Chinese billionaire to scoop up failing car battery maker that got $240M from feds
A struggling Massachusetts-based company that makes batteries for electric cars and got $240 million in stimulus money is being saved from bankruptcy by a Chinese billionaire who could move operations overseas.
A123 Systems received a $241.1-million grant from the Obama administration three years ago and more than $125 million in State of Michigan tax credits in the hopes that the company would create jobs, while leading the country away from conventional gas-guzzling vehicles and toward clean energy.
But the lithium ion battery maker is now poised to hand over the reins to Wanxiang Group, a Chinese firm, which agreed in a tentative deal last August to invest up to $450 million so that it can take over as much as 80 percent of the company.
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The situation with the struggling company is similar to that of Solyndra, a California solar-panel maker that went bankrupt after receiving $535 million in federal loans.
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Workers at the Compact Power manufacturing facilities in Holland, Mich., run by LG Chem, have been placed on rotating furloughs, working only three weeks per month based on lack of demand for lithium-ion cells. The Michigan hybrid battery plant, once praised by Obama as evidence "manufacturing jobs are coming back to the United States, was built with $150 million in taxpayer funds.
ref:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/11/ch ... latestnews