Still, A123's downfall isn't deterring another small company from staying in the race. Envia Systems, based in Newark, California, funded by the DOE and GM, makes electrodes from a mixture of nickel, cobalt and manganese developed by Khalil Amine and other materials scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The material packs a record-setting energy density, the company claims — potentially allowing the batteries to be smaller, and thus cheaper, than those based on other lithium-ion technologies.

“Our guess is that by 2015, the first cars with our technology should be coming out,” says Atul Kapadia, Envia's chief executive.

Johnson Controls (JCI), based in Glendale, Wisconsin, has made an offer to purchase A123's assets, including the Michigan factories. JCI, which makes products for automobiles and buildings, has received about $5.5 million from the USABC to develop lithium-ion batteries. But the company isn't saying whether it will stick with A123's approach or try another technology.

Ultimately, the fate of US battery makers will remain tied to that of the electric car itself. And for now, no battery technology can compete cost-wise with the internal combustion engine.
“The outlook in the near future for electric cars does not look that promising,” says Daniel Scherson, an electrochemist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “They are still just too expensive.”

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on October 24, 2012.

2 Comments

1. 1. witchrunner 12:37 PM 10/25/12

   “My concern is that the A123 debacle will disillusion the people who put in money thinking they were going to make big bucks on car batteries,” says John Goodenough, a materials scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.
   
   Duh! You think? It sounds like the business was actually going quite well. Then, what happened? The government got in and destroyed it. Instead of letting the technology develop naturally, the government waved a ton of money at them (admittedly, probably hard to resist) and they got away from what they do best. And the rest is history. The fact is that whenever the government gets involved to try to redirect resources things fall apart. The reality is that we'd get to where the PC crowd wants to get to faster if the PC crowd gets out of the way. By pushing things faster than they should be pushed, as we've seen here, it slows things down.

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2. 2. SuperString 01:17 PM 10/25/12

   Unfortunate. They made excellent small batteries. Wonder why GM chose the LG Chem?

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