The US Department of Energy has instituted a new Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVMLP) to help auto manufacturers.  To quote the website, “The FY09 Continuing Resolution authorized up to $25 billion in direct loans to eligible applicants for the costs of reequipping, expanding, and establishing manufacturing facilities in the U.S. to produce advanced technology vehicles, and components for such vehicles. These vehicles must provide meaningful improvements in fuel economy performance.”

Hybrid, electric, hydrogen, biodiesel, flexfuel, not to mention just plain old more fuel-efficient vehicle and vehicle parts manufacturers can get loans from the federal government to help them be more green and lessen our petroleum dependency.   Which is great news.

Unless you’re Randall Stross, loudmouth of The New York Times.

He seems to think that Tesla Motors is not doing anything to advance “Advanced Technology Vehicles” and that giving them federal dollars from this program is simply bailing them out.  An interesting stance to take, considering that Tesla Motors produces an all-electric vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, with no emissions.  The only pollution it can be said to “produce” is that of the electrical power facility that recharges it.  (Meaning wind or solar plants have minimal pollution, nuclear can be arguably so, all the way up to coal which creates the most pollution to recharge a Tesla Roadster, unlike petroleum fuel vehicles which spit out emissions as they run.)  Tesla Motors is one of the few rare breed of automotive manufacturers touting the 100% electric car.

“Tesla Motors is applying for the Department of Energy loans in the truest spirit and intent of the program,” responds Diarmuid O’Connell, Vice President of Business Development at Tesla Motors.  “The company does not endorse the diversion of the ATVM resources for a bailout of any kind.”

And in fact, they don’t.  According to Tesla Motors, who have already shipped 80 Tesla Roadsters to date, the Tesla Roadster is on the very cusp of going black and needs no bailout.  What Tesla Motors in fact wants the federal loan for is to set up a factory to produce a Model S version, which is a second-generation trimmed-down five-seater sedan version for the the every-day driver offered at a much lower price point than the famed Tesla Roadster. In other words, a car we could all get behind.

Frankly though, whether Tesla Motors is telling the complete truth and wants to build for us a lower-cost electric car, or whether they really are bailing out the Tesla Roadster, it really doesn’t matter.  Where General Motors has dropped the EV1, Tesla Motors continues to push the all-electric car.  And they prove that an electric car doesn’t have to be a yawn a minute.  They’re working on advancing battery technologies to make electric cars better than they ever have been, which indeed is the very spirit of the ATVMLP.  Just because the first automobile that Tesla Motors produced was an expensive all-electric race car doesn’t mean they aren’t simultaneously helping to advance the very technologies that all electric cars and plug-in hybrids need.  A point which Randall Stross seems to be unable to comprehend.

Further confusing the matter are reports of some folks in Washington wanting to turn the ATVMLP loan into a bailout for the failing economy of the major American automotive manufacturers like GM, the very company that dropped the all-electric EV1 car.  The very group of automobile manufacturers who continue to be bested by fuel-efficient hybrids from Japan.  Even Europe, with their better diesel technologies, and even BMW’s new all-electric Mini E, seem to be grasping what the world needs far better than the American auto manufacturers.  I can’t seem to decide which would be worse, to support the American automotive manufacturers with such a bailout when they’ve done such a bad job of keeping up with the world’s needs, or to see so many generally innocent hard-working Americans out of work in today’s nightmare of an economy.

But the point remains that regardless of what the federal government may or may not do compared to what the ATVMLP had actually be intended for, Randall Stross still has his head up his behind.  If you agree, I highly suggest telling him so, at: stross@nytimes.com.

So if you’re in the least bit green and simultaneously a car nut, you’ve probably heard by now of the Tesla Roadster. It’s a purely electric sports car. What do I mean by sports car? Well, how does 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds sound? Yeah. It can move.

But the one thing about electric cars is what do you do when the battery goes dry? When you run out of gas in a normal car, you just go to a gas station and fill ‘er up. No biggie. In and out in minutes.

But when you run out of juice in an electric car, you plug it in, and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Not very convenient for long distance trips.

Until now!

Introducing the Lightning, UK’s hot new electric sports car!

Built along similar lines, the Lightning is an all-electric road-eating monster. The performance can put most sports cars to shame. And since electric motors are so incredibly simple compared to an engine in something like a Ferrari, it’s also a lot easier to maintain. But again, there’s that whole long long wait to recharge the thing, right? Wrong!

At least in theory…

The Lightning uses a new battery technology. Unlike the lithium-ion batteries and lead-acid batteries traditionally used in electric cars, the Lightning uses NanoSafe™ batteries. These are lithium-titanate batteries manufactured with nano titanate particles instead of lithium-ion’s use of graphite. They’re supposedly a lot faster to recharge, are more stable at extreme temperatures (something batteries just don’t like), and contain no toxins or heavy metals.

And if you noticed, yes, in there were the words “a lot faster to recharge”. Something which Lightning hopes to take advantage of. In theory the Lightning’s batteries can be recharged to 80 per cent in just three minutes.

In practice however, this requires a three-phase industrial power line, something your typical home (and even a lot of businesses) just don’t have.

Yet.

Perhaps one day, in a world where alternative fuels catch on, you can drive up to your “filling station” and get a tank of petrol, a tank of ethanol, a tank of bio-diesel, a tank of hydrogen, or even a quick charge of your batteries from an industrial power line, all in one nice convenient station.

In the mean time however, Lightning owners will have to live with the fact that while they recharge their nifty sports car from their home line, the recharge time is really not much different than that of any other electric car. And they’re still screwed if they want to travel beyond the range of their batteries.

Something where hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, still reign supreme in that they still can just top off their tank of gas from any old gas station and keep truckin’ all night long.

Still, if anything interesting comes from this, it’s that cars are no longer necessarily held down by the crappy battery technologies that we’ve been using since the dawn of time (lead acid) or by those used in the last few decades (lithium-ion). We’ve got something new: lithium-titanate AKA NanoSafe™. Hopefully we’ll be seeing these used in new cars. And just as hopefully, the industry will continue to research and develop even newer and better battery technologies to vault the electric car into the twenty-first century.

And maybe one day, we’ll even have the ultimate green-hybrid. A flexible-fuel hybrid that can take petrol or ethanol to power either a normal car engine (like a Prius hybrid has) or perhaps some sort of electric generator, has a hydrogen tank for filling up a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric motor, and even has some NanoSafe™ batteries for also powering the electric motor and operating as a recharge point for regenerative braking. It’d be the ultimate hybrid. Who knows? It could happen.