Alan Gotcher, CEO of Altair Nanotechnologies, "agreed to resign" on Friday afternoon. Altairnano has kept relatively silent about Gotcher's departure, except to say the company's board "determined that the level of progress made at this point in the development timeline of the company did not keep pace with the expectations that were set." The company has worked on commercializing its lithium titanate battery for a number of years, but has yet to sign a major distribution contract. There's also the $40 million Al Yousuf LLC share deal, which occurred over November and December of 2007. So where did it all go horribly wrong for Gotcher?

The Valley Transportation Authority's long, strange trip with hydrogen fuel cell buses looks like it could (should) crash. Three years ago the VTA dropped $18 million on the three buses, pushed by a state mandate requiring use of the consummate "five year technology". But a new VTA report out this week "raises troubling questions" about both the technology and cost of the program, according to Gary Richards from the San Jose Mercury News. The biggest troubling question? VTA's hydrogen buses cost $51.66 per mile for fuel, operation and maintenance, compared with $1.61 for the standard 40 foot diesel bus. Ouch. The $2.5 million hydrogen buses (diesel's cost around $400,000) also traveled an average of 1,100 miles between repairs, compared with 6,000 for standard diesels. Good thing they're not planning on refunding this progr... Oh. What's that?

GM has been forced to revise up its price estimate for the much-anticipated Chevy Volt. The electric car, originally pegged at $30,000 with a 2010 delivery date, will now be in showrooms in 2011 with a $35,000 price tag. The problem? It seems the geniuses at GM forgot about that whole driving in the rain while listening to music thing. The company that gave us Robert McNamara and that awful John Mellencamp song were too busy man-worshiping their electric phallus to realize that subsidiary electronics on cars siphon power from the battery. Duh. In a gas powered car things like the air conditioner, stereo, and windshield wipers draw power from the battery, which is recharged from the motor via an alternator. Well, the Volt has no alternator and its battery is pretty much occupied making the car go forward (and backward, hopefully). GM's initial solution is to have its engineers build redundant systems into the first generation Volt, raising its price and pushing back the launch date. I guess this means I can forget about the Pimp My Ride makeover. GM: We Bring Dead Things to Life!

Last week we brought you GTM's Top 5 ugliest green vehicles. Today we come to you with news that our crack team of archaeologists have unearthed what could possibly be the ugliest green vehicle of all time. The T-Rex, profiled here with Tiger Beat-like enthusiasm by Justin Moresco at Red Herring, pulls out all the stops: three wheels, metallic paint, roll bar, and wait... are those mufflers? What's going on here? An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making

We love green vehicles here at Greentech Media. We'd love to have one to cruise around Cambridge terrorizing MIT students in an environmentally-friendly manner. And we love the companies that make them - even the ones with crappy business models. What we don't love, though, is how they look. Face it. Green vehicles are usually the spawn of some sci-fi geek's wet dream of crossing an X-wing fighter with KITT from Knight Rider. In other words, they're hideous. Recently a crop of especially ugly green vehicles have popped up, inspiring us to create this Top 5 list of the worst, comic-book-looking, Jetson-wannabe, speeder bike-knockoffs on the market. Uggos after the jump.

William Taylor's recent Xconomy post on GE's and Wal-Mart's lack of disruptive potential is flawed by the same lack of imagination and innovation Taylor accuses these corporate behemoths of harboring. The post, a response to an article by Intel's Andy Grove on Jeff Immelt and Lee Scott, argues GE and Wal-Mart lack the potential to disrupt critical sectors “because that’s just not the way innovation in established companies works. I have a lot of respect for Taylor and his work at Fast Company and Xconomy, and even more skepticism about the innovative potential of corporate giants, but believe Grove's argument requires another look. In terms of greentech, the game-changing impact of an electric vehicle produced by General Electric at the scale and quality of which they would be capable has significant ramifications for startups, VCs, and policy makers – not to mention the big automakers who would end their day with a soup bowl full of tears. GE is the original disruptor. The light bulb. The electric locomotive. The jet engine.

Commercial radar. The company’s array of businesses would allow them to leverage a number of technologies across an electric vehicle supply chain. Combining, for instance, divisions building engine drive trains, battery technologies, electric generation and transmission, and consumer electronics, into a single business unit – let's call it Ecomagination. This would give the company the ability to shift labor, capital, and technology into a preexisting infrastructure instead of undergoing a massive realignment or outlaying the expense of inventing and developing new technology on the level of gas-friendly to gas-free Detroit. All this leads to what I consider the holy grail for green transport – vertical integration. Consider Tesla, which Grove points out spent around $105 million developing an EV sports car, that will run on fossil fuel powered electricity for the lucky few able to afford it. Consider the ethanol bust or Imperium’s recent troubles. These companies tackled one segment of a multi-faceted industry for which development cannot be uneven. Rule #1 of the green transport supply chain ought to be: just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Rule #2 ought to be: you need to build it all yourself. Shai Agassi and Project Better Place have already provided us with a good example of Rule #2. GE has the capacity to build EVs and the green power systems to charge them. Leveraging its wind turbine, solar panel, and energy storage businesses, the company could build an extended network of roadside green charging stations using a business model similar to Project Better Place. This would provide the company with a secondary revenue stream for its EV business that could become a primary revenue stream (see, e.g., ink jet printers and printer cartridges), while also giving GE’s financial business a new property to manage. But, according to Taylor, just because GE could build an EV doesn’t mean they should. “Why would GE, with so much opportunity in its businesses around the world, and so many headaches from Wall Street (GE shares are barely unchanged from when Immelt took over six years ago), take on a high-profile gamble such as electric cars? he writes. My response – They should, for just those reasons. Since a 3-1 split in May 2000, the company’s stock has had one big peak (September 2000), a bottoming out (December 2002), remaining relatively flat since then. It’s revenues and profits have achieved similar levels of mediocrity, and the company has begun shedding lagging business units, such as its $11 billion sale of GE Plastics to a Saudi Arabian company in May 2007. GE Commercial Finance took a big hit over the summer for its involvement in the subprime mess. While not approaching a near-death experience of IBM’s magnitude, GE is not without its fare share of financial problems. An EV program could stimulate interest in the company’s stock, generate significant revenue through car sales and electricity financing, and boost profits as it boosts margins through streamlining its global businesses units. Finally, as Project Better Place proves, there is an international market for this technology. No other company has an on-the-ground global reach and access to global markets approaching that of GE. Taylor insists big companies “have a hard enough time fixing themselves, let alone fixing society – especially when what ails society is not remotely core their existing businesses. Developing an EV would go along way towards putting GE back on track, not least because an EV is in line with its core business. No one would be surprised if GE developed an electric locomotive (already did it) or built a fuel-efficient jet engine (already working on it). One of the best things about the greentech revolution is that it has given entrepreneurs and innovators an opportunity to think in imaginative ways about producing world-changing technologies. Where is it written that that level of imagination is limited to startups? GE has as much to gain, if not more, from greentech as any company. A GE EV would re-establish the company as an innovation leader and would send a signal to corporate America for it to get its green ass in gear. Everyone in greentech is here because we like to think big. But sometimes big ideas need big capital, and the sooner GE realizes this, the better off we’ll all be.

Watching the major auto manufacturers killing themselves to release a green product is embarrassing in a way similar to watching an aging, cortisone-infused quarterback rely on his running game because he can’t perform well in the pocket anymore. Despite amassing nearly twenty years of experience designing, developing and producing green vehicles, the leading car companies have largely failed to introduce a product that addresses two critical problems facing green transportation: building a zero-emissions car everyone wants and anyone can afford. At last week’s North American International Auto Show the leading car companies proudly displayed concept cars and products with names like EcoBoost, FCX Clarity, and Green Line, though none presented an operational business model for bringing these so-called green vehicles to the mass market. By way of comparison, it took GM only eight years to develop the H2 and market it successfully in the U.S. and abroad. While the titans in Detroit were busy rolling out their shiny new toys, recent announcements from India and Israel proved