The background story as I've been able to piece it together is that the JCI-Saft joint venture got a $299.2 million ARRA battery grant for "Production of nickel-cobalt-metal battery cells and packs for hybrid and electric vehicles" and Saft America got a separate $95.5 million ARRA battery grant for "Production of lithium-ion cells, modules, and battery packs for industrial and agricultural vehicles and defense application markets."
At some point JCI decided that having the JCI-Saft joint venture restricted to automotive battery packs was not in its best interest. Since Saft was not particularly interested in competing against it's wholly owned subsidiary, JCI sued to dissolve the joint venture and the settlement was the result. The sub-text from my jaded perspective is that JCI is less than enchanted with the short term potential of the automotive lithium-ion battery market and doesn't want to have its hands tied.
In their analyst day presentation this year, JCI was absolutely gaga over the stop-start market for the next decade. Their unsubsidized spending on new AGM plants puts the lithium-ion piece to shame. The entire presentation is available from JCI's website and makes for some very interesting reading if you want to know what JCI thinks the market potential is.
If you read the JCI presentation, and then read the new white paper that Axion's posted to the Investor page of its website, it looks really good for the home team.
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