John McCain's (R) plan to give the advanced hybrid battery industry a boost sounds promising. I mean, a $300m prize to the company that can deliver a better, cheaper battery? What's not to like? Well, plenty, apparently.

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) criticized McCain's idea yesterday, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama explained his own objections to the prize money. As reported by the Detroit News, Obama and other Dems said the "game show" strategy wouldn't be strong enough to push automakers to produce the really high-mpg vehicles that are needed (although, the News points out, Obama does support cash prizes in the cellulosic ethanol realm). Obama said it was his across-the-board plan that would do the trick.

Other criticisms that have come into the ABG mailbox include the claim that McCain's plan is "poorly thought out." McCain's aides admit that more details need to be worked out. One alternative would be to not hold the money back until a particular battery can be built, but to offer tax rebates on PHEVs and BEVs that are on the road today, or very close to it.

Photo by transplanted mountaineer Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

[Source: The Detroit News via Autoblog]

Andrew Littlefair (left) and T. Boone Pickens in Las Vegas in May

There was a lot of interest in my post about oil (and wind and natural gas) man T. Boone Pickens' presentation at the AFVI Expo last month. So, when I saw a new press release titled, "Boone Pickens: U.S. in Energy Crisis," I figured there was good reason to read it and maybe write about it. Turns out, yeah, there was.

Pickens wasn't exactly upbeat about the U.S. energy situation last month, and when he gave a speech to the Oil and Gas Investor's Energy Capital Forum in Houston earlier this week, he said the situation was at crisis level. It's so bad that it should be the most important issue of this fall's (and summer's) presidential campaign, he said. Pickens, who supports Republican candidate John McCain over Barack Obama (but acknowledged that McCain's whole summer gas tax holiday idea was wrong), said he's going to use his clout to "force this [a discussion on energy] into this campaign. We'll see if I have the credibility to force it into the debate." One way is by spending some of his billions on running energy issues ads on TV in the coming months.

There are some choice Pickens quotes in the release pasted after the break. Basically, Pickens believes, high gas prices are a good thing, as they're finally forcing people to change their mindset. Click through for more.

With the gas tax idea hopefully safely behind us and just two major party political contenders left in the race for president of the U.S., the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, spent some time over the weekend acting like still President Bush (kind of) by riding around on emissions-free, two-wheeled transportation. The AP reports that the Obama family rode with some neighbors along Lake Michigan in the Chicago area for a while until rain came. When he's not pedaling around (or using the immense energy resources required to campaign for president), Obama is in favor of higher CAFE averages, more biofuel and hybrid Hummers.

[Source: AP via Ecorazzi]

Photo by Ewen and Donabel. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

First, Republican presidential candidate John McCain had the brilliant idea to prove his ignorance of the economy by calling for a gas tax holiday. Basically, he proposed, the federal gas tax (currently set at 18.4 cents a gallon) and the diesel tax (24.4 cents) should be suspended between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Not much later, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made the wrong move and backed the plan. Thus far, Democratic challenger Barack Obama is keeping his wits about him and is denouncing the plan.

But what do people who aren't running for president think? It's impossible for us to keep tabs on everyone who discusses the energy issue, because everybody's talking about it. Still, I wanted to point out one bit of media that covers the issue better than any other I've read/seen/heard. Earlier today on the Diane Rhem Show, three guests - Neil King, Jr., The Wall Street Journal's international energy reporter, Roger Diwan, partner, head of financial advisory PFC Energy, Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America - discussed the gas tax holiday and rising oil prices. I'm not sure which one of the three said it, but one of them called the idea "dumb on all counts." He is not the only critic of the idea (Tom Friedman recently lambasted it); in fact, it seems like just about everyone says it's a bad idea. Diane told her listeners that the show's producer looked long and hard for someone to defend the idea, but couldn't find anyone who was willing. And, while we can't possibly point you to everyone's thoughts on this issue, this morning's Diane Rhem show (listen here) presents a good, hour-long discussion on why McCain and Clinton has grabbed the wrong end of this political stick. Your thoughts?

Not quite sure what to make of this, but on a day when America's political eye is turned to Pennsylvania, Zipcar would like us all to know that the car-sharing company took a weeklong poll of Zipcar members in Philadelphia and found that Barack Obama was the runaway winner with 59 percent of the "vote." Hillary Clinton came in second with 25 percent and John McCain trailed with 16 percent. Of course, the "votes" were not simple "who do you like best?" questions but instead were taken from registrations of three vehicles: Honda Hillary, Mini Cooper McCain or BMW Barack. The number of hours each of these vehicles was reserved during the week counted towards the final score. Scientific? No. Accurate? No. Fun? Sure, why not. More details after the break.