Battery maker Imara emerges from stealth

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Imara emerged from stealth mode to announce it plans to begin producing its high-power rechargeable lithium ion batteries in 2009 for applications such as power tools, lawn equipment and electric motorcycles.

Imara, previously known as Lion Cells, uses lithium ion battery technology developed at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) as part of the Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle initiative. Federal funding for the program dried up, and CEO Jeff Depew bought the exclusive license, which Imara has used as the basis for its technology.

Depew said Imara's battery technology is unlikely to be replicated. While many battery companies focus on nanoparticles as a way to improve capacity and cycles, Imara's original technology licensed from SRI uses a "non-obvious approach," Depew said.

"Most battery development is experimental and empirically based, so there's not a lot of modeling that will tell you if you do X, Y and Z, you’ll stumble on something," he told the Cleantech Group. "The approach SRI took contravenes conventional wisdom."

Fuel cell membrane developer PolyFuel (AIM: PYF) also spun out technology from SRI. 

Imara worked to make the technology material agnostic, allowing it to take advantage of all mainstream lithium ion chemistry combinations—making Imara one of the few horizontal battery plays in cleantech, Depew said. Additionally, Imara used venture capital backing to further develop the system to optimize cathodes and anodes within the structure of a battery cell.

The company was previously called Lion Cells but changed its name because of concerns it couldn't protect the copyright. Lion is too similar to Li-ion, the shorthand for lithium ion, Depew said.

The company secured funding in May 2006 from Battery Ventures and Nth Power. The company has now raised a little more than $19 million in two rounds from the pair, who were joined in the most recent round in January by a couple unnamed investors.

Depew said he expects to raise an additional round in the first half of 2009 to start scaling production capacity but hasn't determined the amount of capital needed.

The company's first product is a 18650 battery, which can be used in laptops or power tools. A second product line ready a couple months later is expected to offer about three times the capacity, capable of powering an electric motorcycle or a lawnmower. The company plans to later target the electric vehicle market and is mulling short-term storage for the electric grid, Depew said.

Imara recently acquired a 15,000-square foot building near its Silicon Valley headquarters to allow it to build a production line capable of producing millions of units a year. Imara has ordered standard equipment for the production line, which will make all the electrodes for the batteries. Most of the units are planned to be assembled in-house, but some batteries destined for the power tool market are to be assembled in Asia, where that industry is concentrated.

Currently, Imara has the capability to produce thousands of batteries a year to use in research and development. In early 2009, the company expects to use the expanded line to produce batteries as sample products for customers, ramping production according to customer demand.

Imara expects to sign on OEM customers to incorporate the batteries in laptops, power tools, lawnmowers, leaf blowers and other devices.

That's the first target market because it can produce revenue sooner than the automobile market, which is largely just experimenting with lithium ion batteries now, Depew said.

"The development contract doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a production contract," he said.

A similar strategy is being pursued by San Diego-based PowerGenix.

Additionally, lawn equipment is far more polluting than traditional vehicles, Depew said. For example, the emissions attributable to an hour's use of a leaf blower are equal to that of 17 SUVs.

Depew said Imara's technology overcomes some of the shortcomings of other lithium ion devices. In comparison to the lithium cobalt oxide laptop batteries that drew attention after starting fires when reaching the take-off point of 140 degrees Celsuis, Imara's technology has a threshold of about 200 degrees. Competitor A123Systems has a take-off of about 210 degrees. Both offer "a significant safety margin" when compared to early technology, he said.

Depew said Imara beats A123 on power density: 140 versus 88 watts. And he says Imara's technology achieves three times the cycle life than competing products from Sony or Sanyo, reaching 1,000 full-discharge cycles.

Pricing hasn't been established, but Depew said he expects the cells to be competitive with those of Sony and Sanyo.