Electric car battery from Boston-Power, image courtesy of Boston Power.
Battery maker Boston-Power is closing on a round of $250 million from investors in China and internationally, reports the Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch blog. The company, founded in 2005 in Massachusetts, originally made lithium ion batteries for laptops and consumer electronics, and then in 2011 launched its electric car lithium ion battery tech. A few months after moving into the EV market, Boston-Power announced it was moving the bulk of its operations to China and was raising a round led by China-based investor GSR Ventures. The WSJ report says Boston-Power already has battery factory capacity for 300 megawatt-hours of batteries -- with expected sales of $100 million this year -- and next year plans to more than triple that factory capacity. Boston-Power is providing batteries for electric cars made by Beijing Electric Vehicle Company.