by Steve LeVine
For kindnesses large and small, thanks to Tom De Waal, Sabine Gallagher, Gideon Lichfield, Sam Patten, Becky Shafer, Faith Smith, Lisa Thackeray, Eric Weiner, and Georgina Wilson.
My most profound gratitude to my family for unconditional support and understanding of absences, silences, and surliness: thanks to Alisha, Ilana and Dolores LeVine, and finally to my best friend and wife, Nurilda Nurlybayeva.
Appendix A
Atul Kapadia e-mailed the following letter to the Envia team on August 30, 2013:
Dear Envia Team:
Thank you very much for all the hard work and the sacrifices each of you made for Envia during the past three years. I greatly enjoyed our interaction but most importantly learnt a lot from each of you.
It was most satisfying for me to watch each of our employees really care about the quality of their work. Everyone worked hard and made enormous sacrifices. When Tom Stephens, GM Vice-Chairman, visited Envia in 2011, he told me in a private conversation that he wished that GM could reproduce Envia’s culture—Envia is respected because each employee takes pride in their job and knows that if they did not show up, Envia would suffer. That’s high praise indeed. Of course, I did not take any credit for that because the true credit belonged to Sujeet and Herman (for setting up such a work-ethic early-on) and to the team members themselves.
My journey with Envia has been a long one! When I was at Bay Partners, I (along with John Walecka) was the first one to write a check for Envia in 2007 and then re-wrote another check in 2009. When we were approaching insolvency and were using Silicon Valley bank debt money in 2010, I joined the team and Envia closed a highly successful [cash-raising] round of $17 million. Closing those deals with Honda and GM was equally exciting. However, you will all admit that most fun was to compete and win against LG at GM by benchmarking [the] NMC:LMO mixture against our own layered-layered lithium rich cathode.
Some companies have this unique magic potion of employees that as time goes by you see several of the young (and not so young like me) employees become successful via entrepreneurship, via MBAs from prestigious universities or big-shot executives in large companies. I know for a fact that I will hear about many many of you in the years to come.
You all have very exciting individual futures ahead of you. And as long as you keep things simple—ethically and intellectually—nothing will stop you from achieving things that you want to achieve. Surround yourself with people who are tough on you, but also have a strong moral compass.
Some of you have also asked me—what really happened? Easiest way to explain it is when you have strong personalities, there are always disagreements. And disagreements can sometimes be reconciled and sometimes not be reconciled. Add to that 4 months ago, I co-founded a company with a friend that recently got funded. And my co-founder is jealous that I spend all my time thinking about Envia. So as a confluence of several factors, I submitted my resignation to the Board of Directors on August 4 and again yesterday. Today they graciously accepted it.
Just like I was the right CEO when the company had a financing crisis in 2010, our new CEO, Purnesh Seegopaul, is absolutely the right CEO for this moment. He has a Ph.D and has deep experience in the specialty materials world. Despite my several disagreements with Purnesh, in this specialty materials business, I have enormous respect for his judgment. Two years ago, Purnesh gave me some conservative advice on making sure that the business team was not running too fast compared to where Envia was in its technology development cycle. At that point, I disagreed with him. But as time passed, I realized that Purnesh was right. Purnesh is calm, meticulous and methodical—all traits that are vital to running a research company. Make sure you don’t let go of him.
Lastly, I received several messages today that I did not address the team in the company meeting. Purnesh graciously offered. But my philosophy is you look forward—not backward. And for each of you the time now is to carve that individual and combined forward path—so all the best!
Regards,
Atul
Appendix B
Envia released the following statement after Kapadia’s lawsuit was dropped:
Envia Systems is pleased that the lawsuit brought by Atul Kapadia and two other former employees has been dismissed. Envia is considering its options to address the fact that the baseless lawsuit was filed at all. The company’s own investigations and other data confirmed that the lawsuit was meritless, and the plaintiffs and their lawyers have now essentially agreed—by themselves dropping the suit less than two months after it was filed. The plaintiffs are still required to comply with a Preliminary Injunction issued against them in December at Envia’s request, which orders them to return company confidential property and data. Envia is moving forward and remains focused on developing breakthrough lithium-ion battery cathode and anode materials for both the automotive and consumer electronics markets.
Notes
2. Why Argonne Let Wan In
1.“Batteries for Electric Cars: Challenges, Opportunities and the Outlook to 2020,” Boston Consulting Group, 8.
2.Interview with Peter Harrup, chairman, IDTechEx, July 8, 2010.
3.Ibid.
4.13 to 15 percent, IHS Global Insight, quoted on Edmunds.com, January 22, 2010; 50 percent, author interview with Ralph Brodd, August 3, 2011. Translating the 2020 percentages into hard figures, we were talking sales of about 7.5 million cars a year. At an average of $30,000 a vehicle, that was a $225-billion-a-year industry, equivalent to the 2012 gross revenue of Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker. If accurate, the estimate for 2030 would be more than three times that number.
5.French ecology minister Jean-Louis Boorloo, quoted by Agence France-Press, October 2, 2009.
3. A Good Place to Do Science
1.Arthur Compton, Atomic Quest (Oxford, 1956), 144.
2.Jack M. Holl, Argonne National Laboratory, 1946–96 (University of Illinois Press, 1997), 56.
3.Ibid., 430.
4. “Discouraged Weariness in the Eyes”
1.Lab description and quotes from Robert K. Steunenberg and Leslie Burris, From Test Tube to Pilot Plant: A 50-Year History of the Chemical Technology Division at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne National Laboratory, 2000), 89–160.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.Detail and quotes from ibid.
5.C. P. Gilmore, “Electric Autos . . . They’re on the Way!,” Popular Science, December 1966, 76.
6.Stanley Whittingham interview with SUNY Binghamton, October 30, 2000, http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/materials/public/Whittingham_interview.htm.
5. Professor Goodenough
1.John B. Goodenough, Witness to Grace (Publish America, 2008).
2.Clare Grey, Barcelona speech, March 10, 2013.
7. Batteries Are a Treacherous World
1.The Electrician (London), February 17, 1883, 329.
8. Creating NMC
1.Steunenberg and Burris, From Test Tube to Pilot Plant, 470.
11. The New Boss
1.Industry size, Fantasy Sports Ad Network, http://www.fantasysportsadnetwork.com/aboutfantasy.htm.
15. The Start-up
1.Author interview with Michael Pak, December 2, 2013.
16. Out of India (and China and Africa)
1.San Jose Mercury News, www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22094415/asian-workers-now-dominate-silicon-valley-tech-jobs.
2.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), www.oecd.org/unitedstates/2102002.pdf.
3.Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/04/03/economic-conditions-key-keeping-foreign-phd-graduates-us.
19. The Car Man
1.Civil suit RG13704405 by Kapadia et al. in Alamada County Superior Court, 12.
29. Orlando
1.Edward L. Morse, “Energy 2020: North America, the New Middle East?” March 20, 2012, Citi notes to clients.
33. ARPA-E
1.Kapadia lawsuit, 16.
34. The Old and the Young
1.New York Times, Apr. 13, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/automobiles/how-green-are-electric-cars-depends-on-where-you-plug-in.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
37. Getting to a Deal
1.From a public relations . . . Envia “Corporate Presentation” by Kapadia, February 23, 2012. Kapadia presented the fourteen-slide deck to a small group of journalists at ARPA-E on February 27 but it was not released to the general press or released publicly.
42. The News from Envia
1.Private Crane report, June 28, 2012.
2.Kapadia lawsuit, 31.
44. Second Quarter Review
1.Kapadia lawsuit. The author verified the substance of the letter with a source in a position to know its content.
2.See Appendix A.
45. Black Box
1.From Kapadia’s “Corporate Presentation,” February 23, 2012.
2.See Appendix B.
46. Back to the Race
1.“LG Chem to Supply Batteries for 200-Mile Electric Cars in 2016—CFO,” Reuters, July 18, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/18/lg-chem-batteries-idUSL4N0PT25U20140718.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
A123, 39, 108, 185
bankruptcy of, 251–52, 262
and battery competition, 131, 149, 154, 155
and voltage fade, 157–59
Abraham, Daniel, 142
Air Force, U.S., 23–24
Akerson, Dan, 255–56, 260, 285
Amgen, 127
Amine, Khalil, 49–54, 185, 212
aggressive style of, 56–57, 126
and Argonne, 53–54, 55–57, 67, 103, 210, 235–38, 286–87
and battery competition, 180, 182, 186, 197
and Battery Hub, 137, 138–39, 141–42, 149, 221, 227, 243, 245, 250–51
and En-Caesar, 135, 138, 139
and entrepreneurship, 126, 128, 192
foreign staff of, 91–94, 97–100, 102
and Kumar, 85, 170, 193–94
and NMC, 57, 59, 67, 68, 72, 77, 78, 79, 127, 194
patents and papers of, 57, 59, 92, 97–98, 100, 102, 127, 236
Ammundsen, Brett, 46
Anderman, Menahem, 180–81, 182, 196–97
Apollo mission, 122–23, 129, 143
Apple, 198, 250–51
ARCH, 127–28
Argonne National Laboratory:
Advanced Photon Source, 168–69
and battery competition, 9, 47, 48, 132–33, 137–38, 149–51, 165, 166; see also Battery Hub
Battery Department, 13, 17, 20, 27, 41, 55, 65, 72–74, 92, 100, 105, 128, 137–38, 155, 160, 208, 211, 216, 221, 225, 235, 253
beam line in, 168–69, 260–61, 285
collaboration in, 140–44, 150, 170–71, 188, 204, 247
competition within, 55–57, 77–78, 141
and En-Caesar, 135–36, 138
and Energy Department, 123, 137, 193
foreign-born scientists in, 91–94, 96–100
history of, 10, 11–13
intellectual property unit, 64–65, 72, 98, 141, 153, 247
and internal combustion engines, 182–85, 187
and international patents, 65–69, 98, 197
and NMC, 4, 5, 41, 43–45, 47, 57–59, 60, 65, 67–69, 70–72, 83, 115, 127, 141, 162, 277
Obama’s visit to, 268–71
old vs. young staff in, 209–13
promotions in, 236–38
publications from, 59, 77, 78, 92, 97, 98, 100, 105, 171, 216
risk aversion in, 125–28
and robots, 79
scientists in, 13, 14, 16, 73, 77–78, 93–94, 98, 100, 104, 123
Wan Gang’s visit to, 3–6, 7, 9, 27
warehouse in, 187–89
work hazards in, 16–17
Arora, Rohit, 274
ARPA-E:
competition, 193–98, 201
Summit, 199–206, 207, 213, 230–31, 233, 257, 262, 263–66, 272, 277, 278, 279
Asahi Kasei, 112, 261, 267
AT&T, 13, 61–62, 119, 120, 122
BASF, 9, 67, 115, 116, 156
Basu, Samar, 119
batteries:
anode improvement in, 192–94
capacity of, 278
changing the energy density of gasoline, 149
charging, 58
cobalt in, 42, 153, 251
competition for, 4–6, 7, 37, 74, 75–78, 110, 118, 124, 129, 132–36, 137–39, 149–51, 167, 181, 184, 192–94, 204, 232, 245, 253, 283–84
DC resistance in, 230–31
and electric age, 17–19
in electric vehicles, see electric vehicles
in electronic devices, 7, 25, 35, 45, 152, 167, 250
elements of, 18
Energizer, 19, 36
energy density in, 278
and energy storage, 37
fires and explosions in, 21, 24, 35, 44, 59, 134, 145–46, 197, 214, 233
foreign-born inventors, 91–94, 96
400-watt-per-hour, 194–95, 196, 197, 201, 206, 207, 230–31, 262–64, 272–74, 277–79
future outlook of, 178–80
intercalation in, 21, 25
internal combustion engines vs., 182–85
iron oxide spinel in, 29, 30–32
layered-layered or composite, 44
lead-acid, 19, 20, 149
lithium, 24, 25, 35, 58, 192–93
lithium-air, 99, 235–36
lithium-cobalt-oxide, 25, 27, 28–29, 31, 35, 38, 41, 44, 45, 52, 58, 119, 152–54, 156, 250
lithium-ion, 5, 9, 18, 31, 35–36, 41–42, 45, 48, 58, 59, 65, 68, 70, 75–76, 79, 101, 102, 108, 110, 113, 119, 125, 129–32, 142, 145–46, 152, 153, 178, 187, 194, 198, 210, 248, 285
lithium-iron-phosphate, 9, 38, 39, 44, 154
lithium-manganese- oxide (Li2MnO3), 43–44, 46, 47, 58–59, 170, 171–73
lithium-sulfur, 209
manganese-nickel, 43, 46
manganese oxide, 41–42, 46
manganese spinel (LiMn2O4) in, 32, 38, 44, 47
Nelson-Gallagher model, 212, 213–14, 243–44
nickel-cobalt-aluminum (18650s), 232–33
nickel manganese cobalt (NMC), 4, 5, 9, 36, 41, 43–45, 47, 57–59, 60, 65, 68, 70, 79, 83, 110–13, 115, 127, 128, 141, 155, 166–67, 169, 197, 233, 257, 263–66, 277, 285
nickel metal hydride, 152, 153
NMC 2.0, 59, 71–72, 74, 76, 83, 103, 110, 111, 131–32, 152–61, 165, 170–72, 195, 197–98, 231, 250–51, 261, 278, 283, 285–87
Orlando conference on, 177, 180–81, 195–98, 205
rechargeable, 18–19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 37, 152
silicon anode, 193, 194, 196, 231, 261, 263, 266
spinel, 28–29, 30–32, 33, 38–39, 45, 110, 113, 152, 153
sulfur-sodium, 20, 25, 42
and 300-mile car, 194
200-mile battery, 285
voltage fade in, 154–61, 162–65, 166–67, 168–73, 205, 210, 227–28, 233–34, 238–41, 263, 278, 283, 285–86
Zebra, 28, 47
zinc carbon, 24, 31
Battery Hub:
Argonne’s proposal for, 138–39, 204, 212–14, 217–22, 223–27, 228–29, 235, 243–45, 253
award to Argonne, 250–54,
282
collaboration in, 132–33, 140–43, 150, 217
competition in, 132, 135, 137, 242–43, 249, 253
and Congress, 137
first year of, 286
and GM, 216–17
goals of, 132, 216, 232
oral presentations, 245–48
re-creating Bell Labs, 131, 133, 216, 282
Bayh, Birch, 126
Bayh-Dole Act (1980), 126
Bay Partners, 85–86, 112
Bell Laboratories, 13, 21, 61–62, 118–23, 129, 192
Nobel Prizes to, 150, 244
re-creation of, 131, 133, 136, 140, 216, 282, 283
Bosch, 183
Bowling, Chad, 162–64
Brinkman, Bill, 119, 135, 136
Brodd, Ralph, 65
Brown, Jerry, 228
Buffett, Warren, 39
Bunel, Emilio, 91, 237
Burrell, Tony, 91, 141, 160–61, 228, 235–37
Bush, George W., 125, 145, 203
Bybee, Clint, 127
BYD, 6, 39
Cairns, Elton, 20, 235
Cavuto, Neil, 145
Ceder, Gerd, 220
cellular phones, 122, 186
Chamberlain, Jeff, 3, 6, 9, 40, 60–69, 70–74, 100, 125, 208, 209
and Amine, 77, 138–39, 141–42
and battery competition, 75, 77–78, 79, 91, 135–36, 139, 140–44, 149, 184, 190
and Battery Department, 73–74, 105, 128–31, 160, 216, 235–37
and Battery Hub, 133, 135, 137–39, 141–44, 204, 213, 214, 216, 217, 220–22, 223–29, 232, 235, 243, 246–48, 252–53, 282, 283, 286
and Croy, 239–41
and En-Caesar, 133–36, 137, 138
and Envia/Kumar, 86–87, 88, 106–7, 115–17, 171, 203–4, 231–32, 277
and intellectual property, 64–66, 68–69, 71, 73, 86, 149