Dang, I was going to buy alti when it was at $3/share a few weeks ago---it spiked more than 20% today.

As far as I remember Phoenix had an exclusive deal with Altair to use their batteries. However, it was made conditional on Phoenix actually ordering a minimum quantity of batteries from Altair. It seems the exclusive deal with Phoenix is off and Altair is selling their batteries to others. I wish Altair good luck and hope they will soon find a real customer among the established vehicle producers. The website of http://www.micro-vett.it/eng/indexing.html looks like a joke and I wander how the rest of the firm is operated.

Does anyone have a price on this product?

rick;

I too think that Altairnano batteries have a lot to offer for PHEVs and specially BEVs. Safety + Very fast (10 minutes) multiple (25000+) charge-discharge is exactly what is required.

Let's hope that the current price of about $1000+/KWh will drop to about $300/KWh when mass produced in very large factories in countries with lower labour cost by (2010-2012?)

Will competition do better? and cheaper? Time will tell.

Yeah I was going to buy $1,000 worth. I purchased 100 shares @ $3.50 and was waiting for the stock to go to $3 and buy the rest.

Anyone know anything about if ALTI has any options trading?

re: options
no, no options... only stock
BC

As an owner of Altairnano stock this is a nice morning. But the battery situation is going to take roughly another year before the winners and losers emerge.

Invest money only if you are willing to lose 100%.

Small tech companies never know when their patents and product will be made worthless by a single improvement or event elsewhere.

No big company is committed to Altairnano batteries. And several, such as GM, are buying elsewhere. It is anyone's guess what that means - which is why stocks rise and fall.

Anyway, I am glad to see Altair dealing with Fiat. Phoenix may do OK but their recent announcements have worried me. They seem to have lost focus.

This solution makes sense for operators of delivery fleets, who can afford 25kWe gensets or utility drops on site and, can train staff in the safe handling of the cables and connectors associated with such high power levels. 100km is a substantial acion radius for e.g. an urban delivery vehicle. Boosting it to 300km via a couple of rapid recharges during the day is very attractive.

I don't think recharging that often is attractive for members of the general public, though. For a commuter car, trickle-charging at night would be preferable - iff you have a garage or access to a secured outdoor outlet. Longer distances will remain impossible until there is a network of fast recharge stations - the usual chicken-and-egg bootstrapping problem.

Rafael:

Colocating fast charge stations with most existing fuel stations should not be a major problem. Electricity is already available most everywhere. Fuel pumps could progressively be phased out in favor of charge stations.

Handling a flexible insulated power cable should not be that different from a fuel hose and nozzle. Most North Americans, could learn how to do that. For reluctant drivers, service attendants could do it for a very small fee.

Eventually, an automatic, car roof top connector, could take care of this task for reluctant and disabled drivers. The 300 and 400 pounders would not even have to get out of their vehicles.

@Harvey D -

25kW is a big utiliy drop, involving both high voltage and high current. It think there might be some safety concerns having that in close proximity to flammable fuels like gasoline.

Besides, recharge stations would be franchisees of the utilities. Gas stations are franchisees of the oil industry. IFF PHEVs/BEVs ever achieve signiicant market share, these two industries will be competitors.

andrichrose: You are fight. I read that the vehicle was a Fiat and erred.

Apparently a Fiat shell is the EV testbed.

In any case it looks like good news. I want EVs but not just any EVs.

It is hard or impossible to get good data on battery cost curves. For now everything depends on that.

@Harvey D,

Handling 25kwe power lines is not something that you want your average gas jockey to be handling. Its like feuling your ICE with a little nitro boost...

That is dangerous stuff.

This is great news for a number of reasons:

1/ light commercial traffic is growing rapidly and makes up a substantial proportion of vehicle traffic, especially outside peak periods.
2/I used to drive a light truck for a warehouse distribution company in Sydney (4m population). We would never drive 300km in a day. Most operators wouldn't need to charge three times in a day and some days you would get away without stopping for a recharge.
3/ The stop-start nature of delivery driving is ideally suited for EV torque and regenerative braking.

In a short time EV's are going to be a very attractive proposition for distribution and delivery, especially with rising diesel and petrol costs.