I Drive Electric

Received this scandalous email from the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Society today and had to share. There are no footnotes or references to sources however its similar to what has been promoted on Who Killed the Electric Car: GM and Chevron which does have some source info.

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Published by VEVA,

The tale of GM’s attempted suppression of NiMH, and the hand-off to
Standard Oil, is so involved and convoluted, so hidden by secret
agreements and subsidiaries, split-off rights and so on, it’d take a
legion of lawyers to expose fully, even if the confidential documents and
settlement agreements were not hidden.

It’s true that GM in 1994 purchased the exclusive worldwide licensing
rights for NiMH and then vested these rights in a subsidiary “Joint
Venture” called GM-Ovonics,  and also true that GM sold its interest in
GM-Ovonics plus shares in the parent company ECD (enough to guarantee
control of GM-Ovonics and the rights) to Texaco on Oct. 10, 2000.

Previously in 2000, ECD’s unit, Ovonics, was granted the unusual honour of
Japanese patent protection, setting the stage for the drama that followed.

Texaco vested the new assets in its unit “Texaco Technical Ventures”; but
on Oct. 16, 2000, Texaco and Chevron (Standard Oil of California)
announced their intent to merge.  As we all know, this is not done
overnight; they were doing Due Diligence for months, or years, belieing
the 6-day gap separating GM from is co-conspirator Chevron.

After the merger was consummated, in 2001, the unit was renamed Chevron
Ovonics Battery Systems (“cobasys”) and a lawsuit was filed by the actual
patent holder, More >