Fledgling Battery Company Says Its Technology Boosts Hybrid Battery Performance
By John O'Dell December 17, 2008
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
A Silicon Valley startup that believes it has developed a better battery is planning to spread its proprietary lithium-ion cells from power drills to hybrid cars within a few years.
Imara Corporation, a research, design and manufacturing company that just emerged from "stealth mode" with the launch of a public website Sunday, says its batteries represent breakthrough technology that can deliver greater power, longevity and reliability than lithium batteries on the market today.
Electrode material with Imara's proprietary coating merges from hulking coating machine in company's Menlo Park plant.
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The company believes it has something else going for it - a U.S. address and manufacturing plant.
Domestic automakers and import brands that build cars in the U.S. have long expressed concern that virtually all lithium battery production is done overseas by foreign companies.
Many have visited Imara's Menlo Park headquarters - near famed Stanford University - and asked for early prototypes of the company's automotive-quality cells so they can begin the lengthy testing process, Neil Maguire, the battery company's business development veep, told Green Car Advisor.
He declined to name the companies, but said visitors to Imara headquarters have included representatives of "10 of the top 16" automakers.
The company has a 50,000-square-foot factory next to its research and development offices in Menlo Park, Maguire said. It is there that Imara will process the electrode material that forms the heart of its batteries.
He said the company's technology is "material agnostic," meaning it will work with various types of lithium battery chemistry, including cobalt, cadmium, manganese and iron phosphate. Each type of chemistry provides a unique level of power, energy, thermal build-up, charging cycles and other battery characteristics. Imara is working with nickel-manganese cobalt.
The company, which began life about two years ago as Lion Cells and changed its name just last month (Imara is a Swahili term that means strength, endurance and power, Maguire said), licensed its core technology from Stanford Research Institute, which developed it as part of the federally funded Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle initiative. PNGV operated as a cooperative research program from 1993-2001 and has been replaced by the Freedom Car progam.
Maguire said the company's technology, which enables it to pack more power and charging cycles into a battery cell (right)
that is just slightly larger than the AA batteries many digital cameras use, has been tested by Stanford Research Institute for more than 70,000 partial discharge cycles - the kind of use demanded of hybrid vehicle batteries.
While Imara's lithium-ion battery material isn't unusual, the "secret sauce," Maguire said, is in the way the cathode coating material is processed and altered.
(The cathode is the negative electrode in a battery. The positive electrode is called the anode. The electrons in a battery flow out through the cathode when battery power is being used, and it is the cathode that Imara's technology addresses.)
The company will begin producing prototype batteries for consumer products in the first quarter of 2009 and expects to begin high-volume production in the fourth quarter. Automotive battery production could begin in 2012, Maguire said.
Because Imara's game plan calls for it to build a market and a reputation with lithium-ion batteries for power tools and outdoor gardening equipment such as electric lawn mowers, it initially will ship its cathode material to a plant in China, where most of those products are made these days, he said.
But the company plans to establish production facilities in the U.S. as well, Maguire said. "We want to make the batteries close to where the customers are."
Imara's initial automotive battery foray will be with lithium-ion batteries for conventional accessory power and for starter motor-generators that enable mild hybrid vehicles such as General Motors Corp.'s Saturn Vue Greenline to shut down their engines at stop signals.
As a start-up, Imara is operating with funding from venture capital investors. It so far has raised $20 million from two firms, Boston-based Battery Ventures and San Francisco-based Nth Power, that specialize in advanced clean technology companies.
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Note: Ignore the company's sales pitch and there's a nice primer on battery technology on Imara's site
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