Battery maker Ener1, a DOE grant recipient, goes bankrupt

As Corwyn said, research is a gamble. Venture capitalists know that the majority of their investments will fail. Yet they still invest because the winners make it all worthwhile.

Success in government service generally requires never being caught in a failure. Thus we get employees who avoid decisions at all costs, and spend most of their time covering their nice person.

I for one think government will do better by taking more chances. And that means accepting failures without wringing the participants necks. The thing to do after a failure is to rescue as much as can be rescued, chaulk it up to experience, and try the next thing.

 

As I said in my first post, we should acknowledge this is not like solyndra, which some lawmakers seem to try to make it. In solyndra, if it succeeded the government would get its money back, while the management and VC would make a fortune. If it went belly up which it did, the government would lose its money. It had a large chance of failing. This made it public risk, but private gain. Solyndra if you do diligence did not have some over riding technology that would help make solar less expensive for everyone.

Enerdel is a different case. They do have some interesting technology that the government did spend money to incubate. The government has given them some small grants to help develop it. The grant in question was for production expansion so that an american company could get more design wins and create jobs. Think, the customer partially owned by ener1, is emergining from its 4th bankrupcy, and these jobs may still materialize, but aren't all that likely. Part of the problem is the us government has helped everyone, which includes the competition, so there was also money for lg chem to build its plant in michigan to supply the volt, a123 to build its plant, nissan, etc. The US is giving money to all of the battery suppliers, domestic and foreign, to make batteries here under different programs. This is unlikely to give american companies a step up, or create the jobs that this grant money was given. All of the battery development money is small though compared to what we expect the industry to become.

I am supportive of the tax credits to sell plug-in cars, and the grants to develop the technology. But the money to create american jobs does not seem like it is paying off.

And sometimes failure is rewarded. How many times has the congress failed, yet they continue to get paid.

Yes but simply throwing money at it, and taking public risk for private reward does not seem like a good recipe to me. I certainly am not tring to blame anyone for ener1 and enerdel bankrupcy. My other posts were intended to be the opposite.

 

Yes along with a lot of my money, I held it for years. Now all the common stockholders get zero, and comrade Boris Zingarevich owns both Think city electric car and Ener1, along with the Chinese. So Much for planned chapter 11. It’s just another way to skin the public and fatten the cow. GM and Chrysler did it too.