Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Hardware
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Mass. firm seeks $100M in stimulus funds for lithium-ion plant

Boston-Power technology seen as critical to national security; plant would employ 600

June 1, 2009 12:45 PM ET

Computerworld - Boston-Power Inc., which now builds lithium-ion batteries in Taiwan, is seeking $100 million in federal stimulus funds to build a 455,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Massachusetts.

Of the $787 billion in federal stimulus funds approved by Congress, the U.S. has set aside $2 billion to build, from scratch, lithium-ion manufacturing facilities in the U.S. Government officials have said production of lithium-ion batteries, whose technology is rapidly improving, has been specifically targeted for stimulus dollars because it is critical to national security.

On Monday, Massachusetts pledged to add $9 million in matching financing for the project if the federal funds are approved. It is estimated that that project would create about 600 jobs at the manufacturing facility and some 2,000 indirect jobs, including those of the workers who will build the plant and those of people hired at companies that will supply materials to it.

The manufacturing plant would be built in Auburn, Mass., close to Boston-Power's headquarters in Westboro, Mass. That locale boasts an abundant workforce and is close to a number of universities.

A Boston-Power spokesman said the company hopes to get an answer on its request for federal stimulus funds within a month.

Boston-Power currently makes laptop PC batteries, and it has plans to produce batteries for electric cars. The company had been planning to build a lithium-ion manufacturing plant in China, and but it put that plan on hold once Congress approved the stimulus package. In an interview earlier this year, Christina Lampe-Onnerud, Boston Power's CEO, said that with U.S. help, "in principle, we would be able to compete with leading Japanese manufacturers very, very quickly."

Boston-Power's laptop batteries are used by Hewlett-Packard Co., among other vendors. The company now produces its batteries in Taiwan under an agreement it has with a manufacturer there.

Read more about laptops in Computerworld's Laptops Knowledge Center.



Jump to comments

boston-power

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Managing Laptops Outside the Office
Learn how you can reduce costs by tracking mobile computers no matter where they are located.

Airport Insecurity: The Case of Lost Laptops
Access this white paper, compliments of Dell, for a limited time only!  

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!


IT Jobs