Top News: "General Motors plans to purchase Cobasys outright"

[Blake Noble]

"General Motors plans to purchase Cobasys outright"

Shortly after reports of leaky batteries coming from Cobasys, which greatly slowed the production of GM's mild hybrid vehicles, such as the Saturn Vue and Aura hybrids and Chevy Malibu hybrid, comes a report from Automotive News which suggests that General Motors may just purchase the troubled battery maker outright. That's one way to manage the problem, wouldn't you say? Though GM would own 100-percent of Cobasys, some sort of partnership is said to be in the works, though that other entity remains unknown. Before this announcement, Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices, co-owners of the battery supplier, had been fighting over ownership of the company.

What effect this news may have on GM's future hybrid plans remains unknown. Currently, Cobasys supplies nickel metal hydride batteries to the General. The upcoming Chevy Volt will use the newer lithium ion batteries. Still, General Motors recently showed off a new version of its mild hybrid technology, and therefore may have extended plans for future batteries from Cobasys.

Sourced from AutoBlog: Link

[PurdueGuy]

interesting... in kind of a cool way, I guess...

[thegriffon]

IIRC Cobasys is in one of the Lithium-ion partnerships as well. It's not so much a fight over ownership, but funding commitments.

[enzl]

In essence, they're rescuing another supplier.

[ZL-1]

In essence, they're rescuing another supplier.

It makes me wonder where all of these troubled-supplier stories are pointing: fully internalizing components/systems R&D and production (as examples, Delphi/Visteon returning to GM/Ford)? Or is the supplier picture so messed up right now that no one really knows what to do and OEMs just throw money at suppliers in hope things will hang on and a Hollywood-style happy ending happens?

Edited June 7, 2008 by ZL-1