So, John McCain has proposed paying a bunch of money to someone who can come up with a "revolutionary battery" to free us from oil dependence for transportation.

Here's what I'm thinking.  The "revolutionary" batter may not exist.  The "evolutionary" improvement in battery tech is happening even as we speak.  If my idea was to happen, market competition would surely result in continual improvements.  But here's my idea:

STANDARDIZATION

If the auto industry were to get their best brains together, and agree on a basic size, shape, and interface for a standardized electric car battery, then gas stations could simply be converted into "battery exchanges".  You pull into the station, pay whatever the cost would be, and they take your battery out, put a freshly charged one in, and you go on your merry way.  They plug your battery into a rack to charge, and use FIFO (first in, first out).

They could then install PV and wind turbines on all these stations to offset what they suck out of the grid, and increase profitability.

The initial design agreed upon would have to be WELL thought out, of course.  And the range of the battery would have to be close to what a tank of gas will get you.  Or they'd simply have to build more stations in the boonies where existing gas stations are too far apart.

Competition will lead to improved models of this standardized battery.  This might lead to "regular" vs. "premium" batteries as well.  Or if you have a premium battery, and the station doesn't have enough fully charged premium ones available, then you'd get your regular battery at a lower rate.  You could "upgrade" whenever you wanted by paying a similar difference in reverse.

What do you guys think?

Basically the government has no business paying such rewards!

I think you should share it with the Automobile manufacturers.

McCain is, of course, appealing to a mass desire to fix the problem quickly so everyone can go back to watching TV.  This is naive and a little dangerous. 

It's like saying America needs a "revolutionary diet pill" to cure obesity.  If government developed such a pill would you take it?  Remember that this is the same government that pushed "swine flu" vaccine and halted the smallpox vaccine.

Also remember that years ago Congress played aerospace engineer and picked the space shuttle.  It locked future space development in that effort for decades.  It could have simply stepped aside to let private businesses try different ideas until one or more emerged.  The combination jet/rocket ideas we see emerging today could have been the norm in 1980 and maybe today private automated labs would be researching materials, energy and who knows what overhead.

It's more recent attempt at energy engineer is to push corn for ethanol.  I suspect that pushing batteries for energy storage would have unintended consequences much like ethanol.

I'm "preaching to the choir" here, but let's not forget examples like this when we discuss the drawbacks of government solutions with non-libertarians. The libertarian approach is to simply remove barriers from individuals and groups so they can more easily address these problems.Government is usually one of the barriers.

Mark

That's not revolutionary!

THIS is a revolutionary battery!

Oil companies are researching many sources of energy.  They're actually calling themselves Energy Companies.  They're getting such a horrible rep but it's not all that well deserved.  We're all forced to deal with these high prices mainly through manipulations by the cartels.  The Energy Companies are more of a free market structure, they're already moving with the will of the market, they're not dumb, their profit driven and responsive to the market.  I like McCain's idea to try and get some optimism and innovation as well as dedication to self sufficiency, but you're right, the company that develops this idea will recoup that amount and more through patent protection for seven years (I think).  However, if he's simply saying that they will pay off the seven year protection and let the market have full access to this techonolgy, that's a little different.  A bounty won't get it done, innovation will, as will the market.  I'd let him do the $300 million dollar deal if we that means we can get rid of $45 billion in ethanol subsidies.  A one time payment and then being rid of that waste is a good trade in my eyes.