President Barack Obama believes that batteries are the future. In accordance with that belief, he’s made four visits to battery plants so far; the last of which was the visit to a plant in Holland, Mich.The electric battery plan is not farfetched and nor is it foolish. Batteries are vital to the next generation car industry and will face a demand within the next decade. In fact, next generation cars are expected to dominate sales within that period. This will have two distinct benefits to the nation’s economy. First of all, it will get the auto industry back on track and enable it to become a leader once again. Second, the manufacturing process of electric batteries will create thousands of jobs.But all of this depends on whether America can get up to speed with the technology and the manufacturing process. Asian countries have long been working on electric battery technologies and are currently world leaders in lithium-ion car batteries.
The Obama Administration has tried to address this problem by pumping in $2.4 billion into the advanced battery industry. The injection of funds has turned the U.S. electric battery manufacturing industry into a potential world leader. Out of the 30 plants under construction now, 26 are beneficiaries of the funding and nine of those are lithium-ion plants. But there is a hitch. All of this is based on projections that the consumer market will switch to energy efficient cars in the coming years. That premise is based on the expectation that car manufacturers will churn out more and more electric cars. If those expectations and projections do not come through, the battery plan will create more of a mess than the one it was supposed to clear up.