A123 Systems

“A-one-two-three systems was supposed to represent the next generation of U.S. Manufacturing. Instead, it showed how America excels at inventing new energy technologies, but not building them.”

“Anyone who's, you know, familiar with manufacturing, you know, it's a lot tougher than like, oh, hey, I just wrote an app, and now I'm generating some revenue or something. You basically invest billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars up front An…”

“So he ended up That, like, basically ripping up the deal with, ah, A-one-two-three and picking, ah, Bosch. So basically A-one-two-three lost its anchor contract to make, ah, you know, hybrids or make electrified cars.”

“And as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, it issued a two hundred and forty nine million dollar grant to an up and coming company with a novel cathode for lithium ion batteries.”

“The technology that A-one-two-three systems pioneered, a lithium iron phosphate cathode, was not a failure. It is the dominant chemistry in lithium ion batteries coming out of China today.”

“So I think the fact that the government did not step up further, yeah, I think it was the death knell. That was their last chance, and it didn't come through.”