Envia GM Deal Dropped… It Seems

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

envia ev battery breakthrough

There’s a reason we’re very careful when covering “potentially breakthrough” technologies — the large majority of them never make it to commercialization; or, if they do make it, they don’t necessarily come through with the disruptive cost they anticipated. We had quite a bit of hope for Envia’s potentially breakthrough battery technology, especially since it seemed that GM was very bullish about the technology, but it seems that this might have been another case of too good to be true.

The GM–Envia deal seems to have been dropped. Furthermore, “the company is alleged to have used other companies’ technology in its battery tech (one part allegedly stolen, one part purchased and used as if it was their own),” Katie Fehrenbacher of Gigaom reports.

The PR firm representing Envia has responded to the lawsuit claiming the above infringements, stating, “The allegations in the complaint are baseless. The evidence will show that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit is nothing more than the spurious allegations of three disgruntled former employees.” However, it hasn’t denied the collapse of the GM deal, on which its whole future seemed to be based.

Envia_info
Envia claims back in February 2012

As noted back in February 2012 (yep, quite a while back), “Envia’s research was funded by the venture-capital arm of General Motors, GM Ventures, which may mean that GM would get first dibs on this ‘breakthrough’ technology.” If GM has really given up hope, it doesn’t seem as if Envia has any promise after all.

So, I don’t really think there’s much else worth reporting on at the moment. But if you want to learn more about the lawsuit, or dig into the claims Envia made back in 2012, Katie’s article is a good one. And you can check out ARPA-E’s two pages on Envia (2009 PDF and website 1-pager). And you can of course check out our original story on Envia.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan