Steve Funk

Li-ion Battery Manufacturers: The Bleeding Edge of Energy Storage Technology

Kudos John. You have laid out what I believe is an accurate picture of the issues with battery operated vehicles and the investment consequences. To your naysayers, has anyone wondered why GM produced and sold a commercial electric car in the 1990's but are now slow to produce a more broad based product? These vehicles will not work in Chicago, Minneapolis or Bangor in the winter. Everyone keeps thinking a breaktrough will solve the problem in the nick of time but as John points out that is not the history of battery development. Most of the chemical combinations that produce electricity have been known for a century (that includes fuel cells). Many of the same engineering problems that we knew about then are still with us. A lot of money has been lost in battery development. One of the first companies to start development (at least 15 years ago) was Ovonics Batteries and now they are making money by selling solar panels. I think short-term trading will be the only investment opportunity in batteries for quite a while.