Boston Power charges up battery technology with $45M investment

Money has been pouring into battery and fuel cell startups of late, with companies like A123 Systems, Lilliputian Systems, and M2E Power (coverage here, here and here) raising funding ranging from single- to triple-digit millions.

Now another company has taken on a heavy round of funding: Boston Power, a firm that plans to concentrate its efforts on the laptop market with a battery that ages better than competing products.

One of the most annoying things about laptop batteries (besides when they catch on fire) is their short lifespan. Standard lithium-ions lose their ability to recharge over time, and typically have to be replaced every year or so by mobile workers.

The battery that Boston Power just began producing, the Sonata, will continue to charge just as well as they did when brand new for up to several years, depending on the usage habits of owners.

The Sonata averages a four to five time longer lifespan than current battery technology, according to the company. That, in turn, will lead to fewer discarded batteries from the millions of laptop users around the world.

“I have a system that’s a few years old, but I still get 4 hours battery life. I’m often the only person in the room that’s not plugged in,” founder and CEO Chrstine Lampe-Onnerund told us in an interview.

Unlike companies like A123, which has a proprietary doping technology, Onnerund tells us that Boston Power’s secret is just in overall good engineering, and solving production problems ranging from battery chemistry to the manufacturing process.

The Sonata will, at least initially, be sold through laptop manufacturers who will choose what to charge for it. The company plans on scaling its production, which is handled by outside firms, to one million batteries per month by the end of 2008.

The $45 million investment is the company’s third. Oak Investment Partners led the round, while Venrock Associates, Granite Global Ventures and Gabriel Venture Partners also participated. The Boston-area company has raised over $68 million total to date.