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Honda, Nissan Not Having Same Problems with Gas Pedal

Details of the hybrid recall

Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors disclosed that they are purchasing accelerator pedals for their vehicles from CTS Corp, which also supplied the accelerator pedal recalled by Toyota.

Though the three companies did not reveal the names or the numbers of the vehicles equipped with an accelerator pedal manufactured by CTS, they said that they did not find any problem with those vehicles.

"The design and the material of our pedal are different… Read More ›

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Solar Roundup: HelioVolt, Hoku, Petra, Amonix, ECD

Funding, forecasting, and fulminating

According to the Austin Business Journal, HelioVolt, a once well-funded and well-regarded CIGS PV aspirant, has delayed its job creation commitments by two years in an attempt to preserve some local funding and save face. HelioVolt altered an agreement with state officials 18 months after it received $1 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund calling for the creation of 158 jobs. Now, an amended agreement extends the target date for creating… Read More ›

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Want to Go Green? Buy a Rolex, Stop Paying Taxes

And quit visiting your in-laws too? Saul Griffith explores the low-watt lifestyle.

There's really something for everyone, even those on the political fringes of the left and right, in Saul Griffith's energy plan.

Griffith -- an MIT-trained scientist, MacArthur genius grant recipient and serial entrepreneur whose ventures include a kite for extracting power from atmospheric winds -- is trying to get people to stop thinking about their personal energy consumption in terms of a carbon footprint and start thinking about it in… Read More ›

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The Electric Taxi, Courtesy of Ford

It only has a range of 80 miles, but that could be enough for fleet buyers.

Ford is getting back into the electric car market in a utilitarian fashion.

The automaker today will show off the Ford TransitConnect, an all-electric fleet car, at the Chicago Auto Show. The TransitConnect, coming out late this year, will drive 80 miles on a charge and hit a top speed of 75 miles an hour. Those aren't stats that Tesla Motors or Fisker Automotive would brag about, but Ford is chasing a different market. These cars will be sold… Read More ›

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Thin-Film Solar Investment Dries Up

Thin film 2010 is thin film 2.0: go small or go home.

VC investment in solar power is still going strong, despite a dismal 2009 and an only slightly more heartening first quarter of 2010.

But the sub-sector of thin-film solar is a different story.  In 2007 and 2008, almost every energy and greentech investor invested in a thin-film firm.  In fact, they did so in a big way -- with $100 million plus funding rounds going to Nanosolar, HelioVolt, AVA Solar, MiaSole, Sulfurcell, SoloPower, etc.

Here's a… Read More ›

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Q&A With David Gelbaum of Quercus: He Likes Solar

No new investments for Quercus right now, says Gelbaum.

It's scale up time for the Quercus Trust.

The somewhat secretive venture firm is not currently placing new investments, said founder David Gelbaum in an exclusive and somewhat rare interview. Instead, the firm will concentrate on putting more money in the existing companies already in the portfolio to build them up.

Considering the scope of the trust, that's still a mammoth job. The firm has around 40 to 45 companies in the portfolio, he… Read More ›

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David Gelbaum Takes a Job—As CEO of Entech

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

David Gelbaum, the super-secretive investor behind the Quercus Trust, just took a day job.

He will serve as CEO of Entech Solar, one of the Trust's investments. He takes over for Frank Smith, who became Entech's CEO in March 2008.

The product of a merger between struggling solar installer WorldWater and Solar Technologies, Entech has devised a solar unit that contains silicon photovoltaic cells, which can convert sunlight into electricity, as… Read More ›

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Ausra Gets Bought By Areva

The three-way bidding war is over.

Areva, the swarming energy conglomerate, has won the bidding war and purchased Ausra, the solar thermal specialist.

Two other conglomerates had been bidding on the company, according to sources. One of them, however, was likely not Siemens. Siemens bought rival Solel for $418 million last year.

Like many Silicon Valley-funded startups, Ausra came up with a novel idea for harnessing clean power, but has lacked the money, engineering and contracts… Read More ›

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News Monday: Better Place Goes Fleet, Carbon Counter AMEE Gets $5.5 Million and Quercus Returns!

Glad to see you back, David Gelbaum.

Why do electric cars with a 100 mile range and battery swapping stations seem so appealing in Israel?

Because, in most cases, if you can't drive 100 miles in a shot without ending up in the sea or enemy territory.

But that's not the only reason Better Place has reconfirmed its plan to set up electric car fleets and charging stations with large corporations in that country. Fleet buyers reduce the number of charging stations required. Fleet cars… Read More ›

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Greentech IPO Scorecard: Tesla, Solyndra, Codexis

For better or for worse, 2010 looks to be the year of the greentech IPO.

According to a study by Ernst & Young, 53 companies filed paperwork to hold initial public offerings in Q4 2009 -- the highest number of new registrants in a single quarter since 2007. That means that there are more deals in the IPO pipeline than there have been for more than two years.  

And a number of those IPOs happen to be high-profile offerings in the greentech sector.

For several years I've been predicting that 2010 would be the year of… Read More ›

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Can U.S. Know-How and Arab Oil Money Make the Middle East a Tech Hub?

Masdar City has a growing university, a good plan to tackle energy markets, and money. But will they come?

Abu Dhabi--For grad students, it's easily one of the best deals on the map.

The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST)-- the graduate school for alternative energy created by the emirate of Abu Dhabi with help from MIT -- pays all of its students' expenses. That includes tuition, housing, food, travel, fees for taking the GRE, and more. Students even get a monthly stipend to help take the "starving" out of the student.

MIST, which… Read More ›

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Skyonic Gets $3 Million To Show if Carbon-to-Baking Soda Works

Let’s just hope it doesn’t rain vinegar.

Can biscuits stop global warming? Maybe.

Skyonic has received a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy to create a simulation and study the feasibility of SkyMine, an industrial process it has developed to convert carbon dioxide into baking soda.

If all goes well, the company will then apply for a second grant to build a large-scale facility in which to house the technology. The idea is to build the plant at Capitol Aggregates, a cement… Read More ›

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Will Amyris Be Next to File for an IPO?

Sugar goes in, $2-a-gallon biodiesel comes out.

IPO fever is gripping greentech, and rumors are circulating that Amryis, the company that made synthetic biology a household word, could be one of the next to file.

The company, which was spun out of research conducted at UC Berkeley, could file the necessary documents for an IPO in the second quarter, according to sources. So far, Amyris has raised around $165 million. Codexis, which makes enzymes for fuel production, filed its S-1, the form… Read More ›

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EPA Issues Renewable Fuel Standards: What It Means for 1st and 2nd Generation Biofuels

New determinations from the EPA allows corn ethanol to pass. Can we cry foul?

Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its revision to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program.  Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), Congress created requirements for how much renewable fuel (corn ethanol, biomass-based diesel, cellulosic ethanol, and other "advanced" fuels) must be blended in the nation's petroleum supply.

Although the revision does not change the fact that 36 billion gallons of… Read More ›

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Bob Metcalfe of Polaris on Startup Sun Catalytix

The return of the hydrogen economy via low-cost electrolysis.

Renewable energy start-up Sun Catalytix' history, so far, is a good example of early-stage VCs doing their job and scientists doing theirs.

MIT Professor Daniel Nocera had a discovery that, according to VC investor Bob Metcalfe, "mimicked photosynthesis with inorganic chemistry."  Nocera's Lab at MIT studies the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. 

Polaris swept in before Nocera published his paper, got a license from… Read More ›

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Smart Appliances: What to Expect

The Smart Oven? Trials begin later this year.

Appliance manufacturers have been concentrating on reducing the power consumption of their products since California's 1978 passage of Title 24, the landmark set of regulations that first mandated and codified energy efficiency standards.

But until now, manufacturers haven't concentrated too much on the question of when appliances are most likely to be operated. With the advent of smart grid technologies, that hopefully will change. We recently… Read More ›

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Amazon Getting A Boost From Green

Sustainability info helps close the deal, says GoodGuide.

San Francisco--On average, only around two percent of searches on Amazon result in a sale, according to Dave Mandelbrot, chief business officer at GoodGuide.

On the other hand, the leads generated by green shopping aggregator GoodGuide result in a ten percent closure rate on Amazon sales, Mandelbrot reported during a panel discussion at the Sustainable Capital Forum sponsored by investment bank Wood Warren in San Francisco.

This data point,… Read More ›

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Serious Materials Latest Factory and China’s “Strong Grid”

To survive, study the weather, says Intel.

San Francisco–Make it where they live, says Serious Material CEO Kevin Surace.

The green building-material developer is participating in the energy-efficient retrofit of the Empire State Building by supplying insulating windows to the project. But rather than make the windows at its factory in Pennsylvania and then ship them to New York, Serious is taking the building's existing windows and turning them into thermal windows in a small factory… Read More ›

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Nordic Windpower: Khosla Shifts in the Wind

Nordic Windpower challenges the Goliaths in the wind industry

About a year ago I listened to investor Vinod Khosla comment on wind power at PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. 

According to Khosla, at that time, wind turbines from GE and Vestas are nice, but there was little upside for innovation, the Betz limit is being approached, and the availability of viable sites is declining. Furthermore, without storage capacity, wind turbines don’t provide spinning reserve. At the same event, Khosla also took… Read More ›