Cuberg Cuts Out As Battery Business Hits A Bump in the Road
Is California just that bad? Did the company just want to centralize in one location? Is the battery storage industry just being battered by everyday stories of lithium battery fires caused by nothing? Or, is it this:
We don't know. It could be all three, but this much we do know: Cuberg is closing its battery storage business in the Bay Area and moving everything to Sweden:
Northvolt, a Swedish battery marker, is shutting down a Bay Area subsidiary and laying off its nearly 200 employees as it consolidates research and development efforts in Sweden.
The subsidiary, Cuberg Inc., announced the cuts in a Tuesday WARN document filed with California officials, as is generally required in the event of mass layoffs. Cuberg’s facility in San Leandro will shut down, per the document, leaving 196 workers without jobs. The list includes a slew of engineers and technicians and several executives and scientists. It’s another blow for the Bay Area’s green energy workforce, which has recently seen waves of layoffs at Moxion Power, SunPower and Fulcrum BioEnergy.
We’re also told “Cuberg’s founder and former CEO, Richard Wang, mourned the news on LinkedIn” and here is some of what he had to say:
Today is a sad day for me, the entire Cuberg family that I have known for the last nine years, and the battery industry at large. Northvolt has officially announced that it is closing down all of Cuberg’s operations and centralizing its R&D efforts in Sweden.
Since 2015, the Cuberg team has worked tirelessly to advance the state of the art in battery technology. Together, we built a pioneering set of lithium metal battery technologies, worked with some of the most exciting high-performance mobility brands and projects in the world, and perhaps most importantly, assembled a world-class team that was as tight-knit and collegial as it was capable. I could not be more proud of all that the Cuberg team has accomplished over the years.
Everyone seems to be leaving California these days, especially green energy firms and employees. It seems exploding energy prices and taxes caused by green energy foolishness isn't healthy for green energy enterprises. Who'd have thunk it?
#California #GreenEnergy #Cuberg #Climate #BayArea #Sweden #BatteryStorage
It's too bad that so many people have been misled by faulty climate science and unwise government policies. Careers are threatened, jobs are lost, capital is misallocated - all because of hasty decisions made to replace existing energy technology and start new-fangled energy businesses before thorough market research and testing. What will these 200 laid off folks do?
With the state of the ev market, the solar battery storage market, wind energy battery storage market, this of course is a shock to believers in the tooth fairy - but not the rest of humanity. If you can’t run a profitable business, get a government grant. If the government grant is given then sucking yiur horns to preserve as much of the free cash as possible - even if you just abscond with the funds and declare bankruptcy. Remember solyndra??