WASHINGTON — In proposing a $300 million government prize for the invention of a more efficient car battery, Senator McCain is taking a page from the playbook of Newt Gingrich.

The former House speaker and architect of the “Contract with America” has pushed the use of cash rewards to spur innovation, particularly as the country grapples with the challenges of reducing its dependence on gasoline-powered transportation and foreign oil.

In a speech in Fresno, Calif., Mr. McCain said the government should offer $300 million “for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost, and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

“This is one dollar for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” the presumptive Republican nominee said, adding that the $300 million reward “should deliver a power source at 30% of the current costs.”

The prize would be available to companies that manufacture and sell their products in America, and the money would be set aside through the standard congressional appropriations process, a top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said.

Noting that others — including himself — have championed the idea of prizes as public policy, Mr. Holtz-Eakin told The New York Sun that the idea was “unrelated” to proposals by Mr. Gingrich, who has advocated prizes in recent op-ed articles and in a book he wrote last year.

In his book, the former speaker, who a spokesman said was traveling and unavailable for an interview yesterday, cites as examples the $25,000 won by Charles Lindbergh for his 1927 flight to Paris from New York, and the $10 million Ansari X prize for space travel. He says tax-free rewards should be offered for space travel to Mars and for building the first permanent lunar base, as well as for the development of a hydrogen car that can be mass-produced.

Mr. Gingrich considered a run for president last year, and while he is not often mentioned as a possible running mate for Mr. McCain, he has not ruled it out if asked. He endorsed Governor Jindal for the vice presidential slot in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this month.

Calling Mr. McCain’s proposal “an idea whose time has come,” Mr. Gingrich praises the Arizona senator in a newsletter set for publication today on the Human Events Web site. “Rather than bloated, bureaucratic government programs that are black holes for tax dollars, prizes unleash the creative, entrepreneurial spirit that built this country,” he writes. “Congratulations to Sen. McCain for his faith in the ingenuity of the American people.”

Democrats responded to the McCain proposal with harsh rhetoric, but they did not reject it out of hand and instead focused most of their criticism on the Republican’s support for offshore oil drilling. Senator Obama’s chief economic adviser, Jason Furman, told reporters on a conference call that the battery prize was a “bogus solution to a major problem.”

But in response to additional questions, Mr. Furman offered a more nuanced critique. “Prizes can be a perfectly good technique to encourage innovation,” he wrote in an e-mail. He said that while Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would “consider” prizes as part of his plan to invest $150 billion in new energy sources and other job-creating measures, Mr. McCain’s proposal fell short. “A single proposal for an additional $300 million in funding is entirely and completely inadequate to the scale of our problems,” Mr. Furman said. “It is small compared to existing spending on energy research. Small compared to McCain’s tax cut proposals. And small compared to what is needed.”

Mr. McCain also unveiled what he is calling the “clean car challenge” to encourage automakers to reduce carbon emissions in cars. Customers who buy a car that emits no carbon would receive a $5,000 tax credit, which would decrease on a sliding scale for vehicles that emit some carbon.

The proposals drew a mixed grade from some conservative policy analysts, who praised the reward idea while criticizing the tax credits as an unnecessary government subsidy. “Tough fiscal times call for innovative strategies. Prizes could work well,” the policy director for the fiscal watchdog Concord Coalition, Josh Gordon, said, adding that tax credits signaled a more “old-school” approach.