Charging Ahead

An inventor and his crew are providing the world with the technology of the future.
They mean to save the planet.

JULIE EDGAR STAFF WRITER

T H E DE TR O I T JE W IS H N EW S

ECD founder and president Stanford Ovshinsky believes the future is here.

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nside a block-long row of squat industrial buildings
in Troy lie the seeds of a cleaner, more peaceful fu-
ture.
The products generated at Energy Conversion De-
vices Inc. and its partners — nickel-metal-hydride
batteries and a semi-conducting material for solar
panels, among other applications — provide noth-
ing less than the means to save the planet, says com-
pany founder and president Stanford Ovshinsky.
When he speaks of war as a consequence of eco-
nomic dependence on crude oil, Mr. Ovshinsky is
almost prophetic; witness the quick response of the
West to Saddam Hussein's incursions to the north
and south.
"The idea of fighting wars, overthrowing gov-
ernments — it's ridiculous when you have science,"
he says.

Elegant and trim in a navy blue suit, Mr. Ovshin-
sky walks over to a "boom box" on a windowsill in
his office, picks up a 2-foot-long panel coated with
a thin-film semi-conductor material and holds it up
to the sun. Music floats into the room. He with-
draws it and silence follows. Simple but revolu-
tionary, he notes.
Mr. Ovshinsky's enthusiasm is shared by Robert
Stempel, the former head of General Motors who
now serves as ECD chairman and board member
of GM Ovonic, L.L.C., an ECD partner.
"He and I very much share the same vision. I love
the technology," Mr. Stempel says.
So do the automakers, which have entered into
joint ventures with ECD to use the Ovonic batter-
ies, which are manufactured by Ovonic Battery
Company, an ECD subsidiary. They are already in

wide use in cellular phones — a $3 billion market
— and GM and Honda plan to use them in electric
vehicles. Piaggio, the Italian scooter maker, recently
entered an agreement with Ovonic, as has Formosa
P1 a stics Group of Taiwan.
The company's surge to the forefront of "green"
technology in the last year has been phenomenal.
Last year, ECD's profits grew by 285.10 percent.
Sales grew by 113.59 percent. Stock (Nasdaq:
ENER) traded at 39 percent higher than the pre-
vious year. The growth prompted Crain's Detroit
Business to honor ECD as the first of its "Superstar
10" companies.
Mr. Ovshinsky, 73, shrugs off the accolades, re-
marking offhandedly that it pays to be in the right
place at the right time. He'd prefer to focus on the
company's vision, not its position in the marketplace.