FastCAP founder
ARPA-E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded FastCAP Systems, from Cambridge, MA, with a 2.5 year, $5.35 million grant to further develop and commercialize a nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitor, which could reduce the costs of hybrid and electric cars, being able to store and consume the energy much faster than conventional batteries do.
“The ARPA-E grant represents the ability to ramp up faster,” says Joel Schindall, the MIT professor in whose lab the technology was originally developed. “We now have the resources to do the things that we’ve been wanting to do for the last few years.”
Nick d’Arbeloff, president of the New England Clean Energy Council, says that the ARPA-E award will make a big difference to the small companies that receive them. “An award of this type is huge,” he says. “It is a huge badge of honor and validation for other investors, that this is seen by the Department of Energy as a highly innovative, breakthrough technology, and one that every venture capital firm should be tracking.”
It’s good startups like FastCAP get funding and trust from an organization member of the DOE, because this way their achievements will be accelerated towards commercialization to the end-user. And electric cars are something everyone is craving about.
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