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In Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s speech on Tuesday, he said that battery innovation in the U.S. over the past three or four years has been “fantastic.” In numerous interviews with the CEOs of these battery companies at ARPA-E, executives referred to the emergence of new energy storage tech for the grid and EVs as a new boom.

In Chu’s speech he referenced a startup called Vorbeck Materials, which is working with Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) and Princeton University, to develop next-gen lithium batteries using graphene. In a speech by former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, Scott took the opportunity to talk about Fluidic Energy, an energy storage company in Phoenix, Arizona, that’s making rechargeable metal air batteries, and on which Scott is on the Board.

Silicon Valley battery maker Envia Systems made news at ARPA-E this week thanks to its breakthrough that it can build a high energy-dense battery that could create a 300-mile range electric car and could cost around $25,000 to $30,000. Envia is backed by venture capitalists, General Motors, and the Department of Energy. “There are three countries in the race for batteries for electric vehicles: Japan, Korea and the U.S.,” said Atul Kapadia, CEO of Envia Systems to me in an interview at ARPA-E. Envia is looking to partner with global battery manufacturers to license it’s tech or establish joint ventures.

Eos Energy Storage, a startup based in New Jersey, is building a low cost grid battery using air and zinc and is shooting to commercialize its battery in two years at a cost of $160 per kWh. Eos Energy Storage President Steve Hellman told me in an interview that he thought the U.S. was leading in terms of grid battery innovation, and that he thought other countries would be hard pressed to recreate the ARPA-E event, and have it be chock full of grid battery innovation.

Phil Giudice, CEO of Liquid Metal Battery — a startup building a sodium battery and backed by Bill Gates — told me he also thought the U.S. was dominating the grid battery space, and that there has been “10-fold more activity” in the U.S. compared to other countries in terms of grid battery innovation and investmtent. Liquid Metal Battery is looking to continue development on its battery, which sandwiches molten salt between two layers of liquid metal, this year.

Other energy storage companies I chatted with at ARPA-E include Pellion, which is developing magnesium battery tech, Recapping, which is developing high energy density capacitors, PolyPlus, which has an air and liquid battery, FlexEl, which makes flexible batteries, and Prieto Battery, which is developing a next-gen lithium ion battery. Government players like the Army, and corporations like Johnson Controls are also developing home-grown energy storage tech.

However, the way it works with early stage scientific innovation is that not many of the companies will likely be home runs. Bill Gates, in a speech on Tuesday, noted that the failure rate of these battery projects would probably be 90 percent, which is why the world needs to try thousands of these ideas.

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1). GreatPoint Energy and China Wanxiang Holdings: At one point GreatPoint Energy, a company that converts coal into cleaner-burning natural gas, had an investor list that was led by the who’s who of Silicon Valley’s greentech ambitions, including Kleiner Perkins, Advanced Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Khosla Ventures. But according to DowJones Venture Wire last week, GreatPoint Energy has now developed a $1.25 billion partnership with industrial parts supplier China Wanxiang Holdings, including a $420 million Series D equity investment.

The article calls the deal “the largest ever by a Chinese corporation into a venture-capital-funded U.S. company.” GreatPoint Energy will use the money partly to build a large-scale plant in China to convert coal into natural gas using GreatPoint’s process called hydromethanation.

2). Smith Electric Vehicles and Wanxiang Group: GreatPoint Energy isn’t the only one that’s teamed up with Wanxiang. I reported last week that electric car company Smith Electric Vehicles is in the process of raising $40 million from private investors. And days after that article, Smith announced that Wanxiang Group has signed a letter of intent for a $25 million equity investment into Smith and an up to a $75 million investment in a JV between Smith and Wanxiang to make electric school buses and commercial vehicles.

Smith filed for an IPO in November 2011. The company sells electric trucks and vans for companies’ fleet operations and counts customers like Coca-Cola, Fed-Ex, Staples, and Sainsburys, as well as the military.

3). Bridgelux and Kaistar: California-based LED lighting startup Bridgelux announced last week that it’s getting $25 million from Kaistar, a joint venture between two public Chinese companies, Epistar and Kaifa. Bridgelux plans to use the funds for research, development and manufacturing of LED chips and packaging for light fixtures.

Bridgelux had already raised a massive $220 million in private funding and in previous years Bridgelux was on the short list for an IPO.

4). LanzaTech and Chinese steel and coal companies: LanzaTech uses microbes and fermentation to convert the carbon monoxide from waste gas from industrial operations and other sources into biofuels and chemicals. Founded in 2005, LanzaTech originally hailed from New Zealand and in recent years has started building demonstration projects in China.

LanzaTech is already working with two Chinese steel manufacturers – Baosteel and Capital Steel — to turn waste gas from their operations into ethanol. LanzaTech said it has installed equipment for a demonstration plant at Baosteel and plans to start production later this year. Last November, the biofuel company also announced a plan to work with a large Chinese coal producer – Yankuang Group — to produce fuels and chemicals from synthesis gas produced by Yankuang’s gasification equipment.

5). PowerGenix and China City Construction Corps: San Diego-based PowerGenix spent the past year hunting for a partner in China and announced in January that it’s forming a joint venture with China City Construction Corp. to produce its nickel-zinc batteries for the so-called microhybrid vehicles. By the end of this year, the joint venture, called CCCC-PowerGenix Clean Energy Co., plans to set up a factory to produce 400,000 batteries per year, or 200,000 watt-hours total.

6). TerraPower and the Chinese government: Nuclear startup TerraPower doesn’t have an official deal to build a reactor with China’s National Nuclear Corporation (despite media reports), but TerraPower investor Bill Gates (yes that Bill Gates) says that TerraPower is having preliminary discussions with the Chinese government over its nuclear tech.

TerraPower is developing nuclear traveling wave reactor technology, which is a relatively new type of small nuclear reactor design that can use the waste byproduct of the enrichment process, or waste uranium, for fuel. TerraPower’s backers have long said it will likely commercialize its technology first outside the U.S.

7). Brammo and the Hong Kong government: Electric motorcycle maker Brammo says it’s scored a deal to supply the Hong Kong government and police force with its electric motorcycles. Brammo says the Hong Kong government will replace its existing gas-powered motorcycle fleet with Brammo’s Enertia.

Hong Kong’s Water Supplies Department will use the Enertia Plus, while the Hong Kong police department will use the 2012 Enertia Plus “LE,” or the Law Enforcement edition, which has features for police. Brammo’s exclusive dealer in Hong Kong is JCAM Advanced Mobility Company.

8). Silevo and Chinese venture firms: California startup Silevo is building a hybrid solar cell design that uses single-crystal silicon as the base layer on which it adds a “tunneling oxide layer” and a layer of amorphous silicon to alter the voltage and current of the cells. Silevo raised $55 million in venture capital from investors, including three China-based firms: DT Capital (affiliated with Madrone Capital),  NewMargin Ventures, and GSR Ventures (connected to Mayfield Fund).

Silevo is in the process of building a 30 MW factory in Hangzhou, China, and expects to bring the factory into full production mode during the first quarter of 2012. The company plans to add another 200 MW in 2013 if demand is there.

9). Boston-Power and the Chinese government: Boston-Power, a lithium-ion battery maker, raised $125 million in venture capital and Chinese government incentives to move its manufacturing base to China. Boston-Power plans to build a lithium-ion battery cell factory near Shanghai and a technology center in Beijing where its staff will work with customers to integrate Boston-Power’s cells into electric drivetrains.

10). Sunpreme and Chinese investors: Solar cell maker Sunpreme raised roughly $50 million in a series B round to build a factory in Jiaxing, China. Investors include International Finance Corp. (part of the World Bank Group), Capricorn Investment Group and China Environmental Fund III (managed by Tsing Capital in China).

Images courtesy of Boston-Power, Silevo, Dainis Matisons, PowerGenix, Bridgelux, Smith Electric Vehicles and GreatPoint Energy.

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So the company is looking to live again, and says if approved, it will use the restructuring and equity to continue operations, and will meet its commitments to its suppliers and customers and employees.

Ener1 is officially off the Nasdaq; it was first delisted in Oct. 2011. After this restructuring plan, Ener1 says all that common stock will be “extinguished” and current equity holders “will not receive any distributions.” That’s fun.

One of Ener1′s biggest problems was its support of electric car maker Think, which headed into bankruptcy itself last year. Ener1′s current CEO (the former CEO left a couple of months ago as well as many key execs), Alex Sorokin, explains the market falter in a release Thursday as:

Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles. That pressure was exacerbated by volatility in the debt and equity markets that further limited our borrowing ability and the loss of a major customer, Think Global, which filed for bankruptcy in June 2011, and for which we were exclusively providing commercial lithium-ion battery packs.

The restructuring could also shine a light on Ener1′s previous government support. Ener1 is the parent company of EnerDel, which if you remember back to summer 2009, received a $118 million grant from the Department of Energy’s $2.4 billion Electric Drive Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative.

EnerDel received the funds to help it build a factory that would produce batteries for electric vehicles. The DOE told Inside Indiana Business last year that EnerDel has received $55 million of the grant, and the DOE is closely watching Ener1 and EnerDel.

Update: DOE spokesperson Jen Stutsman emailed me this statement on Ener1′s bankruptcy plans:

The Department of Energy’s grant to EnerDel is supporting a cutting-edge battery manufacturing plant that is producing batteries in America that are being sold across the country and around the world. This grant is part of the Department’s efforts to commercialize promising vehicle technologies that will help America to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and ensure U.S. companies can compete in the global auto industry.  While it’s unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit. As the company has said, the restructuring is not expected to impact EnerDel’s operations and that they do not expect to reduce employment at the site.

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Update: Better Place sent me the latest numbers for its corporate customers which is 250 companies and a planned 80,000 cars. The company also drove 70 cars in its first weekend drive and delivered 100 cars to customers.

On Better Place’s Facebook page, Agassi said:

Four years ago, we promised the president of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres, that by today we will have serially produced electric cars that would drive in the streets of Israel. It seemed like an impossible dream. Today we delivered those cars to people who will be driving electric cars daily as their only vehicle. We had to move mountains to get to this day, and we did. Yet we have many more mountains to move.

Here are some of the photos from the event, courtesy of Better Place’s Facebook page:

Better Place’s vision is to sell electric car miles like cellphone minutes, accompanied by a network of chargers and battery swap stations. The company has a partnership with Renault-Nissan and the cars in the Israeli Better Place network are the Fluenz Z.E.

Late last year, Better Place closed yet another round of $200 million in funding that supposedly brought the company’s valuation to $2.25 billion. The Silicon Valley startup has raised more than $750 million, and included new investors GE and UBS in that round.

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Here’s what the Department of Energy said back in February about which cars would deliver what part of the goal. It should be noted that the DOE didn’t include estimates from Coda Automotive, Honda, and Mitsubishi which will likely deliver some volumes of cars between now and 2015. But let’s look at the numbers below and see what is still there. A couple months ago Pike Research said that it thinks that we might end up seeing about 667,000 plug-in electric cars sold by 2015 instead of the 1 million.

Think EV: From the get-go we can cross off the 57,000 cars from the Think City EV. The company filed for bankruptcy this summer, and though it was acquired by an investor, I don’t think it will be producing any cars anytime soon. That takes us down to 1,165,200.

Tesla: Tesla will sell 2,500 of its Roadster car in 2011 and 2012, so that adds another 1,500 cars, bringing us up slightly to 1,166,700. The numbers for Tesla’s Model S seem to be on track with those on the list.

Smith Electric Vehicles: Electric fleet maker Smith Electric Vehicles recently filed for an IPO, so has revealed its latest figures for how many cars it thinks it can produce. Smith says it has sold 320 vehicles for the year ending Sept. 30, 2011, has a backlog of 120 vehicles, and has pre-sold 540 vehicles, which it will make through July 2012. So after the Summer of 2012, Smith will have made and sold about 1,000 electric cars. That’s close to half of what the DOE was expecting by then. Smith says it make another 2,220 vehicles between 2012 and 2015, while the DOE was predicting 4,000 vehicles from it (1,000 per year) by the end of 2015. I think we can conservatively cut Smith’s contribution by a third of what the DOE estimated, bringing us down by 1,600, roughly what the extra Roadster sales contributed, 1,165,100.

Nissan LEAF: Nissan said about a month ago that it had sold 15,000 LEAFs globally. The DOE predicted that there would be 25,000 LEAFS just in the U.S. by 2011. Conservatively I think we can cut 10,000 cars off the DOE’s 2011 LEAF figure, bringing it to 1,155,100.

Navistar eStar: I’m not sure on the latest numbers for this company, but I’ve contacted the company and will update this when I know more. Navistar was given a $39.2 million grant in 2009 under the $2.4 billion stimulus program, and the company hoped to deliver 400 eStars by the end of 2010. It launched eStars for its first customer FedEx in the Summer of 2010. But I don’t think its goals have been met, and the DOE estimates for its status report that it thinks Navistar can deliver 200 eStars by the end of 2011. Given that lag time I would bet that the Navistar numbers for the DOE status report are lower, but I’ll since they were already low, I’ll keep them as is for now.

GM Volt: O.K. now for a big one. According to the DOE numbers, GM is supposed to produce 15,000 Volts by the end of 2011, though more recent figures put GM’s own estimates for 10,000 in 2011. According to Wired last month GM had shipped about 4,000 Volts off of the lot by the end of September. GM sold 723 Volts in the month of September. So let’s give GM the benefit of the doubt and say it will  sell 1,000 Volts each month for October, November and December. So that would mean GM would have shipped 7,000 Volts for 2011, less than half of what the DOE was predicting for 2011.

Then the DOE says that GM is supposed to produce 120,000 Volts for 2012. That number is way high. According to reports GM intends to likely produce 45,000 Volts for U.S. dealers in 2012, and will make more cars for other markets. So we can cut the 2011 figure by 8,000, and the 2012 number by 75,000. Bringing us to 1,072,100.

DOE is depending on GM to make and sell 120,000 Volts for the U.S. market each year in 2013/2014/2015. It will probably end up being more like half that figure at 60,000 cars for at least 2013, though it could ramp up in 2014 and 2015. Giving the DOE the benefit of the doubt for 2014/2015, let’s shave off another 60,000 for 2013, to bring it to 1,012,100.

Ford Focus EV: Ford won’t even start selling its Focus EV until the end of 2011, and just opened a website to accept reservations. The DOE thinks it can produce and sell 10,000 Ford Focus EV’s in 2012. Ford hasn’t said how many it intends to produce, but if it sells 10,000 it would mean the Ford Focus EV would sell more than the Volt in its first year. Doable? Let’s keep the number the same on that for now.

Fisker: And now to Fisker, which has delayed production and salesof its Karma car, and plans to produce the car in small volumes in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, and then ramp up to volume production in 2012. The production of 1,000 Karmas in 2011 doesn’t

Coda sedan

seem realistic, as last I heard Fisker had shipped 40 cars from its partner’s plant in Finland in mid October. Let’s say Fisker produces and ships 200 Karmas in 2011. Let’s cut the DOE’s Fisker Karma estimate by 800, bringing the number down to 1,011,300.

Fisker says its Nina won’t be produced in volume until mid-2013, with prototype production starting in late 2012. That’s assuming this car is coming out at all (the skeptic in me says it’s 50/50 at this point). Erase those entire 5,000 cars that the DOE says will come from the Nina in 2012, bringing us to 1,006,300. Since Fisker isn’t going into volume production until mid-2013, I think we can cut its 2013 estimates in half, by 20,000, bringing us to 986,300. I’ll leave the 2014 and 2015 Nina DOE estimates alone, but they seem rather unreasonable at 45,000 Ninas produced and sold in 2014 and 75,000 in 2015.

Coda: The DOE didn’t take Coda into account for that table, so let’s add in some cars for Coda, as it will start shipping its first Codas to dealers in December. Let’s say Coda sells 2,500 Codas in 2012 (it’s estimated 14,000 in its first year, 7,000 for consumers and 7,000 for fleets, but that sounds high), and 5,000 each year for 2013, 2014, and 2015. So I’ll add that backup to 1,003,800.

Wrapup

All of this math is based on guesses and assumption, but I’m trying to give you a picture for how close this is going to be. I’m also being conservative in assuming that Fisker stays afloat and is able to ramp up volume production of its Karma, and then is able to produce the Nina at all — the DOE estimates that the Nina will give close to 200,000 EVs to its 1 million total by 2015! So if the Nina doesn’t emerge or struggles the numbers will go waaaay down.

In addition if GM doesn’t ramp its Volt up to 120,000 per year, it will also cut the total significantly. The DOE was assuming about 500,000 EVs to come from the Volt for its estimates. Essentially between the Nina and the Volt, the DOE thinks close to half of the volume will come from them!

Finally some companies that are meeting their milestones could end up producing more cars than previously estimated. Tesla will be unveiling its Model X, a cool SUV minivan, which will likely go on sale before 2015.

It’s going to be close — very close — for the U.S. to meet its goal to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. As I said earlier Pike Research thinks that we might end up seeing about 667,000 plug-in electric cars sold by 2015, instead of the 1 million.

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But even as recently as this May, Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur was emphasizing that the company is still hoping for a Department of Energy loan to help it with funding for manufacturing the car. About a year ago Aptera execs said that once the DOE loan had been received, it could start manufacturing in 11 months. That should be a lesson for greentech entrepreneurs that are building businesses based off government support.

Even with newly raised debt, things are looking a little shaky for Aptera. All Cars Electric and Autoblog Green point out that Aptera is no longer letting prospective buyers reserve the car on its website (the reservation system gives an error message). At the same time, automakers Nissan and GM have launched their inaugural electric cars that are in the same price range as the planned 2e, which is classified as a motorcycle in California because of its three wheels.

Aptera has some high-profile backers, including Google.org, NRG Energy and Bill Gross’ Idea Labs, so maybe its funders can keep the company alive until it can get its car out. I hope so — I still want to drive a 2e!

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Its flagship electric bus is called the EcoRide BE-35, and it uses an electric propulsion system from UQM Technologies, and the bus has a lightweight composite body. Proterra has designed the vehicle to operate for up to three hours and juice up within 10 minutes at inductive fast-charging stations installed along the bus route.

Proterra said in a release Monday morning that it will use the new funds to complete validation testing of its buses, to deploy more pilot fleets and to boost volume and cut costs from its factory in Greenville, South Carolina that can produce 400 buses annually.

About a year ago, Proterra deployed its first electric buses and fast-chargers to Foothill Transit, which serves eastern Los Angeles County. Foothill Transit purchased three Proterra EcoRide BE-35 electric buses, as well as two fast-charging stations, and signed on for an option to buy nine more of the model if all goes well in an initial trial period. Other Proterra models built with fuel cell range-extenders have been deployed in Burbank, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Columbia, S.C.

Transit companies can use the electric buses to meet the state and the California Air Resources Board’s Zero Emission Bus (Zbus) regulation, which requires buses with zero tailpipe emissions to make up at least 15 percent of large California agencies’ annual bus orders starting in 2012. Foothill bought the Ecoliner buses with funds from the CEC’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Transportation program.

Proterra previously raised $20 million, but this new funding from GM Ventures and Kleiner takes the company to a completely different level. GM Ventures can provide the startups it invests in commercial and research development deals, and it always looks good to be able to use a quote from Kleiner partner Al Gore in an announcement.

Updates from media call: GM Ventures said in the call that it has invested about $36 million into startups, and will be announcing a few more investments “soon.”

Image courtesy of Proterra.

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