When it comes to clean energy investments like hybrid batteries, America has fallen behind the international curve. Now Washington needs to get America's intellectual and industrial leaders down to the same task and make us competitive again.

This week, the Kiplinger Letter told its investor readers about a glass-half-empty proposition: America's shift away from addiction to foreign oil will yield to dependence on overseas-based cleantech.

"Japanese and Chinese manufacturers are set to sew up the market for mass-producing lithium ion auto batteries that will provide sufficient power for most motorists to make daily commutes without burning any gasoline," Associate Editor Jim Ostroff wrote on Tuesday.

He's talking about Japanese companies like Matsushita, Panasonic, Matsui, and China's BAK. They're making moves with international giant Toyota and smaller companies such as China's Geely, which has yet to make a name for itself in North America.

Mr. Ostroff says we don't have large-scale production facilities for this transportation technology, and he's right.

Nevertheless, we see the glass as half-full, both because we're profiting from international cleantech already, and because we know America's best and brightest are stepping up to the global challenge.

Since Green Chip Stocks and sister publications have been tracking and profiting from international hybrid battery makers like Matsushita for years now, we know what led to Asia's dominance in the field...

It turns out the U.S. auto industry wasn't "asleep at the wheel," as Kiplinger's says. Rather, Detroit took a disastrous wrong turn when it banked on behemoth SUVs and abandoned promising plug-ins and hybrids.

But current foreign dominance in plug-in-friendly batteries, which Kiplinger's calls the "dark shadow" of plug-in hybrids' bright future, needn't be a nail in the coffin of homegrown energy ingenuity. Jeff Siegel told you recently about General Motors' major moves in plug-in hybrid technology and production: http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/plug-in-hybrids/276

Clean Car Technology from Silicon Valley

The Big Three needed a kick in the pants, and neither the Japanese compact car revolution of the 1980s nor the European breed of tiny-trunk hatchbacks that are easy to park seemed to register with American execs.

We think the looming fact of foreign batteries in each and every GM, Ford, or Chrysler to roll off the assembly line should force Congress and companies to move quickly and concertedly.

Instead of this week's "Drill here, drill now," sloganeering on Capitol Hill to allow more offshore drilling should switch to "Think here, think now."

Let's launch full throttle into the kind of clean car roll-out that tiny Israel's government and business leaders are pushing, using technology being developed in California.

That's right. Israeli software wizard and multi-millionaire investor Shai Agassi's Project Better Place program—set to swarm Israel's roads with plug-in hybrids within the next half-decade—is headquartered in Google's neck of the woods in Palo Alto.

It's the kind of thing we'd like to see more of—Americans at the center of pioneering international cleantech projects.

I pointed out this spring that a consortium of entrepreneurs and researchers from the information technology heartland of Silicon Valley is pushing hard for more clean energy technology funding.

TechNet's Green Technologies Initiative urges the U.S. government to "promote and highlight new technologies and innovation as a critical part of the solution to national security, economic competitiveness and global energy and environmental challenges and encourage a national commitment for investment in and adoption of innovative green technologies."

TechNet, which includes CEOs of Intel and Cisco plus funding giants like JP Morgan, also wants politicians to "encourage public policies, best practices and initiatives to spur the development and adoption of new technologies to enhance energy efficiency, encourage use of renewable energy and protect the environment."

A Merrill Lynch/CapGemini poll this summer found that environmental concerns still motivate the majority of Americans who invest in renewable energy; not profit potential. But the feel-good dividends aren't as sweet if there's no monetary return on your investment. TechNet's line on economic competitiveness gets to the crux of Kiplinger's worries and the solutions that could avoid a redundant American auto industry, while providing you with more opportunities to invest.

We're looking to Silicon Valley and Washington for the next domestic moves, especially in the Senate where many energy bills have died, but we're also keeping an eye on international firms that will stand the test of true global competition in automotive cleantech.

Regards,

Sam Hopkins

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