Phoenix Motorcars to use Electrovaya battery packs
How does this impact Altairnano?
That’s the first question that came to mind when Electrovaya Inc., the Mississauga, Ontario-based maker of Superpolymer lithium ion batteries, announced that it is “negotiating a purchase and supply agreement and has begun work on a battery pack design and production program with Phoenix Motorcars.” The company said it has already received advance payment for upfront engineering design services and hardware production.
Electrovaya’s program is to focus on production of an integrated battery system and intelligent battery management systems for Phoenix’s long-range electric SUVs and sport utility trucks. Phoenix Motorcars will manufacture the vehicles at its California facility.
Perhaps Phoenix, which says it plans to deliver its first vehicles to fleet customers sometime this year, is hedging its bets, like GM and Think Global have been doing. The company has had warranty claim issues with its previously announced battery supplier, Altairnano, but as recently as March the company re-stated its support for Altairnano’s technology. “We wholeheartedly support Altairnano’s technology and believe they provide the greatest product available on the market today,” said Daniel Elliott, Phoenix Motorcars’ CEO in a statement in March.
The key word being “today.” That was then, this is now. Perhaps there are more underlying problems with Altairnano’s battery. Discussion boards are abuzz. So far today Altairnano’s stock is down 4 per cent on the news, which I’m sure hasn’t sunk in yet.
Electrovaya, itself no stranger to bad news, is on a roll lately. In January it announced a joint venture with Malcolm Bricklin’s Visionary Vehicles to produce battery packs for his plug-in electric hybrid car. The same month it announced it will “soon” be launching a low-speed electric vehicle called Maya-300 that will have a 120-mile range but be limited to 35 mph speeds. And last October is revealed it is establishing a joint venture with Electrotherm, the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles in India, with plans to build a manufacturing plant capable of producing 10-megawatt-hours per month of battery storage. The only problem, and perhaps this will change soon, is that Electrovaya is a penny stock that isn’t exactly flush with cash. So I’m waiting to see if someone will soon step up to the plate and provide much-needed funding for this company and its battery technology — a dark horse maybe in the HEV, LSV and EV races.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
May 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Tyler
Looks like you be talking to Dick soon. Did you get the call?
http://www.sedar.com “Zenn”
The Corporation intends to use the estimated net proceeds of the Offering to fund working capital and general corporate purposes, including engineering and new product development, market development for new and existing offerings, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, acquisitions or investments should the appropriate opportunities arise.
http://tyler.blogware.com/ “Fri 28 Mar 2008″
Dick Weir, founder and CEO of EEStor, told me a few weeks ago that
there would be an announcement soon on permittivity of its barium
titanite powder, considered a major benchmark that would trigger future
payments to EEStor from ZENN, and I can only assume Kleiner Perkins as well.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Tyler
Have you read Zenn latest TSX filing?
I am pretty sure the cityZENN is Think City Kleiner Perkins 25% investment in Noth Americal Electric Car. The plan on building a North American Plant as you probably know, it only makes sense that they have to work thru Zenn exlcusive agreement with eestor.
Now I understand how Zenn will meet the fall of 2009 cityZenn with or without eestor. If eestor is not ready, they will incorporate lithiun-ion into the produce which think is already certified for.
Here Zenn latest tsx filing as of Fri may 9th 2008,
http://www.sedar.com “Zenn”
cityZENN
The cityZENN is planned to be a 100 percent electric, highway capable, fully certified car, meeting required occupant safety standards in the markets in which it will be sold. The development of the cityZENN would follow the same development concept as the ZENN LSV, whereby a host and OEM partner will be secured, the Corporation’s engineering team will lead the “electrification” development, and the Corporation would look to the OEM to fully assemble the end product for the Corporation on an exclusive and “turn-key” basis. It is proposed that the cityZENN, incorporating
the EEStor EESU if and when available, would include the following features:
• A 4-passenger, fully certified highway-capable passenger vehicle
• A range of 400 km / 250 miles
• Top speed of 125 kph / 80 mph
• Rechargeable in less than five minutes
• On-board energy that is not impacted by cold weather
• Inherent safety features built into the EESU for punctures, crushing, submersion, etc.
• Zero emissions
• No noise
• Operating costs that are as little as 1/10th that of a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle
The Corporation is in negotiations to secure a suitable rolling chassis to be integrated into the cityZENN product. Since the cityZENN will be designed to travel at highway speeds, it will need to meet homologation standards applicable to each target market. Homologation standards for a highway-capable passenger vehicle are much more stringent than for LSVs and vary from country to country. There are generally two broad homologation standards worldwide, that of the European Union (EU), with general adoption around the world other than in North America, and the North American standard, which is used in the United States and Canada. By meeting the EU standards, the cityZENN could be sold throughout one of the largest global markets for small-to-midsize cars.
The distribution plan for the cityZENN will likely vary between different markets. Generally, management of the Corporation intends to leverage established retailer networks through strategic partners to the greatest extent possible. The Corporation also expects to heavily leverage its OEM partner’s existing retailer network to sell the cityZENN into the OEM partner’s domestic (and possibly international) markets under a royalty agreement. The Corporation will also explore ways to utilize its current ZENN LSV retailers for the distribution of the cityZENN.
The cityZENN is planned to incorporate the EEStor EESU and is expected to be launched in late 2009. As the EEStor EESU remains in development, management of the Corporation has been
evaluating the use of conventional battery technologies in the cityZENN.
The cityZENN is currently being designed to work with both the EEStor EESU and current battery technologies. In the event the Corporation’s cityZENN product needs to be equipped and marketed with a traditional battery pack, the result will be an electric vehicle with a reduced range (likely in the order of 100 – 150 Km), diminished performance in cold weather, longer charge times, a shorter battery life and increased weight and price, when compared to an EEStor EESU-equipped cityZENN. While the Corporation believes that a traditional battery powered cityZENN with reduced performance characteristics would still address an important and substantial market, it believes this would result in lower sales volumes when compared to a similar EEStor EESU-equipped cityZENN. See “Risk Factors – EEStor Technology”.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Looks like a got a copy of the short term Zenn prospectus that was not suppose to be published, it was removed shortly after i saved it on my laptop. The above blog was the cityZENN information. Anyways there will be a significant investment based on 2009-2010 objectives, cityZENN, new LSV, ZENNergy OEM, and ZENNenergy retrofit. Price was at 4.50 number of shares was blank. If was to take a guess, it be around 25 miliion + 18 month burn rate of 2 million, plus eestor payments, etc. new LSV 4 seater etc.
I would expect shortly after that eestor will release the permittivity results as tyler heard dick weirs would be giving the results shortly. Tyler if you would like a copy of the prospectus let m
May 15th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Hi mrjerry,
It’s quite likely ZENN is preparing for further investment, which is a prudent thing to do. If it has obligations to invest when certain benchmarks are reached, and if those benchmarks are reached, it’s a good idea to have this capital on hand to exploit the opportunity. It’s possible, if we purely speculate, that ZENN has been given advance notice of positive permittivity results, but again — pure speculation. We’ll just have to sit tight and wait. I haven’t heard anything from either corner, though I have heard that Weir is looking to expand production lines because he needs to ramp up output to meet what I suppose will be strong demand for a commercial production. Perhaps ZENN is going to use these funds to make a further investment. We’ll have to wait and see.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Tyler
Thanks for the reply, your input about weir looking to expand is consistent with lockheed martin, an engineer who worked at the site remaining anonymous, and zenn all say this a large production facility will be online later in 2008. Also considering Weir said to you he is going to release soon the permittivity testing strong indication he already is in the know and most likely is favorable or he would not be releasing it. Anyways, once the financing is made public this or next week. Then we should know shortly after that the permittivity results.
July 21st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Does anyone have any idea what the “CityZenn” might look like?