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It Just Keeps Getting Worse
Jul. 16th, 2008 02:06 pmSome time ago, I posted about how Chevron* killed the car-sized Nickle Metal Hydride battery simply by buying the company that made them. Well, things have gotten stinky again.
One day after announcing a contract to supply batteries for a GM hybrid in development, Chevron put Cobasys up for sale. Cobasys was a joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices/Ovonics. According to the date on the press release, it looks like this happened over a year ago. I also seems that Ovonics exercised some of its stock options and bought a large chunk of Cobasys back from Chevron. (Thanks to proprietary news sites, though, it's hard to get the complete story. Grrrr. . . )
Now it looks like Stanley's company is in deep financial doo-doo. Chevron stopped funding Cobasys after the stock buy-back, leading to an arbitration battle and resulting in over $80 million in debt:
Well, gee, since I think Chevron* bought ECD to stop electric automobiles as much as it could, and since ECD inventors developed the NiMH battery to power electric vehicles (see my last post), I'd say the chances of them coming to just about any productive agreement is essentially nil.
But that's just cynical ol' me.
*Addendum July 22, 2008: Texaco, not Chevron, actually bought the controlling Cobasys shares from General Motors in 2000; Texaco then merged with Chevron a year later, forming Chevron Technology Ventures, the current subsidiary involved in this financial stalemate.
One day after announcing a contract to supply batteries for a GM hybrid in development, Chevron put Cobasys up for sale. Cobasys was a joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices/Ovonics. According to the date on the press release, it looks like this happened over a year ago. I also seems that Ovonics exercised some of its stock options and bought a large chunk of Cobasys back from Chevron. (Thanks to proprietary news sites, though, it's hard to get the complete story. Grrrr. . . )
Now it looks like Stanley's company is in deep financial doo-doo. Chevron stopped funding Cobasys after the stock buy-back, leading to an arbitration battle and resulting in over $80 million in debt:
. . . Cobasys' corporate parents on Feb. 15 suspended their months-long arbitration battle and entered into an interim settlement agreement to negotiate a sale with an unnamed bidder. The two parties have since extended seven times a deadline for completing the sale.
ECD's Ovonic Battery Corp. subsidiary and Chevron "have not been able to agree on a solution to Cobasys' business issues or whether Cobasys should continue as a going concern if it cannot be sold in the near future," ECD said in its third-quarter earnings filling with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (Emphasis mine.)
Well, gee, since I think Chevron* bought ECD to stop electric automobiles as much as it could, and since ECD inventors developed the NiMH battery to power electric vehicles (see my last post), I'd say the chances of them coming to just about any productive agreement is essentially nil.
But that's just cynical ol' me.
*Addendum July 22, 2008: Texaco, not Chevron, actually bought the controlling Cobasys shares from General Motors in 2000; Texaco then merged with Chevron a year later, forming Chevron Technology Ventures, the current subsidiary involved in this financial stalemate.
