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www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal 39 25 YEARS: CRASHERS & BURNERS who crashed and burned After rising to glory, here are stories of businesses and people whose fates turned south over the last quarter-century In its early days, Boston-Power won widespread praise for its battery technology, with HP and Mercedes- Benz among its initial customers. In 2009, though, the Westborough company lost out in its bid for a $100-million federal grant under the U.S. Recovery Act. Two years later, in 2011, the Chinese government pro- vided $125 million in venture capi- tal, low-interest loans and grants. The resulting Chinese operation has the capacity to produce batteries for 20,000 electric cars. In 2011, Lampe-Onnerud explained to the MIT Technology Review why Boston-Power failed to win U.S. funding: "While I am extremely well-connected in the business world, I am not really well- connected in the political world, and I didn't really know if there was some other agenda than what we could read," she said at the time. "We didn't spend a lot on lobbying." Following the Chinese deal, Lampe-Onnerud began winding down her involvement with Boston- Power. In 2013, she left the company and joined one of the world's biggest hedge-fund managers, Bridgewater Associates, in Connecticut. BY STEVEN JONES D'AGOSTINO AND SUSAN WAGNER Special to the Worcester Business Journal U nder the leadership of Christina Lampe-Onnerud, a former Arthur D. Little scientist, Boston-Power was founded in 2004 as a promising startup in America's emerging clean-energy sector. A decade later, Boston-Power remains headquartered in Massachusetts, but its research and manufacturing operations are half a world away, in China and Taiwan. And Lampe-Onnerud is no longer in charge of the company she founded, after she saw the plug pulled on prospects for substantial federal funding. A decade ago, Lampe-Onnerud accomplished some- thing truly groundbreaking by dramatically improving the quality and safety of lithium-ion batteries — initially, for consumer products — while delivering unmatched performance levels in that industry. She set up an R&D lab in her Westborough carriage house as impressed investors pumped $1 million into the company, which located its first mass-production site in China in 2006. Christina Lampe- Onnerud, Boston-Power >> Continued on Page 40