I’d be happy to share a more extensive list of battery startups I put together with how much funding they raised & their technologies. Post your email and I’ll send it over.

Here is a summary of the better known battery startups.
http://earth2tech.com/2009/07/20/13-battery-startups-hitting-the-road-with-lithium-ion/

Joe

I was not aware there were so many startups I’d love to hear from you on them.

Someone like 123, with contracts in the pipe vis DoD, needs a bank credit line (repayable loans$) to ramp up productivity, not a gov’t contest grant (free $). IMHO

However, their iron phosphate battery technology is not all that great. GM went with a Manganese Spinel. Nissan went with a Manganese Spinel for the recently announced Leaf.

A123 is not a small fish in the world of high-power batteries. It’s amazing that two major Nickel-Cobalt plays got funded. They are way too expensive and unsafe to make it into more than a few thousand experimental cars.

All of these players are a decent start but none of them have a battery that will enable real penetration of EV’s. Hopefully the government will fund some next generation battery companies at some point to create a true competitive advantage in the U.S. Subisidizing factories with technologies that can’t compete on their own is a 3rd world economic strategy that midwesterners should be insulted by if there is no support of technological innovation to back it up. Help us start up a midwestern version of Silicon Valley or MIT. Going head to head with Asian companies with no technological differentiation (or maybe worse in this case) is totally pointless. Used battery manufacturing equipment will be really cheap in Michigan in five years if more progress on the technology is not made.

The most ironic part of Biden’s speech was when he closed by saying that A123 was founded with a small grant from DOE, and then he proceeded to hand out hundreds of millions to large companies. Meanwhile, zero money went to the 20+ smaller battery startups that probably resemble what A123 was like 5-7 years ago more than A123 does today.

Let’s hope that the next round has some scraps for the smaller companies that will die without it. There were probably 50 startups that burned limited resources applying for this program only to see handouts given to big companies that had already failed to see and act on the opportunity in this space. Any startup that can raise matching VC funds and has a solid technology should have a shot.