Altair sees brighter future in big batteries for utilities

The best-known customer for the electric-car batteries developed by Reno's Altair Nanotechnologies has hit some bumps in the road.

And Altair's top executive said last week he believes the publicly held company's most promising future may lay in big batteries the size of shipping containers that would be used at electrical generating plants.

Earlier this year, AES Corp., a power plant developer, paid $3 million to acquire a 1.5 percent stake in Altair and began working with the company to develop big battery packs.

Alan Gotcher, president and chief executive officer of Altair, told investors last week the work continues, but his company won't have much to say publicly for six months or so.

He said, however, that he believes the big battery business presents the biggest opportunity for Altair. AES in August placed a $1 million order for an energy storage system to be shipped by Altair toward the end of this year.

A similar technology could be used to provide power on ships, and Congress has approved funding of two Altair Nanotechnology projects in that field.

A much-publicized project by Altair to manufacture battery packs for vehicles, meanwhile, is at what Gotcher called "a hand-wringing moment."

Phoenix Motorcars, the California company that needs to buy 250 battery packs for $16 million from Altair by the end of the year to maintain its exclusive agreement with the Reno company, now is uncertain it will be able to line up the financing it needs to complete the deal.

Altair owns a 16 percent stake in Phoenix.

Gotcher said he's confident the order still will come through, and he said Altair also is talking with other manufacturers of electric vehicles.

He said Altair is focusing much of its efforts to cutting costs in its battery business and also is developing a lighter, smaller and more rugged vehicle battery pack.

The research and development expenses, both for the vehicle batteries and the power-plant batteries under development with AES, resulted in a wider loss for Altair during its third quarter.

The company reported a loss of $6.1 million for the quarter compared with a loss of $4 million in the comparable period a year earlier.

Revenues rose to $3.4 million in the quarter from $750,000 a year ago.

The company had $10.1 million in cash on its books on Sept. 30, enough to cover nine months of expenses at its current rate of losses, assuming it doesn't line up additional financing.