the ten year Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles billions of dollars didn't, directly or indirectly, address which of this 26 ways - yet where's the 80 mpg production '3 Big' sedans?

What we got was two of the 'Big 3' bankrupt.

These give-aways should be halted or returned, with interest, if significant, ongoing production implementations aren't successfully marketed.

J.A. has nailed it. We completely ignore the retrofit of existing vehicles with EV and Hybrid drivetrains. That is a good use of existing vehicles for people that can't afford a new car and a much better use of exiting cars than scrapping and recycling from an energy perspective. I'm glad to see bullet 24 in the list.

I know it's not popular with the Big 3 and Toyota, Honda, BMW,etc. because they want to sell new cars. But we're not here to make them happy but find ways to make our fleet more efficient and do it so that everyone can afford to participate.

Roger Pham,

"Having health insurance or not is a private matter, just as whether a person owns a car or not. Do we worry about those Americans who do not own a car?"

Let's buy a car as if it were US health insurance:

First, complete these forms exposing you and your entire family tree's genetics and health history. At our disgression, any errors or oversights and we will repossess the car.

We sell annual car models. If you can not prove continuous annual car purchases - you will be ineligible for a car purchase.

Do you have any 'pre-existing conditions' (too fat, thin, diabetic, yeast, over 25 years of age, over 30, 35, ..our definitions - subject to change) you will be
ineligible for a car purchase or only at several times the sticker price.

Each car manufacturer maintains their version of these sales contracts and there are NO used cars. You are driving this year's model or you have no car.

With the health insurance manner of buying a car - COULD YOU AFFORD A CAR? COULD YOUR WIFE, KIDS, GRANDPARENTS, ....

Also, without a car you could not arrive for healthcare. In otherwords, you and your's will die - as 20,000 carless American citizens do EACH YEAR.

It's called public health, not 'private matter' - especially in this age of bioterrorism.

As for research, fund the basic science (NASA, Defense) and leave cars to private enterprise.

Already, the PNGV cost seven (7) billion tax dollars and yeilded no cars and two bankruptcies so far.

Any money spent on EV development is OK with me. It certainly beats flushing it down a rathole like Iraq.
(Afganhistan is a different matter).
-
Of course there will be waste. There is plenty of waste in the private sector, too. But any nudge in the direction of EV's is a good thing for the fed. govt to do.

"Will the Big-3 (if they still exist) produce competitive cars by 2012-2015?"

What's their incentive? They know taxpayers will bail them out regardless, and the failing management wont even get the boot. It's a circus.

Many of the listed 26 supported areas for research activities have been pursued experimentally for decades with billions of dollars already spent. It is not likely that further significant fuel saving and emission reduction can be obtained by engine experiments alone without applying thermodynamics principle. Because the thermodynamic properties of working fluids of real engine are not in equilibrium, the equilibrium thermodynamics seems having no use at all. However, for thermodynamic analysis of a reciprocating engine performance, it is only required to know the average value of the temperature rather than the temperature distribution as described below.

The reciprocating internal combustion engine is a device to convert fuel chemical energy into mechanical work. Even though combustion taking place inside the cylinder, it is equivalent to combustion taking place out side the cylinder and the converted heat being transferred to the gas inside the cylinder. The heat so transferred is denoted by Q+. The ensuing expansion process converts a part of the thermal energy into mechanical work. The remaining part of the thermal energy is rejected from the cylinder at the end of expansion process. The heat transferred from inside the cylinder to the outside by the exhaust gas is denoted by Q-. By definition, the thermal efficiency is equal to (Q+ - Q-)/Q+. Heat loss during the combustion process reduces Q+. Heat loss during expansion process increases reduces Q-. Thermodynamic analysis of a reciprocating engine performance can be limited to combustion and expansion processes. The rest of processes are for logistics to replenish cylinder with fresh charge.

The necessary equations of the state to relate working fluid state at point 2 to that at point 1 are derived from idea gas law. Gases have various properties including the gas pressure p, temperature T, mass m, and volume V that contains the gas. If any two of the properties are fixed, the nature of the relationship between the other two is determined as follows. If the pressure and temperature are held constant, the volume of the gas depends directly on the mass. If the mass and temperature are held constant, the product of the pressure and volume is a constant (Boyle’s Law). If the mass and pressure are held constant, the volume is directly proportional to the temperature (Charles’ law). By combining these two laws, pV/T is always a constant when work is done on or by the gas or heat is transferred into or from the gas, as the gas going through a thermodynamic process. Because pV/T is always a constant, the equation p2V2/T2 = p1V1/T1 is true in every instance including when all gas properties are in equilibrium. Therefore, the equation p2V2/T2 = p1V1/T1 is an equation of the state to relate the gas properties in equilibrium at point 2 to that in equilibrium at point 1 so that the law of conservation of energy can be met. According to Dalton’s law, a gas mixture behaves in exactly the same fashion as a pure gas. Therefore, the equation of the state, p2V2/T2 = p1V1/T1, relates working fluid state at point 2 to that at point 1 regardless whether process 1-2 is isentropic or not. The pressure reaches equilibrium quickly and thus p2/p1 = (V1/V2)k can be taken as another equation of the state of working fluid. There two equations of the state of the working fluid can be used to compute the pressure p and the average temperature T of the working fluids in every instance. Because idea gas law is taught in high school physics, anybody having taken high school physics can understand how a reciprocating IC engine works and know how to improve it.

sascatcher,

Can you believe this is the proposed answer to unaffordable health insurance:

Be penalized up to $1500 per year/person if unable to afford health insurance .. Baucus Bill

HarveyD,

Below are the three 70+ mpg vehicles our taxes paid seven billion dollars for and then never went into production:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_a_New_Generation_of_Vehicles

Only in America would THAT kind of logic work.