Green Tech

Think, which plans to make a small all-electric car, expects to secure a fresh round of funding and emerge from bankruptcy next month, according to a company representative.

Settling its debts and boosting its capital will allow Think to start producing its electric city car by the end of year. If all goes as planned, the company hopes to start shipping the Think City, a highway-capable electric car with a 100-mile range, to European customers by the end the year, company spokesperson James Andrews said Tuesday. Already, 2,500 people have ordered cars.

The company is also looking at a handful of states in the U.S. where it would produce the Think City, which has a top speed of 65 miles per hour, for sale in the U.S. The Think City is a two-seater hatchback, but the company is also working on a four-seater big enough for two adults and two children, Andrews said.

The Think City: rearing to go.

(Credit: Think Global)

Norway-based Think is at the forefront of a wave of electric sedans that are expected to come to market in the next few years. Although the range is limited in on these electric cars, automakers expect it's sufficient for consumers' daily commuting needs.

Nissan on Monday said , an electric sedan with a 100-mile range and a . will be available for sale next year.

Coda Automotive will introduce its in California next fall. Other planned all-electric sedans include and namesake car.

Think, originally formed when Ford sold it to outside investors, hit in December and had to stop production. It has spent the last months rebuilding and expects to have a court date in August that should allow it to emerge from bankruptcy protection, Andrews said.

It also has developed a business to sell its power train to third parties. The Japan Postal Service, in a deal initiated by battery supplier EnerDel, has signed on to test the power train in.

"We're the only one out with a fully integrated E.V. drive system," Think's CEO, Richard Canny, told The New York Times. "It's an opportunity to get further volume and scale on the technology we already have. And it helps us get better pricing on components and further our development of E.V. drivetrain systems."

Seeking out a better auto battery, Nissan Motor and EnerDel said Thursday that they will team up in support of research into a better conductive material for batteries.

The pact calls for the two companies to co-fund research at the Argonne National Laboratory to develop a new electrolyte made of a slurry liquid. The work is being done specifically for electric and hybrid vehicle batteries.

EnerDel lithium ion car battery.

(Credit: EnerDel)

EnerDel, which makes lithium ion batteries, has agreements to supply Think Global's city car and Fisker Automotive's luxury plug-in electric vehicle, both of which are expected to be available in the next year. Nissan, meanwhile, plans to unveil an all-electric sedan next week, which it plans to make available next year.

Lithium ion batteries will power a generation of electric cars slated to come to market in the next two years, replacing the nickel metal hydride batteries used in today's hybrids.

Lithium batteries, which are also used in consumer electronics, are relatively light and allow for higher energy density. But researchers have been looking at novel approaches to improve performance and cost, including different electrolytes.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Donald Sadoway and his student David Bradwell earlier this year built a prototype of "liquid battery" that uses three layers of molten metals--two for the battery's electrodes and an electrolyte liquid in the middle.

The advantage of this method is that the liquids allow for fast charging and discharging. Batteries built this way promise to be cheaper and last longer as well.

Updated at 7:00 a.m. PT with added information on MIT battery research. Updated at 11:45 PT on October 26 with correct first name of professor Sadoway.

Going electric: thousands of Japanese postal trucks.

(Credit: Japan Postal Service)

Electric carmaker Think Global and auto battery company EnerDel said Monday they will supply the electric drive components for a trial to convert gasoline trucks in Japan.

Think's electric power train and EnerDel's lithium ion batteries will power delivery trucks for the Japan Postal Service. As part of a government-led effort, the Japan Postal Service plans to convert 25 percent of its 22,000-truck fleet from gasoline to all-electric.

Testing alternative power trains with fleets is typically a good way to try out new technologies because vehicles can be refueled in controlled settings, such as corporate or government offices.

Think said the power train that will be used in the Japanese trial was originally developed for the Think City all-electric town car. The company, which had to delay production earlier this year because of financing problems, sees supplying third parties as a "significant new business line and revenue opportunity," Think CEO Richard Canny said in a statement.

EnerDel, meanwhile, is seeking to expand its auto battery manufacturing business, in part by applying for government loans to promote the domestic battery industry. So far, EnerDel has lined up supply deals with Think and luxury plug-in electric carmaker Fisker Automotive.

EnerDel has signed an agreement to supply lithium-ion batteries for electric carmaker Fisker Automotive's planned Fisker Karma.

Indianapolis-based EnerDel announced the letter of intent on Friday, a few hours before state senator Evan Bayh is scheduled to dedicate a new production line for auto batteries. The supply deal is contingent on reliability and performance testing. A Fisker Karma will be at the inauguration.

The Fisker Karma

(Credit: Fisker Automotive)

The Fisker Karma is a four-door luxury car, priced at about $88,000, that runs on batteries and gets about 100 miles per gallon. It will have an internal combustion gas engine to charge the batteries for rides longer than 50 miles.

The electric-powered Karma will be available at dealers in June next year in the U.S. Fisker plans to open a European dealer network as well.

For EnerDel, the supply deal could mean as many as 15,000 battery packs, which is the number of Karmas that Fisker plans to build per year.

The company had a contract to supply Think, a maker of an all-electric town car, but Think's production plans have been changed because of financial problems.

Photos: Fisker Karma

NEW YORK--Ener1, which manufactures lithium ion batteries for electric cars, is testing energy storage systems for the power grid, the company's CEO said on Tuesday.

Ener1's roots are in the automotive industry and its Indianapolis-based EnerDel division already has agreements to supply battery packs to a handful of auto companies, including Think and another automaker in Europe.

Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer

(Credit: Ener1)

The company is also expanding into different markets, including the military and utility-grade storage, said Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer at the Jefferies Global Clean Technology Conference here.

Ener1 is working with a few utilities that work in its Midwestern region on power grid storage units, Gassenheimer said. The company's flat, prismatic-shaped battery cells--different from the traditional cylinder shape--make its technology well suited to large megawatt-size storage as well as smaller units for homes, he said.

Earlier this month, utility AEP said it intends to start testing relatively small energy storage units--able to supply energy for four to six homes for a few hours--later this year.

Energy storage on the grid has become a hot area for technology development and investment in the green-technology area over the past year.

With storage, utilities can increase the amount of renewable power generation on the grid. Because wind and solar are intermittent, storage allows utilities to better control the supply of power on the grid to best match the demand. Storage also gives utilities a form of back-up and a way to store electricity to meet demand during peak times, such as the middle of a hot day when air conditioning spikes up.

With military customers, Ener1 is working on $7 million in potential orders for hybrid tanks and for unmanned aerial vehicles, Gassenheimer said.

Expansion loans?
The company's core business, however, remains autos. Ener1 has applied for $480 million in loans to expand its Indiana manufacturing facility. It also plans to participate in a $2 billion grant program established in the stimulus plan for advanced battery manufacturing in the U.S.

With the $480 million loan, Ener1 could ramp up to 120,000 electric vehicle battery packs a year from a capacity of 30,000 a year now.

Gassenheimer said that investments in battery production are needed now to meet ambitious government and industry targets, such as the Obama administration's goal of 1 million plug-in electric cars by 2015. In the next two years, a number of all-electric or gas-electric sedans are scheduled to come out from many automakers.

EnerDel's batteries for the Think City electric car. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of electric vehicles.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

"Demand is not the issue. It's the ability to supply," he said. "You still need to make the investments in the platforms today. Otherwise, you miss the window of opportunity."

In his investor presentation, Gassenheimer said that Ener1's batteries offer benefits over the Nickel metal hydride batteries used in hybrids today.

The higher energy density of lithium ion batteries mean that costs will be cut in half compared to existing batteries. Ener1's prismatic-shaped batteries can be air-cooled, rather than cooled by circulating a liquid, which adds costs, he said.

"The batteries that power your laptop and cell phone are insufficient for autos," he said. "The cylinder shape doesn't meet the needs for safety and energy density."

The question of lithium supply has become a topic in the media as more auto companies commit to using lithium ion batteries. Most lithium today is imported from South America. But Gassenheimer said that lithium could be extracted from alternative sources and that adequate supply will "not be an issue" until the late 2020s.

Updated at 5:20 p.m. PT with corrected figures for Ener1's potential battery manufacturing volume.

Check out my microblogs/tweets from the Jefferies conference on Twitter.

Car battery company EnerDel predicts that consumers will start getting a two-year payback on hybrid electric cars, once a new generation of batteries are mass-produced.

Charles Gassenheimer, the chairman of parent company Ener1, gave a presentation at the Jefferies Global Clean Technology Conference on Thursday in New York, where he said lithium ion batteries in development will bring costs down substantially.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of upcoming electric cars.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

He said EnerDel intends to have a manufacturing line operating in 2010 that is capable of making 300,000 car batteries a year for hybrid electric vehicles that run partially on a battery and partially on an internal combustion engine.

With gasoline prices at about $4 per gallon, current market conditions would enable a person upgrading from an SUV to a Toyota Prius to recoup the initial cost in about seven years, according to a Wall Street Journal column Wednesday.

That figure subtracts the money received from unloading a tough-to-sell SUV. (See this online calculator at Fueleconomy.gov for a more general assessment.)

Gassenheimer at EnerDel said long-sought advances in lithium ion battery technology can bring that payback period down to fewer than two years. The auto industry is following what the consumer electronics business did in the early 1990s, when it moved from nickel-based batteries to lithium.

"Why we're shifting to lithium from nickel is because it's half the size, half the weight, and two times the energy density. Most important is a substantial reduction in cost," he said.

The company has a deal to supply car batteries to Think Global in the "2009-2010 time frame" for its all-electric towncar. Gassenheimer predicted that EnerDel will sign on to supply two more automakers with batteries before the end of this year.

EnerDel is designing batteries for hybrid electric vehicles like the Prius, as well as plug-in hybrids, which use the internal combustion engine to charge the battery that runs the car.

Gassenheimer claimed that the company's battery chemistry and design are safe, and promise better battery life and performance. A lithium ion cell phone battery can only take half its original charge after two years. But EnerDel batteries maintain the same capacity after 300,000 cycles, the equivalent of 10 years of life, he said.

Farther out, supplying utilities with energy storage "could be bigger than the auto market in front of us today," Gassenheimer claimed. Specifically, he said utilities need ways to store electricity generated by variable renewable sources, wind and solar power.

There are several other battery companies moving into the electric-vehicle market, some of which are using lithium-based batteries, while others, such as PowerGenix, are using nickel zinc because it promises lower costs than lithium ion.

Gassenheimer said that by 2011, there will be 75 car models with lithium ion batteries.

"It's pretty clear some real players are starting to commit real dollars to this space," Gassenheimer said.

The all-electric Think City car enjoys an urban time-out before heading to the U.S. in 2009.

(Credit: Think Global)

Think Global, the Norwegian company making an all-electric town car, has reiterated that it will begin to bring its cars to the U.S. in 2009, and it's providing some more details.

The company makes the Think City, a modified version of an all-electric car originally developed by Ford. It can go 65 miles per hour at top speed and 110 miles on a single charge. Thus, it's not for freeway jockeys--instead, it's targeted at those living in urban cores who take relatively short jaunts and can charge the car up a night. The City will compete against a raft of three-wheeled town cars coming to market over the next few years.

Think started shipping the vehicles in Norway late last year, and this year the cars will start to be exported to France, Switzerland, and other Scandinavian countries.

Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums announced the North American push at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference in Pasadena, Calif., on Monday, but for the last few years at various events he has been talking about coming to the U.S. around 2009.

Still, this announcement offers some grounds for optimism. Electric car companies have big hurdles to jump through to get to market, so the statement that the cars will start to go on sale in the U.S. next year--a few test vehicles will likely come to the states later this year--means that the company believes it has already achieved some major milestones. (Think, for instance, had to find new battery suppliers last year after Tesla Motors canned its battery group.) Investors in the company--Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Rockport Capital Partners--will help with the effort.

The car is expected to compete against standard economy cars, so expect a price of $35,000 or less. Think also has toyed with the idea of leasing batteries to customers for a fee and then selling them the car for less.