Effectiveness of the United States Advanced Battery Consortium as a Government-Industry Partnership (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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In 1996, the USABC developed intermediate commercialization goals that specify technologies the USABC believes will allow the entry of EVs into the market without subsidies. The USABC has awarded eight contracts to companies for work on battery technologies for EVs and is sponsoring related projects at several DOE national laboratories through cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs)
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The consortium has effectively brought together battery technologists and experts in EVs in creative, focused partnerships but has missed some opportunities to provide broad technical leadership because timely information was not made public. The USABC was created to respond to specific challenges imposed by regulatory agencies, and many aspects of its operation, including its technical strategy, have been affected by the regulatory timetable established by the California Air Resources Board (CARB)
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The USABC partners clearly have a common long-term interest in fostering a healthy industry that has multiple suppliers for any given EV battery technology. The USABC could have promoted this interest effectively at very low cost by developing and updating a technology road map and by making concerted efforts to summarize progress regularly on a nonproprietary basis.
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However, the committee is concerned that other DOE battery R&D (under the Exploratory Technology Research program or elsewhere in DOE) may have been unwisely reduced to pay for federal participation in the USABC, which is a focused development program aimed at one very demanding battery application that might be unrealizable in terms of the defined performance goals.
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From page 5... ...
Recommendation. Participants in a follow-on program to the USABC should allocate some program funds to examining a broader spectrum of electric vehicle concepts and related market opportunities, in addition to developing a replacement vehicle for a gasoline-fueled ICE vehicle that could capture a significant share of the conventional automobile market.
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The three major U.S. automakers have managed the USABC program effectively using proven industry practices and have made appropriate decisions to narrow the portfolio of battery technologies as the program has proceeded.
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Recommendation. Within the limits imposed by proprietary considerations, regular peer reviews of the USABC's ongoing programs should be implemented immediately to provide objective assessments and to support decision making.
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In this respect, the announced practices in the RFPI appear to be defensive. The RFPI requirement that companies reveal commercially sensitive information almost certainly discouraged battery developers with relatively mature systems which they have developed over many years at considerable expense from participating.
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From page 9... ...
The Ni/MH battery, for example, which does not meet the midterm performance or cost requirements, will be discontinued in 1998 although it will remain under development in a separate program to meet the high power energy storage requirements for hybrid vehicles for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) program.
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