It’s not just those who gunned for the electric car, or even the emerging power grid market, that have experienced disappointment and shifted their focus. Wilmer tells us that Leyden has tweaked its plans over the past year, and is now focusing on the tablet market as well as providing batteries for gasoline cars with start-stop technology. Previously the startup was looking to sell batteries for laptops, and electric bicycles, and then wanted to move into newer and tougher ones like electric cars.

Leyden had a deal with distributor Dr. Battery to sell cylindrical cell batteries, like the AA batteries in a flashlight, which it announced last year. But the company is no longer selling to Dr. Battery, said Wilmer, who became Leyden’s CEO earlier this year. The laptop market isn’t showing enough growth because consumers prefer thinner notebooks or tablets, and cylindrical cells also aren’t in demand for e-bikes, said Wilmer. UPDATE: Dr. Battery’s CFO,  Fan Chun, told me that his company’s relationship with Leyden hasn’t ended. In fact, Leyden is still shipping cylindrical cells to a contract manufacturer hired by Dr. Battery to assemble the cells into battery packs.

But the company has been working on developing flat and rectangular pouch cells that fit into slimmer consumer electronics. Leyden more recently has announced an effort with chipmaker NVIDIA to design tablets, which they hope will catch the eyes of tablet makers. Leyden also is courting makers of chargers for smart phones and devices for personal Wi-Fi hot spots. The company is shipping its battery cells to customers, who have put those cells in consumer electronics, but Wilmer declined to disclose the brands or types of gadgets.

Leyden also is hoping to see its batteries in gasoline cars outfitted with stop-start technology, which use a battery pack to keep the air conditioning, radio and other electronics running while a car stops momentarily, say, at an intersection when the light turns red. The battery also kick-starts the engine after the light turns green. This technology could lead to 5-10 percent better fuel economy and lower tailpipe emissions and is starting to show up in Europe.

With the slow roll out of electric vehicles, going after more mature and reliable markets certainly makes a lot of sense. But competition in those segments already is intense. A123 also targeted the stop-start market and designed a battery pack for it. And there are non-lithium ion battery developers who are pushing their way into this still niche opportunity.

Then there is the question of how startups can compete with battery giants such as Panasonic and LG Chem who have long established their presence in the consumer electronics business and are no less interested in putting their products in cars. Incidentally, Sony apparently is looking to sell its lithium-ion battery business because it’s having trouble competing with other large battery makers, particularly those in Korea, Reuters reported. Panasonic also isn’t doing so well with its lithium-ion battery business.

The prospect will probably not get too much rosier for battery startups in the near future. Boston-Power, for example, has transformed itself into essentially a Chinese company, to take advantage of low cost financing and Chinese domestic markets. So the question is how many more battery developers will follow A123 into the bankruptcy court or get scooped up, perhaps cheaply, before reaching that point?

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The past two weeks have seen some depressing news on the cleantech front: inverter manufacturer Satcon Systems declared bankruptcy, PV module manufacturer JA Solar got a delisting letter from Nasdaq and Sunpower shut most of its Philippines factories. But the worst news came with two particular announcements: Better Place, the ambitious Israeli electric vehicle start-up, pushed out its CEO and evangelist-in-chief Shai Agassi, while A123 Systems, the Massachusetts-based battery manufacturer which was once the darling of the advanced battery industry, announced bankruptcy.

Is this the long-awaited cleantech apocalypse, or will some of these fighters rise from the mat? The short answer is this: those with effective business models (i.e. Better Place) have excellent prospects; those who don’t have a viable product to sell in the marketplace (i.e. A123 Systems) won’t be rising from anywhere.

All the news of the past few weeks certainly hasn’t helped cleantech, as an investing concept, to gain any respect. The fundamental problem with cleantech is that the name itself is a useful fiction: any company with a technology that might somehow be labelled environmentally positive can affix itself with the cleantech label and start selling shares. That leads to a bucket filled with a variety of companies with no real relationship to each other: from natural gas drillers to solar module manufacturers to high-tech laundromats.

In addition, most of the sectors that these companies play in are very hard to disrupt, such as energy and transportation. For a new company to compete, long lead times and many years prior to cash-flow positivity are to be expected. Meanwhile the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who backed such enterprises are quick to head for the exits when their expected 10x returns didn’t materialize within two years.

Thus cleantech as a whole was doomed to fail simply because it was a square peg of a marketing term that could never have fit into the round hole of expectations. That doesn’t mean that every cleantech investment will be a failure. The acid test for success will be the business model that the company is betting on. Many of them are still relevant and filled with value, even in the age of dropping PV and battery prices. Others are just plain bad bets.

Which brings to mind A123 Systems. I first became aware of the importance of the company’s technology when talking to model plane hobbyists. They were willing to pay a lot of money to get their hands on the first batch of production batteries from the company because they offered something unique: increased density at lower rate. The A123 battery, I realized, had a chance to disrupt the entire transportation sector.

Unfortunately, so did every other battery manufacturer. And there in lie the weakness in betting on A123′s: they were competing against dozens of other battery companies, most of whom had deeper pockets and access to cheap, government-subsidized capital. Thus LG Chem, AESC and Panasonic won the first round of the transportation battery wars. And A123 ran out of cash before they could even get to the second round.

The good news for the car and grid storage industries is that even if A123 won’t be able to compete anymore, its ghost certainly will. That’s because the factories in Massachusetts and Michigan have been acquired Johnson Controls, a company with pockets even deeper than LG’s and Panasonic’s. Thus the equipment and manufacturing spaces that once belonged to A123 will continue to crank out advanced batteries, albeit under a different logo. Johnson Control’s next generation chemistry, based on a Nickel Cadmium Aluminum cathode, will be even more energy dense and safer than A123′s iron phosphate chemistry and will have a shot at being a transformative battery technology for both the grid storage space and for the vehicle industry.

The Better Place situation is very different from A123′s. Better Place planned on launching a network of battery switching stations that would allow subscribers to their system limitless driving range. The idea was that Better Place would bring the wireless communications business model to personal transportation. They opened the first network in Israel and, lo-and-behold, the subscribers didn’t show up. Yet.

The problem with writing an obituary for Better Place is that the underlying business model is still very sound. I’ve spend a lot of time examining that model and various iterations of it. It makes sense. And it makes money. The problem, unfortunately, has been in the execution of the marketing plan. The Israeli car market is held hostage by a small oligarchy of leasing firms. Better Place chose to thread the needle by having those leasing firms be their distributors while at the same time not sharing enough profits with them. The leasing companies balked at becoming a middle-man, and froze Better Place out of the market.

The solution to the impasse is for Better Place to either re-mold its Israel operations as a head-on competitor to the leasing companies or to renegotiate its contracts with them. That’s a relatively simple fix. It will lead to a much higher market penetration and a flood of sales. It is my opinion that Better Place will eventually succeed in the market and will quickly thereafter be faced with EV network competitors. The company still has quite a bit of cash on hand to restructure its Israel operations and then can worry about international expansion.

Here are two companies that were both looking to disrupt the transportation industry with their respective products. One couldn’t compete with the large Asian behemoths. The other stumbled in the details of a specific local market. Both are being buried by the cleantech punditocracy. A123 Systems is definitely down for the count, although its tools will be put to be good use by Johnson Controls, which purchased them. Better Place, on the other hand, has a lot of fight in it and could mount a spectacular, albeit bruising, comeback.

This article originally appeared on IDC Energy Insights.

IDC Energy Insights provides research-based advisory and consulting services focused on market and technology developments in the energy and utility industries. IDC Energy Insights serves a diverse global client base, including electric, gas and water utilities, IT vendors, independent power producers, retail energy providers, oil and gas companies, equipment manufacturers, government agencies, financial institutions, and professional services firms. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company.

Images courtesy of Better Place, A123 Systems.

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Part of the reason for the oversupply of EV batteries is simple: The market for electric cars is looking like it’s going to be a lot smaller than predicted, at least in the short term. The crunched market is something battery maker Ener1, which had a deal with electric car maker Think, and Johnson Controls, which has a battery partnership with Saft, have discussed publicly. Johnson Controls is looking to end, or expand, its deal to work on EV batteries with Saft, because it wants to pursue the power grid battery market. And Ener1 cut its losses on its investment and partnership with Think, partly because the EV market was looking slower than expected. Think eventually went bankrupt.

At the same time that the EV market is looking tiny, battery makers have been expanding capacity substantially for making EV batteries and new battery makers have been moving into the EV market. But Lux says even if oil prices jump to $200 per barrel, which could cause the EV market to grow substantially by 2020, five of the leading battery makers — LG Chem, GS Yuasa, SB LiMotive, AESC, and Sanyo — would have enough capacity to manufacture far more than needed to cover that market. That means there will be dozens of battery makers with way too much supply, particularly if gas prices remain low.

In fact, Lux predicts there will be only a few winners in the EV battery market, and some of the ones already ahead include LG Chem, SB LiMotive, and Chinese makers China BAK, China Aviation Lithium Battery (CALB), and BYD. Lux also gives Envia Systems props for its innovative technology and GM backing — there will be room for small, innovative tech developers to do licensing deals and be acquired, says Lux.

On the other hand, Lux says A123 Systems and Ener1 face “an uphill climb” — marking both of them as “caution.” Lux also issued caution takes for International Battery, K2 Energy Solutions, Valence Technology, Leyden Energy, Electrovaya, and gave a “strong caution” to Altair Nanotechnologies (ouch).

There are a few ways for these battery makers to survive the coming market crunch and consolidation. One is to find new partnerships — because the market is so immature, the partnerships that are already in place are relatively tenuous. Another survival method will be to find battery markets outside of pure EVs, like hybrid vehicles, e-bikes, and the power grid.

But there will be a significant amount of losers in the market. As an anonymous president of a battery material company says in the Lux report:

“If someone wants us to build out capacity, what happens if no one use it? If we return to just phones and laptops, then my investors are looking for new management because we’re bankrupt.”

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In particular, Needham & Company write in their report, that Johnson Controls could pursue an expanded partnership, or even a new joint venture, with Hitachi, a company which Johnson Controls already has signed a memorandum of understanding with around energy storage applications. Needham & Company analysts support Johnson Controls action, as they say: “We believe the [Saft] JV terms and conditions have minimized the company’s efforts to develop a stationary storage market strategy, while competitors have been able to make headway into this large multi-billion opportunity.” The analysts also support a new JV with Hitachi:

The formation of a JV with Hitachi could enable Johnson to cover more bases in the evolving lithium-ion (li- ion) landscape given Hitachi’s penetration into the heavy-duty market and focus on stationary applications.

We’ll see if Johnson Control’s legal actions are successful. Saft says that it will oppose the breakup, and “sees no legitimate grounds for the dissolution.” Saft saw a drop in its stock by as much as 17 percent on the news of the dissolution petition, reports Bloomberg.

The joint venture between Saft and Johnson Controls was established back in 2006 and in 2008 the group opened up a lithium ion factory for hybrid and electric vehicles. At first the JV announced high profile auto customers like Mercedes, BMW and Ford. But over time competitors like LG Chem have overtaken the JV in hybrid and electric vehicle customer wins.

Using lithium ion batteries as stationary energy storage for the power grid has emerged as a quickly growing market. Power company AES is developing the largest lithium ion battery energy storage projects in the world, with 32 MW and 40 MW projects, and AES has worked with newcomer A123 Systems. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has pegged 2012 as a turning point for grid energy storage because by then companies that have collectively received more than $250 million in federal stimulus funding are expected to complete research and development work and move into field trial stages in the U.S.

At the same time, batteries for electric vehicles have seemed to be growing slower than some had predicted. Lithium ion battery company Ener1 wrote down its investment in Norwegian electric car maker Think, citing the fact that Think had halted its vehicle production in Finland for longer than expected, has been unable to raise the funds needed to continue production, and because the overall market for EVs has been moving slower than expected. A123 Systems also recently posted a $53.6 million loss for its first quarter 2011 financials, in part because it’s just not making money off of EV deals yet.

Image is of AES’s lithium ion battery power grid project, courtesy of AES.

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Revenue hit $18.1 million for the first quarter, down 26 percent from $24.5 million from the year-ago period. A123 posted a loss of $53.6 million, or 51 cents per share, an 85 percent increase from a loss of $29 million, or 28 cents per share, from the same quarter in 2010.

The company made its debut on the Nasdaq in September 2009 with $17 per share and ended the first-day of trading at $20.29 per share. The $371 million IPO was the largest in 2009 and held up as an example of an innovative battery startup in the emerging electric car market.

However, A123’s stock has fallen quite a bit since then and closed at $5.89 per share Monday, before the company announced the earnings. The company has received hefty federal support, including a $249.1 million grant in August 2009 to build a factory in Michigan.

A123 opened that factory only last year and ramped production earlier this year. The company needs to build out that factory to eventually reach 600 megawatt-hours of annual production?

A123’s CEO, David Vieau, said the financial results fell within the company’s expectations. He added that the second quarter will be “an inflection point” for revenue generation because several customers are boosting their production now. The good news he wanted to highlight included the start of production for Fisker Automotive’s first car, the Karma, during the first quarter and a deal to supply 5 kilowatt-hour batteries to Smith Electric Vehicles starting in the second half of this year. A123’s other customers include BMW, Daimler and Navistar.

Developing and building batteries is a capital intensive business, and A123 is up against established players in Japan and Korea, from Panasonic to LG Chem. To support its expansion plans, A123 sold more shares to raise $254 million earlier this year. A123 also is angling for a $230 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

A123 also targets the energy storage market and counts AES Energy Storage among its customers. AES has installed A123 batteries in projects, including a 12 MW project in Chile and AES recently ordered 20 MW of batteries for another project in Chile.

Photo courtesy of A123 Systems

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Argonne is granting a worldwide licensing of its composite cathode material, a combination of  lithium and manganese oxides, for making lithium-ion cells. The license isn’t exclusive and covers only GM vehicles, though Argonne officials declined to name other licensees. GM plans use the intellectual property to develop battery packs that will last longer, as well as be safer and possibly cheaper, said Jon Lauckner, president of GM Ventures, on a conference call with reporters.

“We believe this will give us access to cutting-edge technology not for current vehicles, but rather future electrified vehicles,” Lauckner said.

LG Chem, a battery cell supplier to GM, also licensed the cathode material to make lithium-ion cells for the Chevy Volt, the plug-in hybrid electric car GM launched late last year. The agreement with LG Chem only covers the U.S. market, and LG Chem can use it to develop cells for customers other than GM.

The Korea-based battery cell maker does plan to use the cathode material in the cells it will produce at its new factory in Michigan starting in 2012, said Mohamed Alamgir, research director of LG Chem Power, during the conference call. Cells from that factory will end up in the Volt.

A battery is made up of anode on one side and cathode on the other, with electrolyte in between. Lithium ions travel from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte, creating a chemical reaction that allows electrons to be harvested along the way. Argonne is licensing a set of patents to the two companies, and some patents dated back to a decade earlier.

Argonne’s cathode material promises to prolong the battery’s operating time and its overall life span. It also will allow higher-voltage charging in the cells, which means denser energy storage, as well as improve the battery’s safety. But officials from GM, Argonne and LG Chem couldn’t provide specific comparisons showing how the new technology can produce better cells. Eric Issacs, director of the Argonne, did say the cells should be able to store twice the energy, as measured by weight. But the new cathode material won’t enable battery cells to achieve the same energy density as gasoline.

The reluctance to provide concrete examples didn’t seem to only come from a desire not to divulge technical details. For GM, Argonne’s intellectual property forms the basis for research and development efforts to commercialize it, and that will take years, Lauckner said. He also noted that GM will be improving the anode and electrolyte materials as well, so it’s difficult to say for now how much better or cheaper new batteries will be with technology from Argonne.

The licensing deals give the U.S. Department of Energy a chance to brag about the research it has funded. The federal government has awarded billions of dollars in the past two years to spur the development and commercialization of electric cars. Companies that have benefited from the largess include GM, LG Chem, Ford, and a host of other businesses, universities and national labs.

LG Chem is building a $303 million factory in Michigan with a $151.4 million grant from the DOE.

The licensing agreements show “the benefit of investing in science and innovation, “said Cathy Zoi, acting under-secretary of energy at DOE, during the conference call. Late last year, Zoi’s boss, Secretary of Energy Steve Chu, warned that the United States is losing its innovation edge quickly because it lags other countries in investing in science and technology.

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Tuesday’s memorandum of understanding was short on details, and the two companies cited its “non-exclusive” nature. That means GM and LG Chem, the maker of the battery cells for the Volt’s 16 kilowatt-hour batteries, may be announcing more partners in the future.

Just about every battery company and electric and hybrid vehicle maker seems to be looking for an afterlife for batteries that are too depleted to drive vehicles, yet still have up to 80 percent of their original capacity available for less stressful duties. In fact, that’s seen as critical for making EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles more affordable, since much of the additional cost comes from the expensive batteries.

Nissan announced in October that it would form a joint venture with Sumitomo to recycle lithium-ion electric car batteries, like those in its upcoming Leaf all-electric sedan. In April, the Renault-Nissan Alliance announced similar projects in Europe with utilities Enel in Italy and Endesa in Spain.

The action isn’t limited to major automakers. EnerDel, the Ener1  subsidiary supplying lithium-ion batteries for Think City EVs, is working with Japanese conglomerate Itochu on a grid storage pilot project. Last week, BYD, the China-based, Warren Buffett-backed EV startup, announced a MOU with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to build batteries to back up wind power. Of course, all of these projects are still in the R&D phase.

Then there’s A123, which already has a significant presence in grid storage and could find ways to bring its vehicle batteries to that market. Pike Research estimates that the grid-connected lithium-ion battery market will grow to $1 billion by 2018, mainly driven by the economies of scale that will come to the industry as it ramps up for the automotive sector. Samsung, for example, plans to start producing lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles next year through a joint venture with Germany-based Robert Bosch, and has said it is also targeting grid storage applications.

ABB — a sometimes slow-moving behemoth in the power grid field that generated annual revenue of $31.8 billion in 2009 — has been getting more involved in other smart grid and energy management projects lately. Last week, its venture arm invested $1.5 million in startup Power Assure, which makes software to match data center power consumption to server utilization.

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Based in Troy, Mich., the company hosted President Obama this week at the groundbreaking of a new $300 million battery plant backed by the Department of Energy. What’s driving Compact Power’s momentum, and what will it take for competitors to turn the tide their way?

Drive for Scale

One of the biggest challenges for automakers looking to sell electric vehicles on the mass market is cutting costs, and the battery — the most expensive chunk of an electric car — is where those costs need to come out in order to make the purchase price competitive with gas-fueled counterparts. This drive to cut battery costs (along with billions of dollars in government funds for battery manufacturing) underlies a race to ramp up economies of scale in manufacturing.

Early supply contracts could give Compact a leg up in that race.  ”Compact’s prices will most likely drop due to its supply contracts with Ford, Chevy and Eaton,” predicted Lux Research analyst Steve Minnihan. At the same time smaller battery companies, “will have a harder time” cutting costs “without a significant automotive contract,” he said, adding that Compact’s string of deals is “a very bad sign for smaller companies that are looking to manufacture cells and packs on their own.”

While even one supply contract with a global automaker could be a huge coup for the battery makers beginning to crop up in the U.S., the deals that Compact Power has racked up amount to only a drop in the bucket for LG Chem, which recorded $11 billion in revenue in 2009. For Compact Power, however, the supply contracts with electric vehicle makers could give the subsidiary (which recorded $35 million in revenue last year) a real shot in the arm — on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, by Minnihan’s rough estimates.

Ticking Clock

In other words, whichever company can offer technology and scale now will be grabbing plug-in deals with auto companies that are racing to get their first-generation plug-ins onto the market. The battery supply deals we’re seeing today don’t necessarily reflect long-term strategic decisions, said Minnihan, but rather a sense of urgency as automakers hurry to get a foothold in the hybrid and electric vehicle market.

Back when GM announced that it would be using Compact Power cells in the battery pack for the Chevy Volt, Bob Lutz (GM’s vice chairman at the time) explained to the Michigan Business Review that the automaker decided against A123 in part because it was “still sort of a startup, they’re still ramping up….LG Chem is just farther along.” (Another key factor was that LG Chem had more experience with prismatic, or flat cells, as opposed to the cylindrical cells A123 has made for power tools.)

However, the sense of urgency in this industry can in some cases benefit a smaller, more nimble player. When German automaker Daimler tapped electric car company Tesla Motors to supply battery pack tech (such as cooling systems and controls) for a limited run of Smart Fortwo electric models it explained that the primary motivation was to get a plug-in model on the market as soon as possible. Similarly, Toyota Motor Corp., which invested $50 million in Tesla following its IPO and is now working on electric prototypes with the company, has said that it hopes to learn from Tesla’s “quick decision-making” and “flexibility.”

But when it comes to manufacturing the actual cells, scale is king. And as car companies search for “the best battery supplier that can get them on the road as soon as possible,” said Minnihan, “Compact is an obvious choice since its connection with LG Chem will enable it to rapidly deliver the scale of batteries that the automakers demand.”

It’s not just automakers under the gun. For young battery companies building out manufacturing capacity during the next few years, Pike Research analyst John Gartner has told us that excess capacity could present a major hurdle. U.S. battery developers planning to set up new plants in the next few years (some of them with ambitious production goals tied to government funding), “are not sitting on a lot of cash. Once they establish that manufacturing, they need to be instantly generating revenue.”

Room for New Players

For the long term, Minnihan emphasized that despite Compact Power’s recent gains over competitors, the very early stage of the market for rechargeable batteries in automotive applications means “it would be foolish to think that Compact has a stranglehold on it.” According to Christina Lampe-Onnerud, CEO of battery maker Boston-Power, there’s a common perception that “all automotive companies have picked their batteries. Not in our experience,” she told us in an interview earlier this year. “Everybody will need multiple sources.”

There’s room not only for “large, competent battery players” that are “very likeminded” with legacy automakers, said Lampe-Onnerud, but also for “agile battery players able to respond” quickly to an evolving market.

Images courtesy of Compact Power and General Motors

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Job figures (“tens of thousands,” “hundreds”) are somewhat vague — given that this is a progress report on spending that’s meant to stimulate economic growth, coming from an administration that has been touting the green jobs created through Recovery Act investments. But the 8-page document does provide a snapshot of where these funds are going and what kind of changes the feds are hoping they’ll bring about. You can read the full report here, and check out our digit-by-digit highlights below.

1: Number of times that DOE mentions Ford and LG Chem in its report.

2: The number of factories producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. in 2009. (Also the number of times that DOE mentions battery maker A123 Systems, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Nissan in its report.)

4: The number of new battery plants that the DOE expects to be operational by year’s end.

5: Number of times that DOE mentions General Motors in its report.

9: The number of new battery plants slated to open in the U.S. in total with Recovery Act funds.

14: Number of years that the DOE expects electric vehicle batteries to last by 2015 (if recharged 1.5 times per week), compared to an estimated 4-year lifespan for batteries produced in 2009.

20: Percentage of the world’s production capacity for advanced vehicle batteries that will reside in the U.S. by 2012 as a result of Recovery Act investments. The DOE expects this to grow to 40 percent by 2015.

21: The number of plants helped along by stimulus grants that are expected to make components for batteries or electric vehicles.

26: Number of battery and component plants that have started construction, either breaking ground on new facilities or installing new equipment at an existing factory.

30: Number of factories that the DOE expects to come online producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. by 2012.

33: Percentage by which the DOE expects the typical weight of an electric vehicle battery to drop by 2015 compared to 2009 batteries, thanks to improved energy density.

>50: Percentage of oil consumed in the U.S. that’s imported.

95: Percentage of power used to move cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes in the U.S. that comes from oil.

<500: The number of electric vehicle charging locations available in the U.S. prior to stimulus investments.

4,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for a battery delivering 40 miles of electric range (in a plug-in hybrid, for example) in 2015, compared to an estimated $6,700 in 2013 and more than $13,000 in 2009.

5,000: The number of charging stations that Coulomb Technologies plans to deploy at residential and commercial locations in nine metro areas using a $15 million stimulus grant.

10,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for the battery needed to give an electric car 100 miles of range by the end of 2015, compared to an estimated $16,000 in 2013 and $33,000 in 2009.

20,000+: The number of new electric vehicle charging stations expected to be available in the U.S. at residential, commercial and public locations by December 2013.

80 million: Number of additional square meters of separator materials for lithium-ion batteries that Celgard will be able to produce at its plant in North Carolina each year following completion of a factory expansion supported with a $49.2 million DOE grant.

5 billion: Amount in dollars that the DOE is investing in electric vehicle batteries, components, charging infrastructure and other efforts to “electrify America’s transportation sector” through the Recovery Act and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program.

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