Reply #13: Yep, you are being too cynical...

[skids]

...Hymotion has already shipped product to commercial fleet customers. What's new here is that they've swapped out the old-tech lithiums they were using for A123 nanophosphate batteries (since A123 bought the company) and this is the first time the product is being offered in one-offs direct to the consumer -- before they needed quantity orders and probably service level agreements and such.

A123 is probably not going chapter 11 -- they have plenty of customers among the power tool industry, where their batteries are performing quite dandily. They also had enough class to set up a chump-change operation to sell the cells direct to RC toy hobbyists instead of making it uber-difficult to get a hold of them. I think they know they have a winner of a product so they did it for the PR. The RC folks seem pretty happy with the cells.