Now that President Obama has written out a big, fat check to General Motors and put a 31-year old crony with no business experience in charge of it, you’re probably wondering what they’re doing with the money.
The answer, according to Wired, is stealing the best ideas from tax paying entrepreneurs.
GM invested $25 million in the 33,000-square-foot Global Battery Systems Lab to develop and test the drivetrains underpinning the Chevrolet Volt and other hybrid, battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
The automaker believes the facility, at its sprawling Warren Technical Center campus outside Detroit, Michigan, will help make it a market leader in battery and EV technology.
So far, so good. But here’s where it gets a little iffy:
The lab also features a thermal shaker table for testing the structural integrity of each pack and a battery tear-down workshop for failure analysis and reverse-engineering competitors’ batteries.
Please allow us to translate: We gave GM billions of dollars so they could rip off good ideas from the entrepreneurs and companies who helped contributed to their bail out.
Perfect. Just friggin’ perfect.
Source: Wired via PlanetGore
