As we communicated to the market beginning last year, our top priority was to acquire significant manufacturing assets for lithium-ion and nickel based rechargeable cells and batteries to accelerate our commercialization plan.

The closing on the purchase and the finalizing of the financing represent a major turning point for Electro Energy, allowing us to begin executing our commercialization plans for high-volume manufacturing.

The Company is now positioned to start to offer US-manufactured batteries for defense, industrial and commercial applications including hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, power tools, electric scooters, other mobile products and electric utility energy storage.

—Martin Klein, Chairman & CEO of Electro Energy

Electro Energy recently entered into a four-year Joint Development Agreement for the design, manufacture and marketing of high-power lithium-ion batteries and battery systems. Under the terms of the agreement, Altairnano and Electro Energy will jointly develop a new generation of rechargeable batteries based on Altairnano’s advanced nano-structured electrode materials and Electro Energy’s patented bi-polar cell design (earlier post).

Electro Energy’s bi-polar design is more compact, exhibits higher power capability, and presumably will be lower in cost that the conventional cylindrical and prismatic designs.

Electro Energy is currently working with CalCars on a custom prototype battery pack based on the bi-polar NiMH batteries for use in CalCars’ Prius+ plug-in hybrid testbed.