Obama Reveals Plan to Get U.S. Cars Off Oil...Using Tax-Payer Subsidized Firm That Has Yet To Produce a Battery

President Obama listens to a research engineer explain electric-car technology during a tour of the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., Friday. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP).

President Obama last week at the Department Of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory at the University of Chicago outlined his $2 billion plan to get U.S. vehicles off of oil.

Argonne, you may recall, has been awarded more than $200 million by the U.S. government since 2009.

But here’s something interesting: Argonne National Laboratory actually partnered with LG Chem Michigan Inc. in 2011 to design electric vehicle batteries, the Washington Free Beacon notes.

Remember LG Chem Michigan?

That's the tax-payer subsidized battery maker that has not produced or sold a single battery since being awarded a $150 million federal grant in 2009, according to a recent report from the Energy Department’s Inspector General.

“LG Chem was supposed to use Argonne’s design to produce the Volt batteries in its Holland plant once construction was finished,” the Washington Examiners’ Michal Conger notes. “But according to a recent Inspector General report, the company’s employees have been too busy playing video games to produce any batteries, despite spending $142 million”.

In fact, as noted elsewhere on TheBlaze, LG Chem Michigan employees were dying for work and would go out to volunteer around Holland, Mich., in order to have something to do.

“Through interviews with LG Chem Michigan management and other staff, we confirmed that employees spent time volunteering at local non-profit organizations, playing games and watching movies during regular working hours,” the IG report said.

“Even though the facility had produced a large number of test cells, the plant had yet to manufacture battery cells that could be used in electric vehicles sold to the public,” the report added.

So, yes, the president's $2 billion plan to get U.S. vehicles off oil was delivered at a tax-payer subsidized “green” energy firm that in 2011 designed batteries for another tax-payer subsidized “green” energy firm that has yet to produce a single electric car battery.

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RELATED:

• Fed Audit Reveals Tax-Payer Backed Battery Factory Hasn’t Produced or Sold a Single Battery Since Awarded Fed Grant in 2009

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Featured image whitehouse.gov.