The Detroit News reports lithium-ion battery manufacturer A123 Systems is set to post a net loss of $125 million on revenue of $10.9 million for the first quarter of 2012. Official results will be released later this week. The loss includes $51.6 million tied to replacing battery packs produced at the company's Livonia, Michigan facility. Some of those packs could have been manufactured with defective cells. The figure also include
Last week, a fire broke out at the General Motors Technical Center battery research lab in Warren, Michigan. General Motors has since said the fire was caused by a battery that was being tested under "extreme stress." Engineers were trying to get the pack to fail, which it did, but not to ignite, which it also did when gases
Looks like A123 Systems' range has just been extended by a couple of years.
The Fisker Karma was recalled late last year because of improper alignment of the batteries' hose clamps, but that was quickly resolved. Today, A123 Systems – the company that makes
A123, the battery company that supplies lithium-ion battery packs for companies such as Fisker Automotive, BMW and General Motors, will produce battery packs for hybrid-electric buses made by Tata Motors, India's biggest automaker.
Last year, Drayson Racing and Lola announced they would partner on an all-electric race car and now, at the 6th MIA International Low Carbon Racing Conference, the very impressive result of their collaboration has been revealed. The Lola-Drayson B12/69EV is an 850-horsepower (640-kW) monster that will seek to destroy many an electric vehicle speed record this year, whi
A123 Systems said some the batteries it made for the Fisker Karma may cause the extended-range plug-in to short circuit because improper alignment of the batteries' hose clamps may cause coolant leaks in "certain rare circumstances," an official statement from A123 says. Fewer than 50 Fisker Karmas may have the problem and A123 is in the process of fixing the malfunction, which will have "minimal financial impact" on the battery maker and has not affected any vehicles already on the road. F
Battery maker A123 has announced that batteries it supplied to Fisker Automotive for its Karma range-extended luxury sedan might have "misaligned" hose clamps for the cooling system, which could cause coolant to leak. Unabated, A123 admits the leak could cause an electrical short-circuit.
The heat is rising and the cause isn't a crashed battery pack catching on fire.
A123 Systems has had to lay off 125 employees at two Michigan locations because of Fisker's lengthy delay getting the Karma luxury plug-in hybrid to market. That's the bad news. The potentially good news is that the layoffs may be temporary. Even though Fisker has reduced its 2011 Karma orders to 1,500 units from 7,000, once Fisker is back on track to reach its stated goal of selling 15,000 vehicl
A raft of production delays slowed the arrival of the first Fisker Karma. Though the initial round of vehicles were finally delivered, the delays mean that Fisker will only ship 1,500 of the four door plug-in hybrids in 2011, well short of the original target of 7,000.
Here's an unsurprising lede: A big part of the cost of electric vehicles lies in the batteries. The good news is that this may soon change. Expectations have been that those costs will fall with increased production, and there have even been predictions of battery oversupply in th
A123 Systems says it currently has over 20 lithium-ion battery contracts in the works. Of those, A123 says ten of the transportation-related li-ion deals have already entered the production phase and that its "sourced" and "development" contracts call for A123 to eventually manufacture lithium-ion batteries at some as-of-yet-undisclosed date.
