San Jose Mayor chuck Reed isn't giving up on Tesla Motors. Speaking to an audience at the "State of the Clean Green Industry" held by the SD Forum at Sun's headquarters, Reed said that he is working with Tesla to put some operations within the city limits. In fact, he was touring real estate sites with Tesla execs. Tesla might put in R&D or powertrain assembly in the city. But what could be called a complete assembly facility? Probably not. "One site on Zanker road? That is probably not feasible." Last year, Tesla announced plans to build a massive facility here with the blessing and support of the city and state. Since then, however, the economy has gone south and CEOs from a wide variety of industries are spending an inordinate time scrambling for cash in Washington. Tesla is trying to get some of that too. It's amazing how times change. Just two years ago, Tesla was playing California off New Mexico and those two off Michigan when it was trying to figure out where to put an assembly plant.

SunPower Corp. isn’t immune to a growing industry trend: layoffs.

The solar panel maker in San Jose, Calif. has laid off 60 to 75 people, a source told us. Among those folks who were let go included Brad Davis, the chief marketing officer, the source said. SunPower created the CMO position and hired Davis in 2007.

Other management-level employees who were laid off also included Whitney Thomlin, a manager at SunPower’s installation business, and Stephen Kelley, a sales director, the source said.

A SunPower spokeswoman said the company will respond to a request for information shortly.

UPDATE: The company said it let go 60 people in its non-manufacturing operations. That amounted to 6 percent of the non-manufacturing workforce or 1.2 percent of its overall, 5,000-person payroll.

The company is due to discuss its earnings this afternoon.

Layoffs have become a norm in the solar business. Just this week, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ausra confirmed it had shed 10 percent of its staff after Greentech Media first reported the layoffs. Not only that, the company is changing its business model (see Ausra Update: Layoffs Confirmed and a Change of Business Plans).

OptiSolar has slashed about 50 percent of its staff while Suntech Power Holdings has cut 10 percent. HelioVolt and SunEdison also have shrunk their work forces (see Greenlight post).

On Monday, Ausra execs called up to confirm and clarify and earlier story we wrote about their layoffs. The solar thermal company confirmed it laid off about 10 percent of its staff, a spokeswoman said Monday. The layoffs occurred in January (laid off employees told us they began in December.) At the same time, she said the company is changing business plans. While it still plans to complete the solar thermal project it has with PG&E, it will now become an equipment supplier rather than a power producer. Since then, the company's been trying to schedule a meeting with us to further explain its change in lifestyle. In short, it will sell its mirrors, pipes and steam-capture equipment to coal mines and food-processing plants. The shift makes a lot of sense. For one thing, building solar thermal plants takes several years and millions of dollars in capital. You don't need to go through years of BLM meetings to sell equipment to private companies. Second, Ausra has lost out on some of the big deals to Brightsource Energy and others. Thus, it's selling solar steam equipment to people who just need equipment or want to wallow in what might have been. Ausra already has a contract to deliver equipment to produce solar steam to a coal mine in Australia. Solar steam has another advantage. The steam, generated by heat collected by its mirrors, is used directly as an energy source. In a solar thermal power plant, it is run through a turbine. Some efficiency is lost. Ergo, the new products will be more efficient at generating power than the old ones. On the other hand, these projects won't nearly be as big as the Khosla Ventures funded company originally pursued.

Name consultants generally rank fairly low on the utilitarian/work-is-noble scale. They are more useful than coal scuttlers in the public mind, but way below tree root remover, corn-dog coater and people that paint themselves silver and pretend to be statues. But Imara, the lithium-ion battery manufacturer that used to be known as LiON Cells, has unearthed evidence that they actually work. When the company wanted to rename itself, it held a contest. Employees, the public relations firm and others submitted 320 names, said CEO Jeff Depew. A ringer, a branding consultant, also submitted names. The list was winnowed down to 10. Eight of the 10 were from the naming consultant, including the name. Imara is Swahili for power, strength and endurance, three of the qualities the company claims its batteries can provide. Some of the names that came from the non-professionals include Interspark (not the sort of name an industry troubled by electrical short circuits would embrace) and Lithiated. Dude, you are so lithiated. My hands are forming a box around your face and then drawing you out. We'll be posting more on our visit to Imara soon, but I felt like sharing that now.

Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter advocated for a mix of direct investments and tax incentives when he met with President Obama today.

Splinter was part of a group of CEOs from large companies, including Google, IBM, Jet Blue Airways and Micron Technology, who spoke with Obama. The president, in turn, used the opportunity to lobby for the business community’s support of his proposed $816 billion stimulus package.

While the president chatted with the business execs, the House of Representatives was set to vote on the stimulus package today.

Splinter spoke about the importance of investing in solar and championed ideas that also had been presented by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The SEIA’s call for converting an investment tax credit into a direct payment to solar power project developers is now part of the stimulus package.

The tax credit, extended by Congress last October, can offset 30 percent of the cost of building a solar power plant. The tax credit has lost some of its allure because of the credit crunch. Solar project developers in the past used the tax credit to obtain loans from banks, which were then entitled to benefit from the tax credit. But the banks, as you know, aren't so willing to loan money these days.

Splinter pushed for using solar energy to power federal buildings. He said Congress should set aside $10 billion for installing and operating solar energy systems on federal buildings. He also recommended an increase to loan guarantees and research funds to promote renewable energy developments and commercialization.

Obama has said previously that he wants to double the country’s renewable energy production in three years, though exactly how the government could accomplish that remains a big question.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry doesn't much care for the "increasingly activist" U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and he's willing to put Texas in the forefront of promoting plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to get the federal agency off the state's back. That, according to Perry's state of the state address Tuesday, in which he proposed a $5,000 tax credit for Texans who buy plug-in hybrids if they live in "non-attainment" zones for air quality standards. Those include the metro areas of Dallas-Forth Worth, Houston, Galveston, Beaumont, Port Arthur and El Paso. "Rather than wait for more mandates and punishments for environmental non-attainment, let’s continue encouraging innovation," Perry said of the proposal. If Texas' legislature takes up Perry's plan, that could make Texas — not known as the most environmentally friendly state — something of a leader in promoting electric transportation. More than 40 states have incentives for regular old hybrids, like preferred access to parking or high-occupancy vehicle lanes. A smaller number of states have tax credits of some kind for hybrid owners. But when it comes to plug-in hybrids — which aren't yet being mass-produced, though a few hundred converted vehicles are on American roads today — right now only a half-dozen states or so are proposing tax breaks. And of those, only Oregon has specifically proposed a credit matching the $5,000 value that Perry has proposed, said Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org, an electric vehicle advocacy Website. Of course, the federal government did include a $7,500 maximum tax credit for plug-in hybrids in the energy package it passed in October, Kramer noted — more than double the $3,400 maximum federal credit previously available to regular hybrid cars. That credit has a cap of 250,000 vehicles, though lawmakers may double that figure as part of the stimulus package now working its way through Congress, said Chelsea Sexton, the former executive director of the electric vehicle advocacy group Plug In America. Even so, adding state incentives on top of that federal break for plug-in hybrids "is going to make a big difference for a car in the $35,000 to $40,000 range," Kramer said. Those are some possible price points he gave for plug-in hybrid vehicles being promised by Toyota, General Motors and other automakers. Toyota has said it will start testing about 500 plug-in versions of its best-selling hybrid Prius in 2009, and GM wants to bring its Chevy Volt to market by 2010. Other automakers less well-known to Americans might be aiming at those incentives as well. BYD Co. from China launched a plug-in hybrid called F3DM last month, and plans to sell the car in the United States in 2010. And whether the tax credits might apply to all-electric vehicles from startups like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive as well as automakers like Nissan, Mitsubishi, Daimler, Think and others (see Showing Off Green Cars Amid Economic Gloom) will depend on how they're structured, Sexton said. By the way, Perry also said that more plug-in hybrids also could help the state's burgeoning wind power industry by providing car batteries to store excess energy at night, he said. Utilities have said that using plug-in vehicles as electricity storage devices will be a critical part of building a "smart grid" infrastructure that can accommodate intermittent renewable energy resources like wind power, which is most productive at night. Texas leads the country in wind power, but lack of transmission and storage capacity has led some of the state's wind farms to pay the state's main grid operator to take it (see Texas Wind Farms Paying People to Take Power).

An Israeli solar startup called BrightView Systems has raised $6 million, but you will have to wait to find out what the company does.

The Series A funding came from Israel Cleantech Ventures, which provided the money to  BrightView in mid-2008. Hasso Palttner Ventures in Germany is another investor.

What we know is that BrightView thinks its technology can fix some shortcomings in solar cell production. But whether that means the company is developing equipment or software remains to be seen. The company, which isn't disclosing its technology, plans to launch its first product this year. 

The market already has large equipment makers, including GT Solar and Applied Materials. But we haven’t heard much from software companies that develop tools to improve solar cell manufacturing.

In the semiconductor industry, which shares similar manufacturing processes as the solar industry, a plethora of large and startup companies have developed software to monitor and analyze manufacturing performances.

Rudolph Technologies (NSDQ: RTEC), a Flanders, N.J.-based software developer in the semiconductor industry, launched a solar manufacturing software suite earlier this month.

Could BrightView be doing something similar?