Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Ecotality, Car Charging Competitor To Aerovironment, Files For Bankruptcy

Ecotality, one of the competitors of local car charging developer Aerovironment, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after facing issues with locating long term financing. Ecotality makes the Blink and Minit Charger brands of charger for electric cars, which competes against Monrovia-based Aerovironment's EV Solutions unit. According to Ecotality, it has a number of bidders who have expressed interest in buying the company's assets; it's unclear in Aerovironment has put in a bid for the competing electric vehicle charger maker.

San Francisco-based Ecotality had been pursuing the public charging market, with deals with Kroger, Kohl's, Hilton, and others. Aerovironment has been more focused on linking with the actual manufacturers of electric cars for home charging stations; the company had been fairly involved in public deployments of electric chargers back in the 1980's, when California tried to force the deployment of electric vehicles by legislation. There are still thousands of defunct chargers originally developed as part of that 1980's efforts scattered around shopping malls in Southern California.

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