But to achieve really great and effective results requires leadership willing to commit resources and motivation. When Kennedy kicked off the lunar program there was great incentive after the USSR beat us into orbit. Innovation to solve energy/climate problem will require tremendous motivation and a collective sense of urgency.

I’m not seeing a general sense of urgency or public motivation. More than 50% of the American people believe, “Drill Here! Drill Now!” is all that is required. And big oil already knows how to do that. I could use a couple mil’ though. Maybe I’ll enter a contest.

I personally wouldn’t do this kind of thing as a job (who knows if you’ll win), but it could be fun, educational, and maybe lucrative as a personal or small team hobby.

Speaking of battery prizes, there’s already a $1.75 Million “Wearable Power Prize”. It’s intended to reduce the amount of battery weight carried by soldiers, but I’m sure there would be commercial uses, too. It’s too late to register for that one, though.

Then there’s the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize, which would reward the development of commercially viable vehicles that get the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon. “We have over 90 teams that have signed letters of intent from 12 countries so far,” Diamandis said. The next steps include finalizing the rules and selecting the cities where the X Prize races will take place in 2009 and 2010.

Diamandis said he was gratified to hear about GOP presumptive presidential candidate John McCain’s proposal for a $300 million, federally funded prize for breakthroughs in battery technology – and he only wishes his likely Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, was more savvy about the prize paradigm.

“We have been working and will continue to work with both campaigns to educate them about the potential for incentive prizes to produce breakthroughs far beyond what government programs can do,” he said.

The only drawback he sees in McCain’s plan is that it focuses solely on one potential solution (battery storage capacity for electric vehicles and hybrids) to the exclusion of others (such as biofuels).

“One of the key attributes of an X Prize is not to choose the solution, but to identify the problem,” he said. “What we really need are super-efficient cars. Whether that’s done with batteries or better engines is to be determined.”

http://link.brightcove.com/ services/ player/ bcpid1155201977?bctid=1628434148

Rather than criticize the whole prize concept as a gimmick, it would have been a lot better, and more in keeping with the “new ideas” aura he cultivates, if Obama had come up with a better set of energy prize ideas rather than proposing a retro “energy Apollo” without complimentary prizes. Remember, the real Apollo program, although it had its virtues, was shut down because it was considered too expensive. Although it’s budget is considerably less than 1% of the Federal budget, NASA’s current attempt to rebuild Apollo is still expensive compared to the private spaceflight efforts now being built, and is also expensive compared to NASA’s own environmental science satellites. If Obama wants analogies from the space community for his energy policy, he should look to commercial space and robotic space rather than Apollo.

The odd thing is that Obama’s own energy policy includes prizes:

“Deploy Cellulosic Ethanol: Obama will invest federal resources, including tax incentives, cash prizes and government contracts into developing the most promising technologies with the goal of getting the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the system by 2013. ”

The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE released a press statement commending the McCain prize proposal, while encouraging a more diverse set of efforts:

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/ auto/ press-release/ progressive-insurance-automotive-x-prize-releases-statement-in-response-to-senato

Note that the AXP also contains rules to make sure that the vehicles that win that prize (100 MPGe cars) have some prospect of manufacturability if not won by one of the bigger teams like Tata Motors. Hopefully some such rules can be worked into McCain’s proposal if it’s implemented.

Innovation often comes from outside large entrenched organizations. Electronics and computing are examples of the innovative capacity of small shops and individuals. The power steering used in most of today’s non rack and pinion cars was invented shortly before WWII by a lone inventor unaffiliated with the auto industry.

Determining if anyone meets the required size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars is not so difficult and certainly doesn’t need to wait for mass production. Size, capacity and power are easily observed. Cost of production is generally calculated before production begins.

Do you actually think McCain’s proposal is a sensible one? If so, PLEASE explain to me how anybody could possibly adjudicate who is the winner BEFORE mass production? [There is obviously no point in giving a prize to somebody after mass production has occurred.]

Ridiculous comment.