Robert Kanode, CEO of Valence Technology, speaks about vanadium and its impact to future battery technology in the company's February 2010 Quarterly earnings call.

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Transcript Excerpts from Valence Technology’s Q3 Earnings Call,
February 11, 2010

 Comments from Robert Kanode, President & CEO of Valence on Vanadium as a “breakaway material”

Robert Kanode

2010 could emerge as a breakthrough year for Valence.

…we are developing a customer base that offers life changing products enabled by Valence dynamic energy systems. Looking to the future, we believe these technology leading customers may also be early adaptors of our next generation of patented technologies such as Lithium Vanadium Phosphate energy systems.

Bern Schwartz - Unidentified Company

One last question, I haven’t heard very much about lithium vanadium phosphate fluoride and also can you comment a little bit on future chemical mixes?

Robert Kanode

Yes, lithium vanadium phosphate is a family of materials that we have 243 core international patterns covering this. The significant of this, I’ll just give you one example, on lithium vanadium phosphate, we have already been testing in commercial cells for quite a while, the material was made by U.S. chemical company with our processes.

We are achieving significant results from a stand point of you can drive these cells at about five volts versus about three volts for everything on the market today and even more significant than that we have been driving these with a “C” rate of 50C and that means 50- times rated capacity of the cell for short bursts of power that you would want for regenerative braking and things like that.

In that area of 50C, you basically have moved beyond the capabilities of any battery we know of into super-capacitor territory and it is really a breakaway material that others recognize and others want to be with us, for example, people that are making or developing non-flammable electrolytes. They want to put that in our vanadium material because they can optimize their performance and value, and we want them there, because on the other hand, we’ll optimize our performance and value as well.

So it’s a very exciting family of lithium vanadium phosphate and lithium vanadium fluorophosphates that we have been working very hard, and in fact this company has been working very hard on this for years and I think you are going to see it now in very short order and its going to deliver some breath taking performance.

… We’re very happy that number one, vanadium will compliment what we have today in our Lithium Iron Magnesium Phosphate.

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On the Future Growth of Electric Vehicles

Robert Kanode

I think you’ll see EV growth in the next two years.   I think you have to put in perspective where we believe EVs will be developed and I think if you ask me who I’ll think will aggressively move forward, it is in China [with] the likes of BYD, Chery and others for a number of reasons. So one of that is, they’re sitting on top of the market that has had a electric transportation for 30 years and electric bikes, scooters and even three wheel cargo carts that are electric.

They are accustomed to a high degree of electric transportation. So it’s not a market that you have to make a mark with before you can bring electric transportation into it, and the second thing is these se manufacturers in China. They don’t have any baggage, they don’t have internal combustion engine plants, but they have to deal with that they’re heavily invested for example. So they have a market, they are determined, they have the resources and they don’t have that baggage.

So, while they’re accepting an EV, we’re still simply talking about them and Europe thinks it’s a good idea, but if I had the rank GOs if you will, as far as growth and acceptance of EVs, it would be Asia first, Europe second, United States last. So there are major manufacturers also in India like Tata Motors that are going to move forward quickly also. They’re motivated.

Now that we are also seeing a high degree of activity in China, we are extremely well positioned to respond to that, given our manufacturing presence in China, we’re well known in China and there’s quite a bit of vertical integration between the battery companies and EVs such as BYD.

On Stationary Batteries

Robert Kanode

We’re very happy that number one, vanadium will compliment what we have today in our Lithium Iron Magnesium Phosphate. Lithium Iron Magnesium Phosphate will not go away.

The other thing I would say about Lithium Iron Magnesium Phosphate is it will offer much better performance when applications move from consumer grade like phones and laptops into more professional grade demanding applications. So we look forward to that, but looking at the vanadium it will compliment [it] in certain applications such as frequency modulation in stationary.

If you look at stationary, I think you’re going to see growth of very large systems in the next couple of years as again, new “bed fellows” come together like we did with Siemens to do a hybrid bus.

I think that we will be pleased with the result, because that need for stationary [batteries] [requires] that we look forward, that is [power companies] currently have significant operational problems and inefficiencies. Power plants in mass synergy storage have the need and can afford effective solutions and that’s why that’s going to be a nice sector for everyone in our business that has credible storage solutions that are ready to go and we do.