Kleiner Makes Another Green Car Investment: Who Is It?

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is investing in an unnamed electric or hybrid vehicle company that is aiming to produce cars at "the other end of the spectrum" from high-end hybrid vehicle startup Fisker Automotive.

Kleiner partner Trae Vassallo dropped the news Thursday at the Opportunities in Grid-Connected Mobility conference in San Francisco, but didn't provide much in the way of details.

"It's a car company," she said.

One thing's for sure, she said – the company won't be aiming at the luxury market, as is Fisker, which Kleiner has backed (see Fisker Raises $85M).

While Vassallo said that Fisker's high-end approach is one way to push electric vehicle innovation into the marketplace, the new investment is "really focused on driving volume to make a difference."

One would assume that Vassallo wasn't referring to Kleiner's well-publicized stake in Think North America, the U.S. subsidiary of Norwegian electric car maker Think established in March with backing from Kleiner and RockPort Capital Partners.

And Kleiner-backed ultracapacitor maker EEStor doesn't qualify as a car company, though it does promise its long-delayed technology will do great things for the electric automotive industry (see Sounds Like EEStor Has Delayed Again). Zenn Motors from Canada has an investment in EEStor so maybe there is a connection.

So which "car company" is it?

Well, let's see who falls into the low-price, high-volume category:

There's Reva, the India-based electric car maker that sells a lead-acid battery-powered car for about $9,000 and in January said it will bring a lithium-ion battery powered version to European markets some time this year (see Reva Plans to Launch L-Ion Battery-Powered Car in Europe).

Or perhaps Bright Automotive, the spinout of think tank Rocky Mountain Institute that wants to start mass-producing its lightweight hybrid fleet vehicles in 2012 (see Bright Auto Fleshes Out Manufacturing Plans). Bright is well connected so it has some attributes of a Kleiner type of company.

Or maybe Miles Electric Vehicles, the maker of low-speed neighborhood-only cars that wants to bring a highway-legal version to market by early next year (see Miles Electric to Show Off Its All-Electric Sedan June 3).

Or there's China's BYD Co., which became the first company in the world to mass-produce a plug-in hybrid vehicle with the launch of its F3DM in December, and plans to bring a version to the United Stated next year (see Showing Off Green Cars Amid Economic Gloom). Both BYD and Miles are making their cars in China, which can cut costs and time to market.