Rochester Hills’ Compact Power, Inc., has gotten a $12.9 million contract from the Advanced Battery Consortium – members are General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler – to take lithium-ion battery development to the next stage - and they're going to need some new employees to do it.
“Everybody’s kind of realizing (hybrid vehicle) technology is coming to market in a big way in next three to five years,” says Chris Groesbeck, an account manager at Compact. “The reason it hasn’t happened sooner is advanced batteries weren’t quite ready to make that happen.”
A battery, he says, needs to hold a lot of energy in a small space, and it needs to be lightweight. Advanced lithium-ion batteries, Groesbeck says, “cram a lot of energy and power into a smaller and lighter space.”
Creation of such batteries for use in hybrid vehicles could be a boon for Michigan.
“It’s a big deal for the auto industry, and a big deal for Michigan,” Groesbeck says. “There’s a number of large companies that will potentially supply these advanced batteries, and right here in Michigan you have one of them.”
The battery Compact Power is developing won’t be brought to market, but will serve to refine the battery concepts in development for future commercialization.
To complete the development, Groesbeck says, Compact Power will double in size over the next year, from 40 to 80 employees.
Source: Chris Groesbeck, Compact Power
Writer: Nancy Kaffer
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