It assumes that somehow the government, largely comprised of people who probably couldn't tell you the chemical formula for water if you held a gun to their heads, would somehow do a better job of allotting money to research and development programs than the private sector.

The goal of many government research programs is primarily to employ researchers.

The goal of private research is to come up with something that works so you can make some money off it.

Car companies are dumping huge amounts of their own money into hybrids. Why? Because it works, and people will buy them. These two things do not factor very highly in government-sponsored transportation ideas, which usually involve prying people out of cars and shoving them into mass transit systems they don't want.

The real beauty of hybrids, which won't show up for a few years, is that it will create a manufacturing and recycling infrastructure for powerful automotive batteries, something that will start to make pure electric cars look a lot better and cheaper down the road.