Chevron is selling Cobasys, the company that owns the patent to the 15 year old NiMH battery.

That's the most successful EV battery made. It's in every hybrid including the Prius and has operated flawlessly for almost a decade in the hundreds of Toyota's 100% Electric RAV4EVs.

Chevron became famous for suppressing the the use of the NiMH battery as they saw it as a threat to the use of gasoline. For example, Chevron's agreement with Toyota only allows a small NiMH battery to be used in the Prius. This goes for other hybrids that use the NiMH battery. They must use mostly gasoline. The new Prius has a only slightly bigger battery.

Why would Chevron sell now? Maybe because of the grass-roots effort called for in the book, "TWO CENTS PER MILE" asking our government to force Chevron by law to let that battery be used in large scale EV production. This issue may have become a hot potato for Chevron and with the changes going on with EVs today, the time was right to sell.

The new owners LiMotive, Samsung and Bosh plan on producing this amazing battery for sale to be used in EVs. Yeh! The NiMH is much cheaper to make than todays Li-Ion batts.

This could make Battery Electric Vehicles cheaper sooner.

 

Wow great news!

 

My guess would be patents are only good for 14 (or 20 depending on the type of patent.) years. Selling now will give the new owner 5 years to re-coop his investment before the market opens up to everyone.

Does that mean in 2014 we'll see a flood of new battery powered cars? Let's hope so.