The nice part about having the Chinese own this and pursuing batteries an EVs is that I don't think they have a predisposed political/business structure that is vested in the status quo. Therefore, those of us who want cost effective EVs are more likely to get them from China than we are from US companies. The US is willing to send young people to die for oil, but not willing to invest in technologies that would free us from the need for that commodity. The US car companies are willing to build a few compliance vehicles too, and make it look like they want to do it. But really, they would prefer to sell you the highly profitable internal combustion engines with all their wearable and replaceable parts.

Not a good move by any means; what you are doing here is transferring control of the country's battery knowledge to another nation. The A123 battery chemistry is great for power in starter batteries, race car batteries,etc. And, now the current greedy group of capitalists that run the country (read banksters, politicians and lobbists here) are cashing out this company.

I would like to see A123 bankrupt and reorganize to keep the technology at home. Perhaps a company like Tesla, Apple could take over and make it work. But, you know what? The Big Oil firms love it as it slows down our transitions to other forms of energy.

A123 were given $250-300M between various DOE, MEDC and USABC grants, creating a company valued at $2B and funded by the American taxpayer.
Now after 24 months of gross mismanagement a Chinese buyer is permitted to come in and take a 80% controlling interest in the company for pennies on the dollar and we (the American taxpayer) are supposed to feel OK about this, bulls***t.
Were is the accountability, how can the DOE go forward with the balance of its grants and how come Dave Vieau and his teams heads are not on a pole rather than negotiating $M parachute and stay on packages.
Total fraud!!!!

Thank God the Federal Government is not involved.
We have nothing to fear from China Inc.

Thanks, BK4 for the link to WSJ.
It doesn't take a MBA to understand why manufacturing is not doing well in the US and EU when the costs of labor and regulatory compliance are many times over in developed countries than what manufacturers are paying for in China, India, and Mexico et al. and when the out-sourced products are re-imported without significant tariff.

The manufacturers in the US, EU and Japan are not competing with China et al in a level playing field, but at a huge disadvantage. It's analogous to sending your kids to play Varsity Football with their hands tied behind their backs, and then you wonder why they can't win, but got bloody noses all over!!!

If our government wants our industries to succeed and create domestic jobs, the guvmint must be a fair referee and ensure a level playing field. No kids should be sent to play football with their hands tied behind their backs.

@HarveyD,
The productivity level per worker in the USA has been rising rapidly, and is about the highest in the world. Yet, the cost of living and cost of doing business is many times higher in US than in China, such that you cannot pay the US worker what you would pay a Chinese worker, and expect the US worker to be able to live on that salary. And, if you try to do that anyway, the US workers would not have any buying power whatsoever, so that most of the stuffs produced would piled up in warehouses and few have the money to buy much of anything, and DEFLATION will happen, and economic collapse will ensue, just like it did in the 1930's just before the Great Depression.

So, the answer is not to lower our standard of living by forcing every workers in the USA and EU down to Chinese standard and precipitate a Second Great Depression!!! The answer is to raise everyone's living standard by convince China et al to raise theirs, better wages and better working conditions for their workers, OSHA's rules equivalent to the US and EU, same labor standard, same environmental standards etc...or else impose a gradually-rising tariffs on their products proportional to the differences in standards between theirs and ours, until all standards catch up...and then we would really have FREE and FAIR TRADE.

Parallel to the Tariff plan, the guvmint must also ensure that the living cost in the US must be brought down to reasonable world-wide standard. Huge urban sprawls cost a lot in term of natural resources such as concrete and piping and land, time spent on daily commute, energy spent on huge SUV's that carry only one person, woeful lack of public transportation, and a hugely and totally-unresonably expensive health care system and legal system...High cost of living means lower competitiveness level economically.

No electorial candidate dare mention these issues, because in a Democracy...uh...Idiocracy, you get votes by telling your constituents what they LIKE to hear, not what they NEED to hear!!!

We will need to get out of our Idiocratic governance system...FAST...by assigning different weight to each voter...Smart and high-tax-payers need more votes per person, while those with lower cognitive-skill or low-to-no-tax-payers need fewer votes per person...The US founding Fathers intended for a Republic wherein policy making are done by the elites, not by the mass of the people. There were pole tax earlier in the US history, and voters initially were restricted to property owners only.

@Dursun,
Thanks for the reference on China Inc. China is ruled by the elite 5%--the Communist Party (CPC), not by a Democracy...uh Idiocracy...!!! To become member of the CPC, one must demonstrate records of public service and dedication to the cause and competence, or good connections...Only one out of eight person applied can get into the CPC.

I agree with most of what you say, Roger, but you misfire with this:

Parallel to the Tariff plan, the guvmint must also ensure that the living cost in the US must be brought down to reasonable world-wide standard. Huge urban sprawls cost a lot in term of natural resources such as concrete and piping and land, time spent on daily commute

To become member of the CPC, one must demonstrate records of public service and dedication to the cause and competence, or good connections...Only one out of eight person applied can get into the CPC.

Oh! That explains why Communist Chinese are better at business than we are. Anyone can become a successful politician in America.

I don't see how overturning this would help solving the crime and violence problems in urban areas, since crime and violence can be committed by people of any race, color or ethnicity.

In the pre-"civil rights" era, minorities out of their designated areas would be arrested or receive extrajudicial "encouragement" to be elsewhere.  This restricted most of their criminal activities to the zones where they lived (those activities made the areas where they lived very undesirable).  After "civil rights" and "fair housing", the only legal way to avoid the crime was to move out of reach.  As real-estate brokers engineered "blockbusting" to get business through forced turnover, Whites attempted to flee beyond the range of the criminal element unleashed upon them.  You can see the results in Detroit, Gary, St. Louis, and many other formerly-thriving cities:  they might as well have been bombed out like Dresden.

Large city crimes can better managed. NYC is a good example where many areas have been 'cleaned' to some extend.

Hiding ourselves into remote 'fenced in' far away suburbs is a short term very expensive solution unless those hide-outs are organized like 'kibbutzs' with all services, jobs etc.

There must be a way to better managed or eliminate street gangs and other similar undesired groups.

Increased criminalization of the poorer layer of many societies is a very old problem that very few have managed to fix properly and definitely.

Short of racking them off the streets and sending them to booth camps on some remote islands, their number will keep on growing. Over 2,000,000 of them are currently in US's jails without expected results. Special schools to keep them very occupied 12+ hours a day may work but may not be very democratic. Sending them back where they came from (starting with the one with a criminal record) could be the most effective way to deal with the growing problem. We are doing the opposite by accepting 300,000+ new potential trouble makers every year in Canada. The composition of Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal has changed (for the worse) in the last 30 years or so. Good European immigrants have been replaced with uneducated people from the third world. They compose 90+% of our illegal street gangs. Newspapers are not allowed to publish their real names or photos not to be accused of discrimination. The Swiss know better.

Excellent idea Herm.