Links: ZDNet.com Article / earth2tech.com Article / Imara Corp. Home Page /

After 2 years of flying under the radar and operating as Lion Cells, a Menlo Park, California-based startup company backed by Battery Ventures and Nth Power, has suddenly popped up on everyone's radar scopes. Now renamed Imara Corp., this upstart has ambitions well beyond the scope of their size - they want to manufacture lithium-ion batteries in the United States, power the upcoming generation of electric cars, and revive this nearly extinct American manufacturing sector.

Not made in America. How many tech devices are designed in Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, or some other American tech center, manufactured elsewhere? From chips to iPods, we've gotten used to it. Now a consortium of lingering manufacturers in the U.S. want the feds to help them get the U.S. back into the battery race. They're asking for a billion dollars to build a battery factory to compete with those in Asia. There's even a chance that tech giant Intel will join the Yanks wanting to get into batteries.

One battery maven says most of the new tech was developed in the U.S. but manufacturers here couldn't see their way to a quick profit so making them migrated overseas.

Batteries, as readers of ZDnet know well, are crucial to the future of everything from hand-helds and laptops to plug-in cars and the electricity grid itself. Just how bad is the American battery makiing business? Recently HP announced it was buying newer, more efficient batteries from Boston Power, then making them available to laptop customers. Boston Power makes its batteries in Taiwan.

Yes, Virgnia, there are American-made batteries.

Imara is a lithium-ion battery maker running very much against the off-shoring trend. Imara is based in Menlo Park and makes their new tech batteries there. I spoke with Neil Maguire, VP of Business Development at Imara. He told me the manufacturing of the cells is being done at the headquarters to protect their proprietary process. Imara gained their technological edge by licensing a materials process developed at SRI. That independent laboratory was operating under a Department of Energy research contract set up in 1999. It was specifically aimed at making better batteries, especially aimed at the next generation of motor vehicles. Somebody was clearly thinking ahead. And this tech has not escaped to competing nations.

(Source: ZDNet.com, earth2tech.com, Imara Corp.)