INDIANAPOLIS —The federal government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Indiana to help make it a leader in the energy-efficient transportation industry, yet gas prices here still hit a record high of $4.25 per gallon on Wednesday.
So President Barack Obama was trying to make a pretty tough sale when he visited the Allison Transmission plant here on Friday.
His argument one he seems sure to carry into his re-election campaign is that targeting major investments today toward those emerging technologies is a recipe to grow jobs and lessen America's dependence on foreign oil at the same time.
It's a long-range answer to two short-term problems — bloated gas prices and an unemployment rate still hovering just below 10 percent.
How long-range? How have the companies that received federal stimulus money to jump-start the electric vehicle industry have fared?
EnerDel, a lithium-ion battery maker with three Indiana facilities, got a of $118.5 million grant to transition from a research-and-development phase into mass production of those batteries.
That production was supposed to bring 1,100 jobs, paying $18.50 an hour, Robert Kamischke, the company's chief financial officer, said in August.
But according to records posted online at recovery.gov, EnerDel is nowhere near that level of employment, in part because it is still gearing up its new production facility. Those jobs could be months or years away.
There's Remy Internationa in Pendleton, which got a $60.2 million grant to build hybrid electric motors, but that money has bought just 170 jobs so far, according to a report Remy submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The company cited two reasons for the delay. One is that it is still negotiating contracts with companies that will provide its supplies. The other is that its manufacturing site selection process is being delayed "due to market timing." So, the company's timeline has been extended by a year, to the end of 2013, it reported.
There's Wakarusa-based Navistar, which Obama visited in August 2009 to announce $2.4 billion in stimulus grants for green technology projects in 25 states.
The company got a $39.2 million grant to build small, advanced-battery electric trucks. But that project has moved at a snail's pace, and so far only 53 of the 700 or so expected jobs actually exist.
Kokomo-based Delphi got $89.3 million to develop electronic controls for hybrid vehicles. So far the company reports 79 jobs, and some trouble finding buyers.
It's only fair to point out that companies have not yet received the entire sums of those grants. Though the money is set aside for them, most have banked somewhere around a quarter to a third of the full sums, and will have to meet specific benchmarks to get the rest.
It's also important to note that companies that got green tech grants in other states are, for the most part, no further along than those in Indiana. The state is still positioned to have a shot at becoming a leader in the electric car industry.
In the long term, Obama could be exactly right about much of this. Though Republicans can, and do, criticize the shortage of jobs he's grown for the money his stimulus program has spent, these projects might ultimately do just what the president says they will.
That's a really complicated answer, though, to the questions on most Americans' minds: Where can we find jobs today, and when will we stop having to pay $4 a gallon for gas?