I agree that $300 million is a token (enough money to build 1/20 of a single nuclear power station), but I think the intent of these “x-prize” type contests is to get small companies to expend some R&D effort on these issues. I also agree that the main issue is the battery, but lots of people are already working on next generation battery technology. The existing national lab system probably does not have the skill set to work on this problem, and I would not use the word “innovative” to describe the DOE. The national labs do plenty of other work under various interagency agreements, but this is the kind of thing they probably wouldn’t do in-house anyway.