The government has dished out the funds for advanced battery research and development and the winners are….
Johnson Controls (JCI) – $300 million
A123 Systems – $249 million
General Motors (GM) – $240 million
EnerDel (HEV) – $118.5 million
Ford (F) – 92.7 million
Chrysler – $70 million
UQM Technologies (UQM) – $45 million
Exide (XIDE) – $34 million
This is just a TARP bailout for those horrible companies to create jobs in the hard hit great lakes region. AltAirNano and Valence Technologies have far superior and TESTED solutions but they’re located in Nevada/Texas. SAFT I believe is French owned, EnerDel (anything begininng with “ENER”) is russian owned (their batteries are trash compared to a nanosafe battery), Japanese and Korean plants are burning down with battery explosions. Why would you give funds to a lead acid battery maker when there are already LI-ION companies out there?
Yes, I’d like to know why ALTI and VLNC weren’t included.. surprising. I’ll have to look into it.. maybe someone else has an explanation?