By Elan Head | May 25, 2021 Estimated reading time 4 minutes, 16 seconds.
Oxis Energy, a U.K.-based developer of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries for applications including electric aircraft, has entered into administration and is selling off its patents.
The company confirms on its website that authorized insolvency practitioners Simon Girling and Christopher Marsden, both of the accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP, were appointed joint administrators of Oxis on May 19.
In a press release provided to eVTOL.com, BDO confirmed that the majority of Oxis Energy’s 60 employees based in Oxfordshire and South Wales have been made redundant, as was first reported by the electric mobility website Electrive.com.
“The company was unable to secure the investment required to continue its product development,” Girling stated in the release. “However, we are hopeful of obtaining a sale of the company’s specialist testing equipment, together with approximately 200 patents held by the company, and the opportunity remains for an acquirer to purchase these assets in situ at an internationally acclaimed testing center, and separate R&D facility.”
Oxis Energy’s 43 patent families cover quasi-solid state battery technology, electrolyte systems for Li-S cells, methods of Li-S cell construction, and positive and negative electrodes. Interested parties should should contact Doug Cecil at BDO by May 28, 2021.
Sad to hear – did Oxis hit a wall?
It’s troubling to see companies on the leading edge of technology not finding investors. Oxis was always quiet about their progress and we can’t know exactly what happened to frighten investors. However, this scenario has already happened in the past, a decade ago, when investors shied away from those electric cars. Had they not, the automotive landscape would have been very different today.
I always tied investing with an educated vision of the future, but this lack of funding and enthusiasm is only slowing down everything. Eventually, we will find ourselves in the mess we were in with a handful of giant corporations dominating industries. Investors need to learn more about the technology, its potential applications, and the human factor. I must have an over-simplified view of the world.