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It's been some time since anyone accused GM of making a good move. The company surrendered its title as the world's top-selling carmaker to Toyota this year, in part because GM underestimated drivers' appetite for leaner, greener cars — a desire filled spectacularly by Toyota's Prius.

We have previously discussed a secretive Texas company called EEStor, who are reported to be working on a new type of ultracapacitor that can hold 10x the energy in 1/10th the weight of typical batteries, at a fraction of the cost. They have an agreement to produce caps for Zenn electric cars but to date have not shown any prototypes. This has led some to suspect EEStor as not having the technology they report. Today, however, Lockheed Martin, the major U.S. military equipment manufacturer has announced a partnership agreement with EEStor to develop energy applications.

Previous A123 cells have all been cylindrical but this new unit follows the packaging path used by other GM hybrid battery packs. The prismatic design should allow a higher density of cells within a given pack volume but may cause issues with thermal management. While A123 has their own monitoring software and electronics available, GM currently plans use in-house developed code to determine the state of charge of the battery pack.

There’s been an avalanche of news items lately about GM and Toyota and their planned use of lithium-ion batteries in PHEV (plug-in electric hybrid) cars. The bottom line is that GM seems to have stolen the tempo from Toyota (to borrow a piece of chess terminology), at least in the PR battle. (See links to some of the articles at the end of this post.)

Research over approximately two years showed that the parallel hybrid buses required “7 to 11 stops per kilometer to deliver their maximum benefit.”

The vehicle, which would travel for roughly 40 miles on electric power from the grid before recharging its batteries with an onboard gasoline generator, represents a significant advancement in energy-efficient vehicles.