WSJ: "Car Battery Start-Ups Fizzle"

Much like the PV solar debacle:

"The U.S. provided grants that tied the battery makers to aggressive timetables, requiring each to achieve production and staffing targets that would supply tens of thousands of vehicles a year. But those production timetables weren't linked to market demand leaving to a shake out among suppliers.
[...]
A123's $249 million matching grant required it to build facilities that could make at least 500 megawatt-hours of lithium-ion battery capacity a year by this November—the equivalent of supplying 21,000 Nissan Leaf electric-cars. Nissan Motor Co. has sold about 12,000 Leafs in the U.S. since the end of 2010."