Battery startup Leyden Energy is selling off patents & equipment. Is it shutting down?
A startup called Leyden Energy is getting rid of a bunch of assets and patents around its lithium ion battery tech. Is it finally closing up shop?
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A startup called Leyden Energy is getting rid of a bunch of assets and patents around its lithium ion battery tech. Is it finally closing up shop?
Chinese auto parts giant Wanxiang has won a bid for electric car maker Fisker for $149 million, and a judge has approved it. Will they restart production of the Karma and make the Atlantic soon?
Electric car charging station company, Ecotality, is in trouble. It’s having a hard time improving sales and raising enough money to stay alive, and it shows once again how tough it is to survive in an emerging market.
The co-founder of electric car startup Fisker has resigned, after having stepped down as CEO a year ago. The company has stopped production of its cars as it searches for a partner, investor or acquirer in China.
In a surprising move, President Obama called out the need to fight climate change and transition to cleaner energy sources in his inauguration speech on Monday morning. While Obama’s first term provided many resources for clean energy, the administration’s support became controversial and politicized.
Because battery chemistry is such a hard problem, it’s pretty natural that we’re turning to the power of analytics, big data, cloud computing and all those other fun IT buzz words to solve it.
Suffering battery maker A123 Systems has found a lifeline in Chinese auto giant Wanxiang. Wanxiang will invest up to $450 million in A123 which could see it own up to 80 percent of the company.
It’s not a good time to be an electric car battery maker. On Thursday lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems (s AONE) issued a going concern warning and saw its shares drop by close to 8 percent in trading.
Electric car maker Fisker Automotive has boosted its fund raising plans by $200 million, according to a filing. The company has now raised around a billion in private funding.
Fisker has been rushing to fix the problem with the hose clamp for the batteries on its Karma electric car. It says that the “majority” of its customers’ and dealers’ cars with problem batteries have either gotten new batteries or have been repaired.
Lithium battery company A123 Systems has lowered its yearly revenue guidance significantly and says it is because of an unexpected reduction in orders for batteries to its customer VC-backed electric car startup Fisker Automotive.
Auto makers aren’t making much money (if any) off of electric cars yet. The same thing is true for the makers of the batteries that will run them. A123 System on Monday reported lower sales and widened its loss for the first quarter.
Lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems, which has built a business off of power tools and electric cars, has been increasingly focusing on the power grid and can thank power company AES for pretty much all of the growth of its grid sales.
One of China’s largest automakers has tapped A123 Systems to supply lithium-ion batteries for an electric car slated to roll out in 2012. The deal was a silver lining to the disappointing earnings it reported yesterday for the three months ending September 30.
Lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems (s AONE) officially opened up its stimulus money-funded battery factory in Michigan, which will eventually reach 600 megawatt hours of annual production capacity, and, according to the company, represents the largest lithium ion battery plant for electric vehicles in the U.S.
Last week battery maker A123 Systems quietly unveiled that it had spun out an energy storage venture called 24M Technologies that would raise outside funding. This morning 24M details those backers: $10 million from Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, and $6 million from ARPA-E.
Lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems let loose a few tidbits in its earnings call: that it quietly cultivated a new energy storage venture and set it loose, that it has been chosen for a yet-to-be announced auto project, and that it’s pulled out of its Chrysler deal.
Batteries change by “quantum leaps from one chemistry family to the next,” Maurice Gunderson of CMEA Capital. One key for investors, inventors and entrepreneurs when building or sizing up a battery business is to resist focusing too narrowly on the challenge du jour, and instead evaluate what unique applications might be transformed by that particular energy storage solution.