The official line coming out of the National Venture Capital Association about the zero IPO story is that Sarbanes Oxley is to blame. In a damage control press released titled "IPO Drought Creates Capital Market Crisis for Start-up Community" the NVCA argued 57 percent of venture capitalists surveyed said that excessive capital markets regulation was to blame for the falling number of venture-backed IPOs. In the same survey, 77 percent said that "skittish investors" were the problem, while 64 percent said the "Credit crunch/mortgage crisis" prevented venture-backed companies from coming out on the public markets. Still, the NVCA reserved the bulk of its ire for Sarbanes Oxley - a...

Rumors are buzzing because of a report on AutomobilWoche (Auto Week) that electric car company Tesla Motors would supply batteries and other parts to Daimler. Tesla had in 2007 formed a group to sell batteries, but then it temporarily shut it because of problems it was having getting its first cars out of the factory. Tesla won't confirm whether they have a deal with Daimler, but Tesla Chairman Elon Musk told me in February that the company wanted to get back into the business of selling batteries and powertrains for electric cars to other manufacturers. An annoucement would come in the second quarter of 2008 and parts might start going to suppliers in the first part of 2009, he...

Talk about your power burp. The Department of Energy, Sandia National Labs, and a host of municipal utilities in the Midwest are in the midst of designing a compressed air generation plant in Iowa. The plant is expected to be operational by 2012 and produce 268 megawatts of power or 50 hours of power storage. That could enough to save a municipal utility $5 million a year. It works like this. Air compressors force air into underground caves. When power is needed, the air gets released to power a turbine, which generates electricity. The air compressors can run on fossil fuels or wind power. The technique uses about 50 percent of the natural gas that a normal natural gas...