Harley Lover Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Is anyone here up to speed on A123 and their product/intellectual property/plants? IIRC, Ford's partner for battery tech is JCI. Assuming that JCI receives government approval of its buyout of A123, does Ford stand to benefit from the addition of A123's production capacity? Will JCI (and indirectly Ford) benefit from the addition of A123's intellectual property? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickF1011 Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 (edited) I'd imagine the intellectual rights would transfer in a buyout, but I suspect any previously existing contracts and exclusivity deals would remain in place. The production capacity question is a bit cloudier. They would have more capacity but it might not be configured properly to take advantage of it in any current generation products. Edited October 17, 2012 by NickF1011 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkisler Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 (edited) Is anyone here up to speed on A123 and their product/intellectual property/plants? IIRC, Ford's partner for battery tech is JCI. Assuming that JCI receives government approval of its buyout of A123, does Ford stand to benefit from the addition of A123's production capacity? Will JCI (and indirectly Ford) benefit from the addition of A123's intellectual property? Let me give you a long-winded response that probably won't answer your question: 1. Certainly over the last 4 years, there has been a lot of attention and money involved with green energy. Loans were extended to automakers (Ford, Nissan, Tesla, Fisker) to assist them in converting facilities to make them capable of producing more efficient vehicles including those using batteries either fully or partially. 2. In additon to loans to automakers, there were matching grants given to suppliers for the investment required to produce battery cells and packs in the U.S. 3. Obviously vehicles using batteries have not been a huge success; volumes are very low, but growing moderately. So we are in an overcapacity situation, and not every company is going to make it. Ener1 filed for bankruptcy (but their sub EnerDel is still running I think?), and A123 is the latest to go belly up. There might be others that give up the effort but in some cases they are part of a large company (like Dow-Kokam) so it won't take the company down if it happens. 4. In addition to the general overcapacity, A123 had a number of missteps. They hooked up with Fisker which was late to launch, and they produced a bad batch of batteries that cost them around $55 million to recall. Ouch. I leave it to the experts, but I believe their technology is pretty good. GM will be using A123 in the Electric Spark but volumes will be small. Who knows what will happen to Fisker. 5. To the best of my knowledge, Ford is not doing anything with A123, and I'm not so sure about JCI. a. The battery cells for the Focus Electric come from Compact Power which is the U.S. sub of LG Chem. They are the same cells used in the Volt. They have been imported from Korea, but there is a new plant (funded in part by grants) in Holland, MI. The fact that this plant doesn't seem to be on line yet indicates to me that they don't have enough volume to support a single shift, but just guessing. An outside supplier assembles the packs which are shipped to WAP. b. The battery cells for the Hybrid and Energi models come from Sanyo, so they are Japanese sourced. Those packs are assembled by Ford at Rawsonville. 6. Others might know better, but JCI has seemed to be more concentrated on batteries for start-stop systems. Their lithium battery venture with Saft (a French company) went sour. So perhaps they view the A123 technology as a relatively cheap way to get into the game by purchasing the technology rather than having to negotiate who gets what with a joint venture partner. JCI is a very strong company, so stay tuned. The benefit to Ford and other manufacturers would be a robust supply base with good alternatives and sharp prices. As an aside, Prabhakar Patel, the first Escape Hybrid Chief Program Engineer, is CEO of Compact Power. Mary Ann Wright, the second Escape Hybrid CPE is VP Global Technology and Innovation at Johnson Control's Power Solutions. Edited October 17, 2012 by Austin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ute Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 all i can tell you is I lost close to 25K in the $AONE melt down ...that being said they were the best in battery technology . It will be interesting to see what happens with Wanxiang Group and JCI , but at least the Fisker and $20 million in US Mititary contracts will port over Its a win win .FMC will benifit , but remember it will put us in bed with GM because A123 was the battery suplier for the Volt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkisler Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 (edited) all i can tell you is I lost close to 25K in the $AONE melt down ...that being said they were the best in battery technology . It will be interesting to see what happens with Wanxiang Group and JCI , but at least the Fisker and $20 million in US Mititary contracts will port over Its a win win .FMC will benifit , but remember it will put us in bed with GM because A123 was the battery suplier for the Volt Sorry about your A123 stock; I had some too but sold about 6 months ago (at a loss but not nearly as big as yours!). As I said above, A123 had nothing to do with the Volt; those cells come from Compact Power/LG Chem. Edited October 17, 2012 by Austin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lfeg Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 What is happening to A123 is typical in a newly developing industry. They are right on the edge (a mentor of mine called it the bleeding edge) of commercializing a technology, developing a market, and keeping up with technology advancements. All are great money burners. With JCI going for the A123 automotive traction battery operations, it will just make JCI stronger and better able to offer a range of battery technologies to all automakers. And they have the wherewithall to survive the consolodation that will occur in the traction battery market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harley Lover Posted October 18, 2012 Author Share Posted October 18, 2012 Austin and lfeg, thank you for the information. Austin, you mentioned that JCI "seemed to be more concentrated on batteries for start-stop systems" - that could also have a tie to Ford, since Ford seems to be planning to make a fairly big move into s/s in the coming years. I thought I recalled reading that Ford was tied in with JCI (perhaps for battery research), but I can't find an article that states any sort of connection between the two companies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donaldo Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 b. The battery cells for the Hybrid and Energi models come from Sanyo, so they are Japanese sourced. Those packs are assembled by Ford at Rawsonville. From what I see Panasonic has purchased Sanyo's battery line and is actually the supplier of the new LiOn battery cells for all Ford BEVs, HEVs, and PHEVs. Will be interesting to see how older Ford hybrids will have their NiMh Sanyo battery packs rebuilt for owners who want to keep them 8+ years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biker16 Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 What is happening to A123 is typical in a newly developing industry. They are right on the edge (a mentor of mine called it the bleeding edge) of commercializing a technology, developing a market, and keeping up with technology advancements. All are great money burners. With JCI going for the A123 automotive traction battery operations, it will just make JCI stronger and better able to offer a range of battery technologies to all automakers. And they have the wherewithall to survive the consolodation that will occur in the traction battery market. The same thing happened with the dot.com bubble. Venture capital has a 50% failure rate. the goal is high risk and even higher reward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkisler Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 From what I see Panasonic has purchased Sanyo's battery line and is actually the supplier of the new LiOn battery cells for all Ford BEVs, HEVs, and PHEVs. Will be interesting to see how older Ford hybrids will have their NiMh Sanyo battery packs rebuilt for owners who want to keep them 8+ years. It's true that Panasonic bought Sanyo but it's still being operated as Sanyo and Ford has a long relationship with them on hybrid batteries, so replacements shouldn't be a problem. As I mentioned earlier, the Ford Focus Electric gets its cells from Compact Power (LG Chem's U.S. sub), not Sanyo. They are, I believe, the same as Volt cells but of course the packs are different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ute Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 $AONE and the Volt The meltdown /fire of some of the Volt batterys is one of the nails in the coffin of $AONE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkisler Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 (edited) $AONE and the Volt The meltdown /fire of some of the Volt batterys is one of the nails in the coffin of $AONE Although A123 was in the running to supply Volt batteries, Compact Power (LG Chem) was the chosen cell supplier. Which of course didn't help A123's revenue projections. The much publicized Volt post-crash fires were with Compact Power cells, not A123. A123 also experienced an explosion, but it was under extremely severe testing at GM for the upcoming Spark EV. They are the confirmed supplier for this project. Edited October 19, 2012 by Austin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ute Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 Interesting ...thanks for the info more info about the battle for A123 http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/19/news/companies/a123-bankruptcy/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_latest+%28Latest+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noah Harbinger Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 (edited) n/m Edited October 21, 2012 by Noah Harbinger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang_sallad Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Ford worked with JCI for the 50 or so PHEV Escapes. That obviously didn't go very far. After that, JCI partnered with Azure Dynamics - providing the batteries for the Transit Connect Electric (as well as Azure's HEV E-450 platform). That got further than the Escape, but Azure has now officially gone out of business after about 500 Transit Connect Sales. Azure's products were the only vehicles in production using JCI batteries at the time, so I'm sure JCI has been working hard to find another way to put it's fancy new battery plant to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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