Is there interest in a group buy of A123 20ah prismatic pouch cells?

I am not going to "call", label, tag, name, or any fashion defame anyone. (the forum does not allow that)However the facts, past history, and future history are what they are. FACT after A123 bankruptcy hearings monetary funds once again flowed to the management. A123 and solyndra have a track record and similarities with US taxpayer funded which takes abuse of Other Peoples Money aka OPM / most recently visited by the USA financial community to low level again

 

Steve Jobs, Ford, Edison, and other are innovators that figured out how to "change" the future with technology and for the most part used little or no taxpayer funding to gain success...................

 

I can tell I struck a nerve with you and I'm sorry about that. It is not my intention to make you feel like you have to defend yourself or A123. My beef is not with you and I hope you will hold no ill will toward me.

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/is-there-interest-in-a-group-buy-of-a123-20ah-prismatic-pouch-cells.110235/page-5#ixzz2EKD8bQxl​

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Hi again,​

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I didn't mean to say I though YOU were throwing rocks. I've gotten so used to bashing of EV technology and A123, especially this past election year, that I sometimes find myself getting more hostile than is warranted with some folks. My apologies if I seemed like I was venting at you. Now, this other guy whose posts are right next to yours.....maybe I should have responded there first. At any rate, no hard feelings at all, and I suspect if we sat down together we'd find we're much on the same page with most things.​

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Nobody wants to see tax money wasted or exported, least of all me. I've leaped on opportunities to bring business back to the US whenever possible, and I have been able to do that from time to time, however modest.​

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As far as forecasting goes....telling the future is tough. Fisker promised A123 that its volumes would be about 8 times what actually materialized. GM's initial volume estimates for the Chevy Spark was also many times what they are now projecting as they don't seem very serious about selling the EV Spark much outside CA as far as I can tell now. But that's the story of our lives, in most corners of the auto industry. We had A LOT of other customers dipping their feet in the water and there was no telling where that would go, but many have proven to be not very committed, at least in the near term. BAE has been a good customer, and I think VIA has a real chance at blossoming into something great. JCI (or whoever) will likely scrap many of the little programs that aren't going anywhere, but developing that interest and getting the technology into as many companies' hands as possible was an important thing to do. I don't know what the answer is. What we are trying to do is far more difficult than I would have ever imagined. Loss of money and failing companies are inevitable in this arena today just like it was in the early days of radio in the 20's when everybody and his brother had a radio company, the vast majority of which didn't survive. The .com bubble was a similar story. Some people are too optimistic, others too pessimistic. Those who get it just right are probably lucky as much as anything. The bottom line for me is that the technology survives--and every indication is that it will. I don't think funding for alt energy is going to dry up any time soon. I'm hearing now that JCI--arguably one of the best run companies in the world--is going to get some subsidies to continue developing traction batteries after they acquire us. We'll see.​

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You can look up David Vieau online and see what he makes. As CEO salaries go, it's not that much. He could surely make more elsewhere. The last company I worked for made audio equipment in multiple markets. The CEO there (who I have very little respect for) made about 10 times what Vieau does, and he was screwing his employees to make his targets. That's one thing that I don't see happening all around me at A123, so to me that's a big positive. Jason Forcier, the plant manager in Livonia also doesn't make that much when comparing his salary to others in comparable positions. If I thought they were robbing us blind, believe me, I'd say so. At the very least I wouldn't be saying what I'm saying here.​

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Anyway, no worries and thanks for the considered response.​

Take care,​

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most inventors/innovators take advantage of marketplace demand, whether current or foreseen. when it comes to electric vehicles, pollution control, or oil demand, we need government incentives just to offset the government incentives provided for cheap gasoline.

 

You are probaly correct...we have more in common than we dare admit...... I have more issues with China Lifepo4 suppliers/vendors than any mfg. Although third party may be the only way to get HV battery packs and EV componets this has taken me down a path to annoyance with Shanghai vendors who are less than honest .....

 

Yes, and it's not like the government doesn't have a dog in this fight. If we can get off imported oil, we can stop fighting trillion dollar wars to insure the continued cheap supply. It's really too bad we can't bake THOSE costs into the pump price. EV's would be cheaper right now for the man on the street if the true full cost of gas was reflected there.

 

Just FYI for all here, David Vieau made $1,367,134 last year. Much of it was "awards" for doing a great job (I'm guessing about the great job thing but not the awards). So yes, I was right, he did make more money last year than I have my entire life.

These are the things that frustrate me and others. Receiving over $1M for running a bankrupt company??? To me (the average joe) it sounds ludicrous. If I imagine myself in that situation, I don't think I could take the money.

Info like this causes me to become cynical and make cynical statements like "You're tax dollars at work". It is painful to see info like this.

Anyway, I think we hijacked this thread enough, now lets try to add some value to it

wb9K,
What are the "requirements" to be able to purchase batteries from A123 as a commercial customer? What do we need? Do we have to be a "company"? Do we have to have a min. order? Here's the bottom line for me (and others I'm sure); How can we work within your rules, to purchase batteries from A123, for our fellow Prius Chatters, so we don't have to order these crappy, second hand batteries from Ebay?

Some of us have businesses, what does A123 require for our "business" to buy batteries? I own an ebike conversion business that I would love to use A123 products for, How can I go about doing that. Right now I use Chinese lithium batts. Help us out here. Help us understand the requirements.

Thanks in advance

 

Done deal.

China’s Wanxiang Wins A123 Auction for $260 Million- Bloomberg

 

Probably, but still not final. Wanxiang still has yet to get CFIUS approval, and the judge has not signed off on the deal either, to my knowledge. However, cutting out the (small) military/govt contracts gives W a pretty good shot, I think.

Before we get too upset about this, it should be understood that W has a much greater stomach for taking on the costs of developing the EV market than JCI does. Pin Yi visited us and opined that they do not expect to make a profit from A123 for another 3-5 years. JCI's reps sang a very different tune, and they would have likely scaled back traction battery development significantly, actually slowing the adoption of the technology for that purpose. They were far more interested in using the tech for starter batteries; so much so that many drivetrain engineers have left the company anticipating that JCI would halt ALL drivetrain development and put them on the street.

It seems to me that the Americans who had any interest at all were much more shortsighted in their vision for the technology. I wish an American firm had stepped up with a greater willingness to invest in the future of this technology, but to me it's more important that we continue the charge toward greater proliferation of EV's and PHEV's with the greatest speed possible. There was not a lot of confidence that JCI would do this, at least not without continued government subsidies. This is not a simple black-and-white proposition. Oddly, nobody seemed to mind that the only bidders for the grid business alone were also foreign entities--NEC of Japan, and Siemens, from Germany. 75% of the bidders were foreign companies. One, count it, one was an American company.

 

This is most likely due to the fact that there's hardly any great American companies anymore. I'm trying to think of who could bid on it and GE is really the only one that comes to mind but I could just be naive.

 

GE was believed to be a potential suitor for the grid business, not sure why that never materialized.

The real problem here is that publicly traded companies just can't play the long game that a private (or well-subsidized) entity can. (Wanxiang is the largest non-govt owned company in China--something I never knew existed prior to this episode.) Stockholders will not tolerate losses from R&D. Paradoxically, this deal is better for employment here in the US than a purchase by JCI would have been. There is also little doubt that it will do more to advance EV technology than a JCI deal would have.

 

Hello everyone! I have been lurking, there is good info here! Now I gotta put my hand up, and ask some advice.

I just bought a set of these zipper cells to build a battery to replace a 24v in a wheelchair, a sort of 'proof of concept'. (It is good to know the zipper is a fuse, and not a way of 'demilitarizing' the cells.) Probably will just buy the TI battery management kit from Mouser, but that is a different tale. This is a tale of blemished cells.

The first batch the ebay fellow sent had some with a strange absence of markings, somewhat higher ISR, somewhat lower AH. I wanted them replaced. The ebay fellow sent two replacement cells, but those were warped!

I am a little afraid of this warped cell. Should I be?

happy holidays to you all,

bb

 

What ebay seller are we talking about?

-Tapatalk

 

Is it polite to name names on the forum? I am not sure. Anyway, there was only one ebay seller of 'pre form tabs' cells ,so they shouldn't be too hard to pinpoint.

 

While certainly less than ideal, the cell may well be fine. Unfortunately, I'm probably a couple/few months away from being able to give you a really satisfactory answer as I haven't quite got down that road myself yet with this cell. I would flatten back out, clean up/restore the roll on the outer edge where it's been disrupted. If you can't smell electrolyte right up on the bag, and there's no signs of corrosion on the bag, you're probably ok there. Run a capacity test with the cell under compression. Maybe run a high self-discharge test, also under compression.

The absence of markings is funny. Probably the result of the use of solvents when tearing a module back down to cells (which, by the way, is probably when your cell came to be "warped"). If you get enough right on the ink it will take it off. Usually the writing survives. Got a picture of the tabs? How are you measuring resistance (ISR)?

 

Thats what this is for.
Customer support and review.

If something wrongt then share it

-Tapatalk

 

The real question is about those warped cells, and what to do about them. If I were stuck with them, say, or had been just given them, what would I do? Flatten them out, put them in the battery stack, and not worry? Make up a specialty 6V pack for whatever with just the warped cells? Discharge them and dispose of as hazardous waste?

The vendor has been very good about sending replacement cells, even from the start, when the worry was mostly that the serial numbers were not close and the voltage droop under load was slightly different on two of the cells. So now he is replacing these warped ones too, and that problem goes off my bench.

The 7 cells I got did not look 'brand new' as described, but I expected that, and take it to mean they have not been used as batteries. They were scuffed and with some small indentation markings on their envelopes. One can only guess they had been pulled from the production stream of some major buyer. Maybe knowing who the owner of that zipper fuse patent was could give a hint as to where they came from.

When I first saw that zipper fuse, I dug up the old engineers hand book and some google search to compute the fusing current. I thought it was nickel, not copper, and had tables only for aluminum, so I was pretty far off, at 100A. Of course, I also thought at the time that it wasn't so much a fuse, as a 'demilitarization' meant to make safe some factory culls, so I under-estimated. Now, I really like this fuse idea, and the full tab cells scare me. I might try to compute this a bit better, and punch similar zipper fuse holes in my connection straps on the full tab battery.

Ciao, ya'all.

 

I am pretty sure they were warped in shipping. The package was dented on the outside, too.

For ISR, I just measure voltage difference over current difference, at 10A and 7A (ya, I am a wimp, not even 20A discharge rig). I got 2milli-ohm on most cells, 4 milli-ohm on the suspects, that the vendor replaced. I have done nothing with the warped cells. That ISR is confounded, of course, by any resistance in my connection straps.

I ran a droop-recovery test, at 7A:

It is all over the map, even if you normalize them to the peak voltage. My attempts to flush out weak cells was not too conclusive. In the end, I raced them to 2.5V, and the two suspects won (lost? Got there first.) at 19 AH

ciao,

bb

 

Did you balance these cells at 100% or 0% SOC prior to testing, or were they tested right out of the box?