[Oeva-list] Oeva-list Digest, Vol 76, Issue 7 Chevron Blocking of NiMH batteries

[Gene Climer]

At the risk of sounding prejudicial, does anyone have any idea how many people were injured, burned or killed due to Ovonics NiMH traction battery failures during the course of engineering qualification testing and beta testing? I mean, it does not take much of a failure rate that results in injury to convince any corporation to dump a technology, no matter how good it is otherwise. And we have to realize that this data is not likely to exist in the public domain.
Gino

 



________________________________
From: mark barthemer <morbiusx1 at hotmail.com>
To: oeva-list at oeva.org
Sent: Fri, February 5, 2010 4:43:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Oeva-list] Oeva-list Digest, Vol 76, Issue 7 Chevron Blocking of NiMH batteries

Janet - Thanks for the message.  My mention of the refusal of Chevron (or whichever oil company that now owns the patent)  to license the Ovonics NiMH traction batteries for further EV use (including plug-in hybrids and replacements for the original NiMH pack in the electric RAV-4) was not just rhetorical.  I don't know if the issue has been dealt with on this site, but if ever a subject seemed ripe for a Congressional inquiry, this is it -  combining as it does the rosy glow of corporation-bashing with what seems like a real instance of the strategic use of a patent solely to strangle a rival technology, with real harm to the public.  I may have missed something, but I don't recall seeing this in the mainstream media - it is only the EV & alt-energy sites that have discussed it.  Can we light a fire under someone, especially in an election year?

Thanks for the soapbox.  Mark Parthemer


      
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