President Barack Obama’s recovery plan included putting 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. And more than 100 green car, battery and tech companies have applied for as much as $25 billion in loans under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program. Tesla has been approved for $465 million in loans; Fisker for $529 million.
Ford is set to receive far more, at $5.9 billion, with Nissan approved for $1.6 billion to build its Leaf EV factory and battery facility in Smyrna, Tenn. GM has applied for $14.4 billion and Chrysler $8.6 billion, and both seem certain to receive some percentage of those requests.

But behind the feel-good vision is rightful skepticism. For Fisker and Tesla especially, I’ll quote editor Josh Condon, who couldn’t have said it better: “Aren't we far enough down the road with EV technology that companies don't have to create Porsche-priced sports cars, just for the purported trickle-down knowledge that somehow would allow them to build an affordable commuter? And if they can't figure out how to successfully run their business without government money, what chance do they stand once that money runs out?"

Despite all the hype and ink spilled over Tesla in its early, euphoric stages -- that the company would reinvent the auto business and wipe out dinosaurs like GM -- it’s not yet clear that Tesla or Fisker has developed any EV technology that trumps what the Nissans, Fords and GMs of the world can do for themselves.

As Tesla and Fisker are first to admit, the $110,000 Tesla Roadster and upcoming $89,000 Fisker Karma (built in Finland and due in February after several delays) aren’t solutions for the average American, or saviors of the planet. Instead, both companies plan to apply their federal loans to developing more affordable, made-in-America cars: Tesla's Model S electric car and the yet-to-be-unveiled Project Nina plug-in hybrid from Fisker. Even pushing those models' prices to $50,000 requires more federal help, in the form of a $7,500 tax credit for buyers. And that 50 grand is nearly double the price of the average new car sold today.

Last I spoke to Henrik Fisker, the former Aston Martin chief designer, he said that without government loans, development of the Nina model would stall until cash finally flows in from sales of the Fisker Karma -- kicking its timetable back at least two years from the planned 2012 introduction. That's despite Fisker's success in attracting an additional $339 million in private capital. Yet these financial challenges go to show the quixotic challenge of starting a major, successful car company from scratch -- something that hasn’t happened in America for a half-century and more.

Bottom line: We just want something to show for our money -- green, megamileage cars for real people with real budgets. But we’re also fooling ourselves if we think that consumers and industry can do it alone. As oil pours into the Gulf and mucks up the water, the wildlife and people’s livelihoods, the reaction of many people has been, well -- let’s just go out and drill some more.

Ultimately, if the government really wants to change the way we drive and address global warming, it needs to put its money where its mouth is. Lord knows the government has wasted money on worse things than on the sorely lacking technological R&D that could create jobs and revamp a critical American industry. Certainly, the federal government has backed some dogs, including the notorious Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles -- a $1.3 billion public-private project whose goal was an affordable 80-mpg car. The PNGV produced concepts such as GM's diesel-electric Precept, but produced bupkes for showrooms.

Yet the Chinese government, in a country that's quickly become the world's largest car market, isn't shy about shoveling money at electric-car R&D. Sure, its car industry is largely state-owned anyway, but at some point we have to compete. As for skeptics of anything good coming from Washington -- since you’re reading this on the Internet, you have the government to thank: The Internet that sparked its own economic and tech revolution was invented not by Al Gore or Silicon Valley, but by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In other words, it owes its very existence to four decades of public R&D spending. The ARPA itself was formed by President Dwight Eisenhower in response to the perceived threat of the day: Russia’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite. The idea was to reaffirm America’s technical edge, not just in space but in computing and other fields.

That idea is at the heart of today’s automotive aid. Even critics might allow that alternative-fuel vehicles will remain stillborn without public incentives -- at least until gas hits $6 a gallon. In the current marketplace, companies from Tesla to GM agree on one thing: They prefer a helping hand to the invisible one.