Web, one more comment about the production lines. It's been reported that the company wants to sign up several customers right from the start (Mot, HP, Acer, and CPQ have been mentioned), which will give them a broad market base immediately. To do this they must have the production capacity in place, which means more than one production line. Valence are serious about the battery business, and are therefore not likely to take the "dip a toe in the water" approach to bringing their product to market.
Having spent most of $150M to develop the product and bring it to the threshold of production, I don't think committing 20 - 25% of the total to production equipment is unreasonable. The company has repeatedly stated that they believe they can sell all they can produce, undoubtedly as a result of inputs from the companies they have been working with, so the risk factor from not having customers is very small. They have also taken the position that they WILL NOT sign any contracts until customers have received and accepted samples from the lines in their final form. To me, this is a very clearly defined business strategy. To have done otherwise would constitute a much more risky approach, as they learned a few years ago.
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