With all the money going into gas these days, is it any surprise that companies in the business of making gas alternatives are seeing increased financial interest as well? Mascoma was obviously one of the recent big winners, but the list is long and we can now add Firefly Energy. Firefly recently closed its third round of funding, which brought the company $16m. Firefly has been on our scope for a while, especially with their Oasis Group 31 batteries. The U.S. Army is also interested, to the tune of $5m, in the company's lead acid 3D and 3D2 batteries.Khosla Ventures, known for its investments in various ethanol start-ups, is one of the new investors in Firefly Energy, as is Infield Capital. The DOE has also given Firefly $3.2m to develop the 3D batteries, according to VentureBeat. For the 2006 scoop on the 3D2 batteries, check out our interview with Firefly Energy co-founder Mil Ovan. And, if you have a few million to throw around, it seems to be the thing to do to fork it over to green auto tech companies. In case you were curious.
[Source: VentureBeat via EV World]
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1. Given that they have mainly improved the power density, not the energy density, at the expense of production cost, what's the big deal with Firefly? I mean, "making lead-acid batteries not quite as lousy as they used to be" is hardly a winning slogan.
Posted at 7:16PM on May 8th 2008 by KarenRei