Sequel To Solyndra Released Just in Time for Summer

Splashed across the top of the fold on page B1 of the WSJ: Car battery start-ups fizzle, with this subtext: armed with $1.26 billion in US grants, firms opened nine factories; jobs and production lag goals.

This is the link.

$1.26 billion in US grants -- not tax credits, not tax incentives, but outright grants.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has awarded more than $1 billion to American companies to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles. Halfway to a six-year goal of producing one million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, auto makers are barely at 50,000 cars.

The Department of Energy, which oversees the administration's advanced battery grants, says it is too early to judge the effort, and believes it will bear fruit when electric cars become a regular sight on American highways.

Believe. Hope and change.