Altairnano - Partnerships

Partnerships

AltairNano shares its battery technology with battery electric vehicle manufacturers. Phoenix Motorcars of Ontario, California is planning to use Altair's batteries in its sport-utility vehicles, currently slated to ship in 2010. The Lightning Car Company in the UK has a license for using their cells in its upcoming sports cars. Proterra, a battery dominant hybrid, and battery-electric, drive solutions designer, developer and manufacturer, is using Altairnano batteries in its all-electric EcoRide BE35 vehicle, a lightweight 35-foot bus.

In July 2007, AltairNano entered into a joint development and purchase agreement for a suite of energy storage products with AES Corporation, an electrical power distribution company. These are for three distinct market applications:

Frequency Regulation
Renewables Integration
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications.

As a first step Altairnano has produced for AES an independently tested, one megawatt, grid-scale, battery energy storage system currently in use in the PJM Interconnection Regional Transmission Organization control area in Norristown, PA. The agreement with AES is not exclusive leaving Altair free to negotiate with any other utility, Independent System Operator (ISO), merchant operator, municipality or rural electric cooperative.

Altair Nanotechnologies also has relationships with the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and the Ministry of Defense (United Kingdom) (MoD). The DOD relationships include providing a battery backup system to replace the otherwise continuously running diesel turbine generators on United States Navy vessels, such as the Arleigh Burke class destroyer, and United States Army batteries for the M119 howitzer. The U.K. MoD relationship is via BAE Systems Marine Limited for which Altair is producing a battery system for submarine power and propulsion.

Altairnano has joined a number of other companies in a consortium called the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries (NAATB). The objective of this alliance is to build a single production facility where member companies would be able to purchase line time to build their own battery cells while keeping safe their proprietary information. Altairnano is also a member of the Defense Advanced Battery Manufacturing Coalition (DABMC).

Notwithstanding this partnership activity, as of March 2009, Altairnano has shipped little more than prototypes and relatively small numbers of battery packs. This company has, in various incarnations, a 36 year history of varied partnerships without ever making a profit. Altairnano has a dependency on the success of third parties products.