Social network giant Facebook has chosen the northern Swedish town of Lulea as the site of its first data center outside the U.S., reports Reuters.

The data center, which will cost an initial $121 million to build, will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The facility will consist of three server buildings, each with an area of 300,000 square ft.

Despite its remote location (over 600 miles north of Swedish capital Stockholm), Facebook chose Lulea because of its icy climate, which will help to cool the tens of thousands of servers in the facility. It will also serve more than 800 million European Facebook users.

Unlike Facebook’s Oregon and North Carolina data centers that rely on utility (coal) power, the Lulea data center will be powered by renewable energy.

The first of the three server buildings is expected to be operational within a year, while the entire facility is scheduled to be ready by 2014, according to Facebook. It will require about 300 full-time positions during the first three years, the company added.

Image via Data Center Knowledge

The tech giant has been granted a permit to start preparing around 171 acres of land for a solar energy farm, the Charlotte Observer reports.

The facility will be adjacent to the company’s $1 billion data center, codenamed Project Dolphin.

Currently, Apple’s local data center runs on electricity from Duke Energy, a utility powered mostly by coal and nuclear technologies.

The North Carolina center will join a slew of the company’s other facilities that are powered by renewable energy. Currently, the company’s outposts in Austin, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Cork, Ireland, run entirely on green energy sources.

Apple’s requests for county and town building permits have not yet surfaced but are expected to provide more information about the company’s plans for sustainable energy for the data center, including just how much of the 171 acre lot will be used for solar power.

Currently, Apple’s plans show the property will have multiple gravel roads to give technicians access to solar panels as well as a way of preventing soil erosion and runoff.

Early last year, Apple ranked ninth on Greenpeace’s list of environmentally conscious companies, beating out Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

On the consumer side, Apple has been granted a patent for incorporating solar panels on devices like the iPod and other small consumer electronics.

The money will help Brammo solidify its position in the market against electric bike rivals such as Zero Motorcylces, and to reach new customers. Brammo also produces and distributes the Brammo Digital Drivetrain, and the Brammo Power battery back, which can be used by manufacturers in their vehicles.

“We are excited to add Polaris Industries as a valued strategic partner. Brammo and its partners are combining forces to gain dominance in the EV powersports market,”said Brammo founder and chief executive officer Craig Bramscher, in a statement. Alpine Energy also participated in the round.

Polaris makes a wide variety of vehicles for outdoor recreation, such as golf carts, off-road vehicles and snowmobiles. Polaris also makes light-duty electric vehicles, such as the Gem, which is like golf cart designed for grounds teams.

Based in Ashland, Ore., Brammo is the maker of all-electric motorcycles, such as Encite, the Empulse, Engage and  the Enertia (pictured).

Brammo previously raised $10 million Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital and  Best Buy Venture Capital

An intelligent thermostat seems like an odd project for the minds behind Apple’s iconic iPod, but in a strange way, the iPod folks may just be the perfect team to revolutionize home heating.

The project is the Nest Learning Thermostat, a Wi-Fi connected thermostat that learns your heating preferences and optimizes your home’s temperature to save energy. The brains behind it are Tony Fadell, former SVP of Apple’s iPod group, and Matt Rogers, former lead engineer of iPod software. The two are the founders of Nest Labs.

At first glance, the duo’s Apple heritage is plain to see in the Nest. The device’s design is simple and elegant, sporting a metal outer ring that lets you control the temperature (and which also resembles the original iPod’s mechanical click wheel), and an internal display that changes depending on what you’re trying to do. When it’s warming up your house, for example, it sports a nice toasty red. It also sports a leaf when you’re saving energy (usually by lowering the temperature).

But the Nest has brains as well as beauty. The thermostat learns your heating routine, and after about a week it will be able to automatically adjust your home’s temperature without much input on your part. “It never stops learning,” the company states (somewhat ominously) in its promotional video below.

The Nest is powered by six sensors that track things like the temperature (obviously), humidity, motion, and ambient light. The sensors allow the device to determine when you’re home, which makes it smarter than other thermostats that just rely on a time schedule. Multiple nests can also communicate with each other — so when you come home, your upstairs Nest could start to warm up your bedrooms.

Given the way the Nest optimizes your home’s temperature, the company says you could save around $173 a year in heating costs. With those figures, the Nest would more than pay for itself within a year-and-a-half.

Naturally, there’s also an iPhone app for the Nest that lets you remotely control the temperature and manage other settings. The company says an Android app is in the works. You can also manage all of your Nest devices online at the company’s website.

The Nest will cost $250 — much less than other smart thermostats on the market — and will be available in major retail stores like Best Buy. The company says you should be able to install it yourself in under 30 minutes, but the less tech-savvy may want to hire some help.

Fisker has already received $529 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to make its plug-in extended-range vehicles. The majority of the loans are going toward the development of the Nina, a mid-priced family car, to be built in a former GM plant in Delaware. The manufacturing delay means that the creation of thousands of promised new jobs will also be postponed. Fisker now plans to start production in 2013.

“Yes there have been delays, but we have created a totally new car, based on a new technology and started a company and raised finance for it in less than 4 years since the company was formed — and all in an economic downturn,” Roger Ormisher, Fisker’s director of global communication told VentureBeat.

A $169 million chunk of the government’s loan has gone to development of Fisker’s Karma, a luxury sedan made in Finland that costs $96,000 (pictured above). However, even though the factory is in Finland, Fisker and the Department of Energy say the loan money is not being spent abroad, but rather in the U.S. on design, engineering and integration.

The Karma has just been cleared for sale in the U.S., two years late and without meeting its promised efficiency standards. Last week the EPA gave it a rating of 52 miles per gallon in electric mode, and a low 20 miles per gallon in gas mode. Only 40 of the cars have been shipped to the U.S. from Finland, but the company still plans on ramping up production to 15,000 cars a year.

The Obama administration’s $38.6 billion loan guarantee program for green-energy companies is part of a “green jobs” initiative that was supposed to create or keep 65,000 jobs. So far it has given out half its loans and created 3,545 full-time jobs, according to the Washington Post. The failure of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra in September thrust the program into the spotlight, with many questioning the decision to tie investing in unproven and emerging green technology companies to job creation. It’s likely that all of the program’s loan recipients will be closely scrutinized.

The Department of Energy has adjusted the terms of its loan agreement with Fisker to accommodate the delays. Fisker Automotive’s founder, Henrik Fisker, told the Washington Post of comparisons to Solyndra, “This is completely different. You can’t compare at all.”

Fisker Automotive has raised over $600 million in private equity financing, the majority of which has been used to create jobs, including 650 in Calif. and 100 in Delaware, according to Fisker.

[via Washington Post]

“Public policy challenges in the life sciences and clean technology sectors are impacting investment levels this quarter as is the IPO market that basically came to a screeching halt in August,” explained National Venture Capital Association president Mark Heesen in a statement.

The venture capital industry is often reflective of how the markets are doing, according to Heesen, though it does support company, product and job creation. Along with the drop in dollars invested, the number of deals made also decreased 14 percent to 876 completed deals, down from the 1,015 in quarter two 2011.

Clean technology fell in line with the overall venture capital economy, a 13 percent drop in dollars invested, totaling at $891 million. Last quarter the investors spent $1 billion on the industry.

But while green wasn’t great, the software industry did better — it topped all industries in dollars spent and deals completed. Software had a 23 percent increase in dollars at $2 billion, where last quarter the industry saw 1.6 billion. Software deals completed, while at the top this round, actually dropped 1 percent from last quarter, reflecting that even an industry’s success in one quarter is still subject to the whims of the market.

The full report by MoneyTree from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association outlines the venture capitalist markets overall.

[Photo courtesy of tommiphoto/Shutterstock]

The two outfits have been in a standoff since earlier this year when Telsa sued for libel and malicious falsehood over a 2008 episode of the wildly popular motoring show that featured host Jeremy Clarkson test driving electric car maker Tesla‘s roadster. The company contends that Clarkson falsely claimed the car ran out of charge after 55 miles and the brakes were not functional.

The court threw out the libel case on the basis that the performance of the Roadster on the Top Gear racing track could not be reasonably compared to the open road. Mr Justice Tugendhat said, “There is a contrast between the style of driving and the nature of the track as compared with the conditions on a public road are so great that no reasonable person could understand that the performance on the [Top Gear] track is capable of a direct comparison with a public road.” The malicious falsehood case, in which Tesla says that Top Gear made five other false statements about the Roadster, continues.

VentureBeat predicted that the case, which GreentechMedia described as “the best libel suit in Britain since Oscar Wilde and the Marquis of Queensbury went at it”, would not turn out well for Telsa. TopGear’s presenters are annoying, opinionated, funny, love supercars and hate hybrids (they are not called “petrolheads” for nothing). They have been in trouble before for offending women, Mexicans and Robin Reliant owners. Expecting TopGear’s presenters to give an objective review of an electric car is like expecting Charlie Sheen to spend a quiet night playing scrabble.

However, if you watch the segment in full, you will see that Clarkson was, in many ways, surprisingly enthusiastic about the Tesla. TopGear is about entertainment, not serious motoring advice. By taking this case, Tesla appeared earnest and humorless — in other words, exactly what TopGear accuses EV advocates of being, and precisely the image that Telsa has done so much to change.

North America’s winner is smart meter communications company SilverSpring Networks which announced plans a few months ago to go public. Silver Spring sells wireless networks that transmit energy consumption data between meters, consumers and utilities. The company also provides a web-based energy management portal to consumers, which takes the data from its relay points.

TaKaDu, which monitors water pipes for utilities, won for Europe and Israel. The company doubled the length of the water mains it monitors for leaks and other problems since the start of the year. Cities in the developed world lose on average 10 to 30 percent of their drinking water, and the associated revenue, though leaks.

TaKaDu’s VP of Marketing Guy Horowitz told me that high-profile cleantech failures like Solyndra, “have reduced the appetite for new stuff” among investors and are also steering them towards non-capital plays likes software. “The only way for startups to get noticed is to completely change how the sector in which you are operating works,” said Horowitz. “Don’t just build a better mousetrap.” Water utilities traditionally make minimal usage of IT and are slow to innovate but TaKaDu’s system is now in use in 10 countries. According to Horowitz, “Analysts are saying that what happened in the smartgrid space could happen in the water space.”

Asia’s Company of the year is LanzaTech, which coverts waste gasses into cheap ethanol. Its process traps the gases emitted by steel manufacturing — particularly carbon monoxide — and then ferments them with specially engineered microbes to produce ethanol. As previously reported by VentureBeat, Lenzatech has a partnership with China’s major iron and steel maker Baosteel. China, now hyper-conscious of air pollution following the criticism it drew during the smog-choked Olympics hosted in Beijing, has taken a special interest in technologies that reduce emissions from industrial plants.

The Global CleanTech 100 list, produced in association with the Guardian newspaper, also contains many names which have appeared Greenbeat’s pages including trash-to-fuel firm Enerkem, Ice Energy‘s ice-based energy storage and  plant-based plastic makers Avantium.

Cleantech investment may be down, but interest in cleantech is still on the rise, not least among potential employees. “People who would be flocking to Google or Facebook, ” says TaKaDu’s Horowitz, “are going to TaKaDu. For a cleantech startup, that’s a big feat.”

The DMC Delorean, the iconic time-traveling car with gull-winged doors that was made popular due to the 80′s Back to the Future film Trilogy, is scheduled to go back into production 2013 with a new electric motor, reports Digital Trends.

Texas-based motor company is teaming up with startup Epic EV for the new line. The car’s V6 engine will be replaced with an electric motor  — made by a battery systems company named Flux Power (yes, that’s really the company’s name) — that has 260 hp and a range of 70 to 100 miles. The car will reach 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 125 mph.

I have no idea what a car like this would retail for, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I want one.

Khosla said he will invest half of the new fund into clean technology companies, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The firm will continue to make early-stage investments in technology companies like group-texting service GroupMe. The new fund puts Khosla Ventures among the top five firms in terms of the amount of money venture capitalists have raised this year.

Clean technology investing has hit a few hiccups lately, with investments in cleantech companies slowing in the second quarter this year. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said clean technology was a “disaster” on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 earlier this year.

The amount of money invested in clean technology projects fell 10 percent to $1.83 billion compared to $2.03 billion in the second quarter of 2010. Algae-based biofuel maker Solazyme raised $227 million from its initial public offering in June, 2011, while biofuel maker KiOR raised $150 million in its initial public offering in May, 2011. Smart grid developer Silver Spring Networks only plans to raise $150 million in its upcoming initial public offering.

Those amounts are low compared to business social network LinkedIn, which raised more than $350 million without flinching. That company also picked up a market cap of nearly $10 billion before the sell-off wiped out more than $3 billion in value. Two other Web 2.0 companies, Groupon and Zynga, already filed to go public. Groupon wants to raise up to $750 million, while Zynga wants to raise up to $1 billion.

When Khosla left storied venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2004 to invest in clean technology startups, he swung for the fences. Khosla was known for taking a “portfolio” approach to cleantech investing by dropping money in just about every potential part of the budding sector, from biofuels to smart grid companies.

His firm has also invested in some information tech companies like group texting service GroupMe. Khosla himself is an investor in payments service Square, and Khosla Ventures has a partnership with the Designer Fund. But those investments were focused on the team — not the product and not for the sake of making a deal, Khosla said.

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

These new legal structures are revolutionary in two ways. First, they broaden the duty of a company beyond maximizing shareholder value to include maximizing stakeholder value, such as operating the business in an environmental and social responsible manner. Second, they increase transparency and accountability.

Though it is the first state to pass the Flexible Purpose Corporation type, California is the sixth state to approve the Benefit Corporation classification.

Here is a look at exactly what Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations are, and what they could mean for your company.

What is a Benefit Corporation?

The Benefit Corporation is a new class of corporation that allows companies to pursue profit as well as a strong social and environmental mission.

Under current corporate law, a company’s sole mandate is to maximize shareholder value — make as much profit as possible –for its shareholders. If a corporation takes other stakeholders into account in its decision making — such the environment, community, employees or suppliers — and that adversely affects the profits of the corporation, the shareholders may file a lawsuit against the directors of the corporation for failing to maximize shareholder value. Obviously, this poses a huge problem for socially and environmentally responsible corporations.

The new Benefit Corporation structure addresses this problem in two primary ways.

First it mandates that, in addition to shareholders, the board of directors take the environment, community, employees and suppliers into account when they make decisions. This is known as the shift from maximizing shareholder value to maximizing stakeholder value.

Secondly, it mandates a high level of transparency and accountability. Within 120 days after the end of each fiscal year, a Benefit Corporation is required to publish a Benefit Report, which states how the Benefit Corporation performed that year on a social and environmental axis. The Benefit Corporation is held to a third party’s independent assessment that measures social and environmental impact. The most prominent is currently B Labs Assement. The Benefit Corporation has to then share this assessment of its performance publicly, which increases transparency and accountability.

What is a Flexible Purpose Corporation?

Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations are, by and large, similar legal structures. However there is one primary difference between these two pieces of legislation: The Flexible Purpose Corporation (FPC) allows a corporation to select a specific mission, in addition to profits, that it will pursue.

Just like the Benefit Corporation, a Flexible Purpose Corporation broadens the duties of its board of directors, from solely maximizing shareholder value to also pursuing an additional purpose that is clearly stated in the FPC’s organizing documents.

The Flexible Purpose Corporation allows the directors to choose a their own “special purpose,” such as employing people from an underprivileged community. The FPC must clearly state its specific purpose, outline goals to achieve that purpose, and publish an annual report disclosing how well it has achieved that purpose. The premise is that clearly stating the positive purpose of the company and being transparent in an annual report will create better business.

The special purpose chosen by a FPC can be anything that generally benefits society, but can include the following:

• One or more charitable or public purpose activities that could be carried out by a California nonprofit public benefit corporation.
• The purpose of promoting positive short-term or long-term effects of the Flexible Purpose Corporation’s activities upon stakeholders, the community and society, or the environment.
• The purpose of minimizing adverse short-term or long-term effects of the corporation’s activities upon stakeholders, the community and society, or the environment.

What are the advantages of these structures?

The benefits of these new structures for a company are, first, that it has the ability to make decisions that are in the best interest of all stakeholders without risking a shareholder suit. Second, it allows a company to differentiate itself from any competing companies that are green washing.

The benefits for shareholders are that they can now invest in companies that are serious about running in a sustainable manner.

By mandating that corporations only focus on profits, the current system almost assures a negative outcome for society. By removing mandating stakeholder primacy and increasing transparency and accountability, directors are freed up to use the market as a force for good without risking suit from their shareholders.

How do you become a Benefit or Flexible Purpose Corporation?

If you have an existing company, two thirds of the shareholders have to vote to make a change into either of the new forms.

If you have a new company, you simply register as one of these new classes of corporation. The FPC classification requires that you list your “special purpose” in the organizing documents.

Is it right for your company?

You should use either of these new forms if you are serious about operating a sustainable business, and if you are comfortable enough to allow the public to see how well you are performing. If you just want to greenwash your business, or want to look socially conscious without actually changing your core business model, then these new classes of corporations will just make you look ridiculous.

I think the best analogy is, if you’re going to be naked, you’d better be buff.

Kyle Westaway is an attorney and social entrepreneur. Kyle is the founding partner at Westaway Law, an innovative New York City law firm that counsels social entrepreneurs. Kyle is a Cordes Fellow. He lectures at Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School. He launched Socentlaw — a blog about the legal side of social enterprise, and has helped build Biographe, a sustainable style brand that employs and empowers survivors of the commercial sex trade.

[Image via Kudryashka/Shutterstock]

We already know a lot about the all-electric 2012 Tesla Model S sedan — but at a press event ahead of yesterday’s exclusive VIP event at the former Toyota NUMMI facility in Fremont, California, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Tesla was making a faster Model S for those with a sporty side.

Cutting the brisk 0-60 time of the standard Model S from 5.6 seconds to under 4.5 seconds, the sportier version features the same 85 kilowatt-hour, 300 miles-per-charge battery pack found in the 2012 Model S Signature series.

“That’s quicker than a [Porsche] 911 [Carrera],” joked Musk. “Not bad for an electric luxury sedan.”

The additional model, complete with enhanced powertrain to cope with the additional current required for faster acceleration, will be available from launch alongside the 120 mile, 230 mile and 300 mile 2012 Model S cars.

But if you thought 300 miles was the maximum range a Tesla Model S could do, you’d be wrong.

“We’re also going to be offering aerodynamic wheels that will enable 320 mile range,” Musk told us earlier. “There were some skeptics who said we couldn’t do a 300 mile range, but we’re going to do better than that. We’re going to offer 320 mile range, as tested on the EPA 2 cycle test.”

When the batteries are depleted, Tesla says even the 300-mile range Model S will be able to recharge from empty to full in under an hour thanks to its new direct current external charger. The 90 kilowatt units will be installed by Tesla at suitable rest-stop locations or hotels alongside arterial freeways such as I-5 between Canada and Mexico.

On-board AC charging will be dealt with through either a single 10 kilowatt charger or two 10 kilowatt chargers. Tesla says the two options were developed after it realized that many of its existing Tesla Roadster customers did not use the full capability of its 17 kilowatt on-board charger, recharging instead at a more sedate 7 kilowatts or less.

Tesla says it now has 6,000 customers who have reserved its 2012 Model S with deposits of $5,000 or more. If it sells each of the cars it has taken deposits on, that means Tesla will have sold out of the first year’s allocation of Model S sedans a whole nine months before the first one reaches a customer.

Written by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, this post originally appeared on GreenCarReports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners. Tesla Motors provided airfare, lodging, and meals to High Gear Media, the parent company of GreenCarReports.

Photo: Tesla Model S Alpha build, courtesy GreenCarReports.

Some crazy concept cars have emerged since the electric car frenzy hit the market in 2008. Where are they now?

We caught up with 29 electric car manufacturers and developers to find out what they’re doing today. Some are still going strong, some have begun actively producing their cars, and some … well, not every startup can survive.

Most major car companies have begun working on a hybrid electric car or a pure battery-powered electric car. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, two of the cheapest electric cars on the market, now cost less than $50,000. And there are plenty of other battery-powered and hybrid electric cars in the pipeline that will bring those costs even lower.

This list is sorted according to car availability and release dates based on publicly available information.

Battery-Powered Electric Cars

Battery-powered electric cars are emerging as reliable forms of transportation. The Nissan Leaf is currently the leader in the early adopter market for battery-powered electric cars. It costs around $35,000 and has a range of around 100 miles. Tesla Motors’ cars have much higher ranges — the Model S is expected to be able to travel around 300 miles between charges — but are more expensive. Battery-powered electric vehicles face longer turnaround times than hybrids because they take longer to charge than filling up a gas tank.

American Electric Vehicle: Kurrent
American Electric Vehicle (AEV) advises its potential drivers to “slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design of its Kurrent car. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Price: $10,000
Range/Top Speed: 40 miles/25mph
Release date: Available now

Commuter Cars: Tango T600
The Tango is an oddball. It’s less than half the width of a normal car, and two can fit in a single lane. It also accelerates like a bat out of hell, going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds. But this guy will cost you an arm and a leg. Future versions are planned to be much cheaper, and have longer ranges.
Price: $108,000
Range/Top Speed: 80 miles/150mph
Release date: Available now

Dynasty Electric Car Corp.: IT Sedan
This Canadian company sells five different models, although they all look relatively similar. The IT Sedan is another slow-moving electric car, which brings the cost of the car down.
Price: $19,000
Range/Top Speed: 30 miles/24mph
Release Date: Available now

Pure Mobility: Kewet Buddy
Somewhat reminiscent of the Think (now in the deadpool section below), the Buddy is currently only available in its first launch country, Norway.
Price: $28,000
Range/Top Speed: 37 miles/56mph
Release Date: Available now

Fly Bo: FB-3000
The FB-3000, which bears a strong resemblance to the Smart Car, is produced in China.
Price: $10,000
Range/Top Speed: 60 miles/35mph
Release Date: Available now

Global Electric Motorcars (GEM): e2
GEM is a division of Chrysler. Its vehicles resemble golf carts. Polaris Industries acquired the company earlier this year. It currently has six vehicles that are primarily geared to intra-city use.
Price: $7,500
Range/Top Speed: 35 miles/25mph
Release Date: Available now

Myers Motors: NmG (No more Gas)
The NmG is a three-wheeled car with room for only one passenger. It doesn’t go far, but it’s quite speedy. Myers Motors is based in Tallmadge, Ohio.
Price: $22,500
Range/Top Speed: 30 miles/75mph
Release Date: Available now

Reva: G-Wiz
The Indian-produced Reva still isn’t available in the United States. It’s considered unsafe at high speeds, so it may never make it here.
Price: $16,000
Range/Top Speed: 50 miles/50mph
Release Date: Available now

Smith Electric Vehicles: Edison
The Edison, a large van designed for local deliveries, is Smith’s smallest model, meaning drivers don’t need a special license to operate it. The company, based in the United Kingdom also makes several larger delivery trucks. Smith Electric Vehicles raised $58 million in March.
Price: Unconfirmed
Range/Top Speed: 100 miles/50mph
Release Date: Available now

Twike: The Twike
The company sold out its 2007 Twike line of three-wheeled vehicles. It’s based in Switzerland, but sells in several other countries, including the United States. The company has sold between 20 and 25 Twikes in the U.S. The Twike is registered as a motor cycle by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Price: $24,400
Range/Top Speed: 80 miles/53mph
Release Date: Available now

Venturi: Fétish
Another high-end electric sports car (and we stress high-end — look at that price!), the Fétish is manufactured in Monaco. Venturi plans to continue manufacturing the Fétish until 2015.
Price: $400,000
Range/Top Speed: 155 miles/100mph
Release Date: Available now

Universal Electric Vehicles: Spyder
UEV’s Spyder has a sporty design, but the company itself doesn’t seem as slick and polished as some of the competitors. The company’s website is just an explanation of the car and the doesn’t indicate how to order it (which you can apparently do by calling the company). The company is based in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Price: $70,000
Range/Top Speed: 300 miles/80mph
Release Date: Available Now

Miles Electric Vehicles: ZX40S
Miles Electric Vehicles specializes in low-speed cars and trucks that don’t require a lot of juice to run. The vehicles are also cheap because they don’t have to include the same safety standards that higher-speed cars require, such as airbags.
Price: $19,500
Range/Top Speed: 40 to 50 miles/25mph
Release Date: Available Now

Zap! Electric Cars: Alias
Zap! Electric Cars stopped producing the Xebra, its earlier electric car model, in 2008. Its next car is the sporty Alias. The company has also begun work on the A380, an SUV that Zap! says can travel around 350 miles on a single charge. The website indicates that the Alias was supposed to go into production in June, but there are no new details. The company is based in Santa Rosa, Calif.
Price: $38,500
Range/Top Speed: 100 miles/85mph
Release Date: “Accepting reservations”

Lightning Car Company: Lightning GT
This is the United Kingdom’s answer to the Tesla Roadster. The Lightning GT is still slated for a 2012 delivery, and the company is taking pre-orders for the car.
Price: $293,000
Range/Top Speed: 150 miles/124mph
Release Date: 2012

Arcimoto: Arcimoto SRK
The Arcimoto SRK is a two-seater battery-powered electric vehicle. It’s a bit like a three-wheeled electric powered jeep. Like other independent electric car makers, the company has a pretty small retail footprint.
Price: $17,500
Range/Top Speed: 160 miles/65mph
Release Date: Late 2012

Tesla Motors: Model S, Model X
The first shipments of the Silicon Valley-based company’s second electric car, the Model S, are expected early next year. Tesla Motors is working on a battery-powered electric SUV called the Model X, which it will unveil later this year.
Price: $57,400 (Model S)
Range/Top Speed: 300 miles/120mph
Release Date: early 2012 (Model S)

Phoenix Motorcars: Phoenix SUT
Phoenix Motorcars was originally planning to produce a sport-utility vehicle, but it has halted development as of last year. The company has since begun working on a sport-utility truck that’s due next year. The company is based in Ontario, Calif.
Price: $45,000
Range/Top Speed: 70 miles/80mph
Release Date: 2012

Motor Development International: MiniFlowAir
These tiny, unusual little vehicles are powered entirely by compressed air. Motor Development International unveiled a concept car, the AirPod, in 2009 and has since started working on several other air-powered cars. The company is based in Carros, France.
Price: $12,600
Range/Top Speed: 110 miles/68mph
Release Date: 2013

Aptera: 2e
In August, Aptera was forced to return 2,500 $500 security deposits due to a snafu with its credit card processor. The company filed for a $184 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy but was denied. It’s still waiting to hear back about approval for a $75 million loan.
Price: $30,000
Range/Top Speed: 100 miles/TBA
Release Date: TBA

Persu (formerly Venture Vehicles): Persu V3
The Persu is a sleek three-wheeled electric scooter-like car that looks like it comes out of a sci-fi film. The car has plenty of buzz and showed up on Top Gear, a show that tests out supercars like the Tesla Roadster. Persu is based in Los Angeles, Calif.
Price: $25,000
Range/Top Speed: 350 miles/100mph
Release Date: 2014

Proterra: Proterra EcoRide
A Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers-backed electric car manufacturer, Proterra specializes in making buses powered by electric motors. Those buses are meant for public transportation in large cities like Chicago and San Francisco.
Price: TBA
Range/Top Speed: 400 miles/65mph
Release Date: TBA

Mission Motors: Mission One PLE
The Mission One PLE is a concept electric motorbike produced by Mission Motors. The company licenses its electric motors and powertrains out to other car manufacturers. Mission Motors is based in San Francisco, Calif.
Price: TBA
Range/Top Speed: 150 miles/150mph
Release Date: TBA

Wrightspeed: X-1
Wrightspeed recently cut the ribbon on a manufacturing plant for its supercharged electric car, the X-1. That car was last spotted on a track in April racing past a Tesla Roadster, for those of you keeping score. The X-1 is a formula one-esque supercar developed by Ian Wright, originally a founding team member of Tesla Motors.
Price: TBA
Range/Top Speed: 100 miles/104mph
Release Date: TBA

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“The data center market continues to grow at 8 to 12 percent per year. However, it is becoming constrained by the availability of power, especially in high density areas where space is a limitation,” said Tarak Mehta, Head of ABB’s Low Voltage Products division in a statement.

Managing large scale data centers is a cumbersome task when combined with powering multiple computers on one physical server, cooling costs and more. Power Assure attempts to tackle enterprise- to government-size data center management issues, such as dealing with large amounts of collected data, including information on a server’s own performance. The company provides software to track and analyze this data, allowing data center managers to make better decisions on how to run their servers more efficiently as well as how to optimize usage to save power and free up server space.

The funding will be used to increase marketing and sales efforts. The company will also invest in product enhancements for its energy management solutions.

Power Assure is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. The company has raised $28.75 in total from investors ABB Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Good Energies, Point Judith Capital. The United States Department of Energy also provided Power Assure with a $5 million match-funding grant.

[Photo courtesy of Power Assure]

Clean Power Finance connects solar panel providers and installers with investors looking to drop money into residential solar providers. Those investors provide financing to home owners, who are then able to purchase or lease out solar panels at a more reasonable cost. There are some major companies that provide financing options, but Clean Power Finance could be more attractive for smaller installers that don’t have a large market share and can’t price their systems as competitively as companies like SolarCity and SunRun.

It’s a web-based interface that streamlines the connection process between installers and investors. The installer builds the photovoltaic panel system, the investor owns that system, and homeowners make monthly payments to the investor until they completely own it.

Google made the announcement at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco, Calif., today. This is the company’s second investment in a residential solar provider. The search giant recently created a $280 million fund for residential solar power projects run by SolarCity. The fund gives SolarCity the capital it needs to create more reasonable financing options for homeowners who are interested in installing solar panels on their roofs but don’t have the cash to buy panels outright.

So far, Google has skirted around tying up with SunRun, another large provider of residential solar panels. SunRun has a market share of around 28 percent, though it fluctuates between 26 and 28 percent depending on the month, SunRun founder Ed Fenster told VentureBeat. That means that 28 of every 100 homes installing solar panels on their roofs are leasing panels from SunRun.

“We certainly think residential solar financing is compelling and are interested in good investments — in residential solar, or elsewhere in renewable energy,” Google clean energy spokesperson Parag Chokshi told VentureBeat.

A study done by the University of California at Berkeley found that home values increase when solar panels are installed. The study found that homes with solar panels sold for an extra $5.50 per watt of solar power installed, for an average of $17,000 more per house.

Google’s $75 million investment today brings its total residential solar investment to $355 million and its total clean energy investments — which includes investments in wind power — to $850 million.

The company tracks energy usage in a building without installing energy-tracking devices like smart thermostats and plugs. Instead, the company tracks energy usage data from utilities and then combines it with weather data — such as how hot or cold it is near the building — to create an energy use profile for each building.

“The software analyzes available utility and weather data to create profiles of how the building uses energy, and makes the efficiency recommendations off of that,” a FirstFuel Software spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Plus, they do deep analytics on the whole building’s energy consumption, which provides them a view of end-uses, such as:  lights, heating, cooling, plug loads and data centers.”

Those recommendations can include retrofitting the building with more insulation or more efficient lighting systems. FirstFuel Software makes all those recommendations without sending a professional out to the building to make an in-person assessment. The company carries out the entire process remotely through the Internet.

Rather than act as a consultant, the company licenses its software out to utility companies that are looking to remove some strain on the power grid. For example, retrofitting commercial buildings with better windows or insulation can reduce energy consumption from air conditioning units at peak load times — the hottest parts of the day, when everyone else is running an air conditioning unit.

FirstFuel Software was founded last year and is based in Waltham, Mass.

Greenstart’s new office space has a slick, green feel to it — compared to the semi-industrial feel that other startup incubator offices like AngelPad have. The whole space came together in the span of about eight weeks with “a startup’s budget,” Greenstart founding parter Mitch Lowe told VentureBeat. The office space is a critical part of the incubator experience because it gives the startups a professional environment with nearby mentors and peers who they can feed off while they work on their business.

“We were basically holding our breaths, saying, ‘please be good, please be good,’” Sylvatex co-founder Virginia Klausmeier, one of the incubator’s companies this class, told VentureBeat. “And it ended up being awesome, we are so excited.”

Greenstart hosts clean technology startups that fulfill three goals: they’re “fast,” in the sense that they can generate real revenues in less than a year, and they either reduce reliance on fossil fuels or improve existing clean technology. Most of the companies that enroll in the class have to demonstrate some kind of potential business plan, though the incubator isn’t against hiring companies that are in the “idea phase” like other incubators, such as Y Combinator, usually bring on board, Lowe said.

“Most companies will enter at the point where they are starting to think about commercialization,” Lowe said. “We have companies in this class that are mostly ready to start working on business models even though those will change over time.”

Sylvatex, for example, is a biofuel company based on technology that the co-founder’s father developed over the span of 12 years. The company mixes vegetable oils with diesel fuel to make cleaner fuel that will cost less than typical diesel fuel. But rather than create a separate manufacturing plant to produce the fuel, the company simply wants to license out its technology to larger fuel producers — shortening the amount of development time and reducing the company’s upfront capital costs significantly.

“We’re not trying to recreate the wheel and make our own blending plant, we learned from the guys that failed at doing that,” Klausmeier said.

The new incubator hosts three classes of companies each year and invests between $25,000 and $100,000 into each company. It purchases common stock in the companies rather than a convertible note, which most incubators like Y Combinator and AngelPad use. This class featured four clean technology companies, but the next class starting in December will probably have between six and eight startups, Lowe said. Greenstart wants to incubate 500 startups by the end of the decade, he said.

“I love the term accelerator, because we don’t have time to wait, we need this technology now,” Lee said. “We need it not only to maintain our status as a world center for clean technology, but when you start here, those jobs turn into hundreds as your business matures.”

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

Emerging solar markets like those in New Jersey, and third-party residential solar installers such as SolarCity and SunRun, have put the U.S. on track to double its solar capacity growth this year when compared to 2010. New Jersey overtook California as the largest commercial solar market last year. More than half of all residential solar panel installations are now done by those third-party leasers and installers, as well.

The solar industry experienced a black eye when solar panel provider Solyndra, the now-controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. That company was one of the first to receive a federal stimulus grant. But after raising $1 billion the company was forced to slash costs, close a factory and cancel an initial public offering as photovoltaic panel prices collapsed amid the economic recession that began in 2008.

Solyndra specialized in cylindrical solar panels that are not made out of polysilicon, a key component in crystalline solar panels. Solyndra was safe in the solar market when polysilicon prices were at their peak, but they fell rapidly as the U.S. entered a recession. That, along with a collapsing solar panel market in Spain, left Solyndra unable to compete with other manufacturers like SunPower, SEIA chief executive Rhone Resch told VentureBeat.

“What we saw occurring over the last several years was a decline in module prices much more rapid than anybody anticipated,” he said. “Solyndra couldn’t compete, Solyndra’s investors and officials assumed the price of polysilicon would continue to rise or maintain the high levels we experienced in 2008.”

Many governments are offering incentives for solar panel manufacturers, but the market is shifting in favor of higher-efficiency photovoltaic manufacturers because the incentives favor rooftop solar installations with smaller surface areas, senior director of global product marketing Jim Cushing of Applied Materials, a company that sells solar panel manufacturing equipment, told us. But even that market isn’t insulated from a glut of solar panels on the market.

Those incentives could expire by the end of the year, driving solar installation expansion down in 2012, GTM Research managing director Shayle Kann said in an interview. While the U.S. solar market is expected to double this year, it might only grow by around 50 percent next year, thanks to a lack of federal funding he said.

Despite pricing woes, solar panel manufacturing in the United States has some advantages over international manufacturers, Kann said. The U.S. solar panel market expanded by 314 megawatts worth of installations, up 69 percent from the same period last year. The U.S. solar market typically sees most of its growth in the fourth quarter of the year as well, Kann said. There are 7 gigawatts worth of installations already planned for construction in the United States.

“What’s happening, Solyndra is the exception to the rule rather than what’s happening across the board,” Kann said. “The US market remains a rare bright spot, I would say and I don’t think this is an exaggeration, every global solar player is currently developing or has developed a strategy to invest in the U.S. market.”

Khosla Ventures is known for its investments in bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies as well as other areas of the technology sector.

Chung will focus on the Khosla’s clean tech and information technology investments, according to the firm.

Chung is one of six Khosla partners, which includes joining founder Vinod Khosla, Samir Kaul, Pierre Lamond, Shirish Sathaye, and David Weiden.

Founded in 2004, the Menlo Park, California-based investment firm has generated over a billion in profits in the last year from three IPOs, including Kior, Amyris, and Gevo.

Musk told entrepreneurs at the conference to start smaller companies with lower capital costs instead of jumping straight into a large market (watch the video below). The ante for a car company, for example, is around $1 billion, said Ray Lane, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Musk was able to enter that market thanks to the success of his first company PayPal, which was bought by eBay in 2002.

Thanks to the success the three co-founders of PayPal achieved, they were dubbed members of the “PayPal Mafia.” Thiel went on to become an investor while Max Levchin started Slide, which was later bought by Google. Musk started Tesla Motors, an electric car company, and SpaceX, a space transportation company.

Tesla Motors has since gone public and SpaceX is currently slated to replace the now-ended U.S. space shuttle program. It will start with simple cargo missions, but SpaceX flights will begin carrying astronauts in around three years, Musk said.

The greentech industry is growing fast, and with that growth comes an increased need to attract talented job candidates. To competitively recruit the most talented members of the applicant pool, greentech business owners can implement the following hiring strategies:

1. Become an employer of choice:

Employers who create a company culture fully immersed in, and supportive of, a green lifestyle are better positioned to attract talent that is passionate about greentech. It goes beyond simply saying “we’re a solar company,” to saying “we’re a solar company that gives employees incentives to bike to work, partners with green vendors, and has eco-friendly headquarters.” This not only attracts talent that is committed to the industry, but also differentiates the company from other greentech companies recruiting talent. It shows applicants that the company is looking for someone dedicated to improving the world, because as a company, it is dedicated to improving the world.

2. Network at a high level:

Networking efforts that only include reaching out to candidates via LinkedIn will not enable businesses to reach their hiring goals. Companies that aim to be visible within the green movement will attract the right potential job applicants. To achieve this, companies may pursue a specific networking strategy that helps them fully engage with the industry and community. This not only includes attending events, like the Green Festival, which runs throughout the U.S., but also hosting green-themed events for members of the industry and community.

3. Be clear about expectations:

Companies that are successful in finding the right talent know what they are looking for in candidates, and also what candidates are looking for in them. The talent pool knows that greentech is a growing industry that offers a promising learning opportunity for less-experienced candidates. Companies that are open to working with candidates early in their career can use this opportunity to engender loyalty in employees from the start. This helps contribute to long-term employee retention and satisfaction.

About TriNet:

TriNet works with more than 150 clients in the greentech industry (including six who were recently honored by the San Francisco Business Times). It is is a trusted partner to small businesses, providing critical HR-related services on an outsourced basis. TriNet’s solutions help contain costs, minimize employer-related risks and relieve administrative burden to keep an entrepreneur’s focus on core business functions. From employee benefits service and payroll processing to high-level human capital consulting, TriNet’s PEO expertise is integrated with every facet of a client’s business. TriNet specializes in serving fast-moving companies in fields such as technology and financial services, who recognize that top-quality employees are the most critical competitive asset. For more information, please visit www.trinet.com.

“Most of the energy in your hot water system is lost. It’s never used.” says Christy. A typical shower uses at least 3 litres of drinking water, and 22-48 percent of the energy used to heat a shower is lost in storing warm water which then goes cold in tanks and pipes within a household.

The recycling shower captures water you have already used in a reservoir, which is likely to be built into the base of the shower. The water is then filtered in a component called a hydrocyclone, which uses similar technology to a Dyson vacuum cleaner, and spins the water around to separate out any heavier particles or materials. The 70 percent of the water that survives this filtering mechanism is pasteurized to kill any bacteria and redirected back into the shower head. The whole real-time, recycling process takes a mere 25 seconds and reduces the amount of water used in an average shower by 70 percent. Since you are recirculating water which is already warm, energy costs are further reduced over heating cold mains water.

The inventor of the shower technology, Peter Brewir, is a director of Water Recycling Shower. He also invented concrete canvas, a fabric that, when sprayed with water, turns into concrete with 24 hours. Concrete canvas allows solid structures to be built quickly in disaster zones.

According to Christy, showering is the second largest energy cost in most households. In markets like Australia, where the company is based, water shortages are also a problem. “When I moved to Australia at the end of 2007, there was a really bad drought.” Christy explained. “In Brisbane the water was down to 16 percent in a city of 2.1 million people. You were supposed to limit your showers to four minutes. You see what people do when there is no petrol. You can imagine what they are going to do when there is no water.” Based on the current cost of water and energy in Australia, the recycling shower would save around $185 per person per year. However, the Queensland Water Commission estimates that water heating costs in that area of Australia will double by 2016.

Christy estimates that the shower is currently around 18 months away from market. The company will sell directly to consumers. The whole package will consist of a replacement for the current shower’s thermostat and showerhead, a reservoir to collect used water and a briefcase-sized unit containing the filtering system.

The first target market for the recycling shower is the United Kingdom, where 50 percent of the population already uses an electric shower. One possible disadvantage of the shower in other markets is that it requires a higher power supply to be available in the bathroom (40 Amps as opposed to the usual mains power of 15-20 Amps) because the filtering system uses a lot of energy during a shower. Bathrooms with electric showers will already have such a connection. The initial cost will be around $2,365 per shower. Christy says that an average household should save enough within the first 3 years to cover the initial investment.

The recycling shower has one competitor in a company called Quench Showers, also based in Australia. Quench’s shower system divides a shower into two phases: soaping and rinsing. 100 percent of water used in the rinsing phase is reused after the water is filtered, pressurised and heated.  There does seem to be a rather inconvenient wait between the soaping and rinsing phase.

A future Water Recycling Shower feature that is bound to be popular with parents of teenagers everywhere, is the shower remote control. No more endless showers for Madam, unless she likes them cold.

Water Recycling Shower was founded in 2009, has one employee (the Green Challenge prize will mainly be used to hire engineers), is based in Brisbane Australia and is privately funded.

“We have to put this partisan bulls–t behind us,” Doerr said at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference on Wednesday. “We need new leadership and public pressure, it will not happen with business as usual.”

Clean technology investing has hit a few hiccups lately, with investments in cleantech companies slowing in the second quarter this year. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said clean technology was a “disaster” on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 on Monday. The slowing is partly due to dropping subsidies and support for clean technology, he said. That’s fed misinformation and a lack of understanding of the science behind new energy technologies.

One culprit of internal governmental dispute is Solyndra, a cylindrical solar rooftop systems company that filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. Solyndra was a controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. That company was one of the first to receive a federal stimulus grant. Solyndra’s failure raised questions about the future of the loan guarantee program, which would further stifle innovation in clean technology — the same way other industries would have been stifled without government support.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the lone entrepreneur in the garage creating an industry,” he said. “We have this myth that the IT industry got started on its own — no, there was federal funding, just like what we need for clean technology.”

Doerr is a strong proponent of clean technology for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which had an extended stint focusing on investing in clean technology. The company has invested in electric car manufacturer Fisker Automotive and electric bus maker Proterra.

“The thing that scares me the most about America at the moment is the anti-science movement is gaining ground,” he said. “If we don’t have presidents or an informed electorate that can make decisions based on science, we’re gonna be in a bad situation.”

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

That’s what storied investor Vinod Khosla said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 on Tuesday. He is considered a venture capitalist by most as he has invested in companies like GroupMe and Jawbone, but he’ll deny that any day of the week, he said.

“I am a venture assistant. I want to help out entrepreneurs with what they actually need,” Khosla said. “It doesn’t matter what you call it, a great entrepreneur needs more than money, they need help.”

Khosla and his firm, Khosla Ventures, is particularly known for investing in clean technology. But clean technology investing has hit a few hiccups lately, with investments in cleantech companies slowing in the second quarter this year. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said clean technology was a “disaster” on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 on Monday.

“Cleantech is not a disaster, just in the last 12 months we’ve generated over a billion dollars in profits and three IPOs, and there are six IPOs ready to go if the markets hold up,” Khosla said. “I challenge anyone to claim that cleantech done right is a disaster, we’ve generated more profits than anyone has.”

When Khosla left storied venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2004 to invest in clean technology startups, he swung for the fences. Khosla was known for taking a “portfolio” approach to cleantech investing by dropping money in just about every potential part of the budding sector, from biofuels to smart grid companies.

His firm has also invested in some information tech companies like group texting service GroupMe. Khosla himself is an investor in payments service Square, and Khosla Ventures has a partnership with the Designer Fund. But, again, those investments were focused on the team — not the product and not for the sake of making a deal, he said.

“We are clearly investing in (Square chief executive) Jack (Dorsey),” he said. “I’m a big, big fan of design, and I don’t think startups use them enough, and that starts with the entrepreneurs.”

Khosla also said he’s a fan of Foodspotting, a food discovery application, and some other off-beat interesting revenue models and ideas. One of those is a “high-tech burger company” he calls “Meat 2.0.”

And yes, he’s serious about it. That company saves money and saves greenhouse gases by increasing the efficiency at which plant protein is converted to animal protein in meat.

“We’re doing Meat 2.0 for god’s sakes, re-invent the hamburger,” he said. “This is real science. It’s a stealth hamburger company.”

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

With innovation in transportation and alternative energy forms stalled, cleantech investing has become a disaster that has scattered Silicon Valley investors and left the U.S. behind in terms of innovation, Thiel said at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference in San Francisco.

“Cleantech is an increasingly large disaster that people in Silicon Valley aren’t even talking about any more,” Thiel said. “The failure in energy and transportation points to a larger failure in clean energy — we aren’t moving any faster, literally, than we were when modern airplanes first came out.”

Investments in clean technology companies slowed in the second quarter this year. The amount of money invested clean technology projects fell 10 percent to $1.83 billion compared to $2.03 billion in the second quarter of 2010. Algae-based biofuel maker Solazyme raised $227 million from its initial public offering in June, 2011, while biofuel maker KiOR raised $150 million in its initial public offering in May, 2011. Smart grid developer Silver Spring Networks only plans to raise $150 million in its upcoming initial public offering.

Those amounts are low compared to business social network LinkedIn, which raised more than $350 million without flinching. That company also picked up a market cap of nearly $10 billion before the sell-off wiped out more than $3 billion in value. Two other Web 2.0 companies, Groupon and Zynga, already filed to go public. Groupon wants to raise up to $750 million, while Zynga wants to raise up to $1 billion.

Add to that Solyndra, a cylindrical solar rooftop systems company, which is the now-controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy that filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. That company was one of the first to receive a federal stimulus grant. But after raising $1 billion the company was forced to slash costs, close a factory and cancel an initial public offering as photovoltaic panel prices collapsed amid the economic recession that began in 2008.

Thiel frequently expresses disappointment that Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial community is all about making profits and not about changing the world, so you’d think he’d be bullish on anything green. But he’s actually been surprisingly bearish when it comes to cleantech companies. That’s not because he doesn’t believe in the technology, he just doesn’t like the way the companies are run, he said.

“The greatest companies that one can build are ones that represent genuine progress rather than ones that are just rapid change from one fad to the next,” Thiel said.

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

Developing and bringing to market a plug in electric vehicle (PEV) is extremely challenging. It requires hundreds of thousands of engineering hours, costly prototypes, research and development of new technologies, and a reliance on relatively unproven technology. This effort leads to a costly and time consuming development process. While difficult, several companies have successfully brought PEVs to market. While these products have established a tiny toehold in the market, they are far from being viable mass market entries.

The next challenge is to develop mass market, profitable PEVs. In essence, the stakeholders—vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers, battery developers, electric utility providers, and government—must create a long-term business model for “plugging in.”

The Gartner hype cycle describes an (arguably) common pathway for new technology development. The cycle contains; a Technology Trigger, a Peak of Inflated Expectations, a Trough of Disillusionment, a Slope of Enlightenment, and a Plateau of Productivity. While the applicability of the hype cycle is always debatable, the basic concept is relevant to the PEV discussion. The PEV has been through several hype cycles and has yet to reach beyond the trough of disillusionment. The most recent one started five years ago and certainly went through the first three stages. Technology startups and investors are now wondering when—or if—we will reach the Slope of Enlightenment. This time though, things appear to be falling into place.

It’s essential to consider PEVs as a possible solution to the personal mobility challenge. However, it is equally essential for stakeholders to work together to create a business model for plugging in. The Center for Automotive Research will host the third annual Business of Plugging In conference (BPI) October 11-13 in Dearborn, MI. BPI 2011 will bring together stakeholders to address the challenge—and opportunity—of creating a viable, economically sustainable PEV market.

This article was written by Brett Smith, Director of Automotive Analysis Group, Center for Automotive Research.

GreenBeat Exclusive: Until 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 14, BPI is offering a discount of $200 exclusively to GreenBeat readers. To take advantage of this offer, please call Angie Ely (734.929.0496) or fax your registration form, and mention “GreenBeat.” In the meantime, follow the intelligent PEV discussion on Twitter.

Around 35 percent of electric car owners were concerned about reaching a destination before running out of juice three months after buying a car, compared to 100 percent of car owners when they first bought the electric car, according to the report. More car owners drove the cars until the battery fell below 50 percent charge. But the report also showed that electric car owners still desire longer ranges.

Most battery-powered electric cars are limited in their range, which can make car purchasers skittish and less likely to buy a pure battery-powered electric car. It’s one reason hybrid cars — particularly a new extended-range model that can travel 25-50 miles on battery power before switching to gasoline — are more popular than battery-powered electric hybrids.

Clean technology research firm Pike Research expects 754,000 extended-range hybrid electric vehicles to hit the road by 2017, compared to around 504,000 battery-electric vehicles. It’s around a three-to-two ratio, which should continue for the foreseeable future in the United States, Pike Research analyst John Gartner told VentureBeat.

Extended-range hybrids can travel much further without having to recharge for upwards of several hours. Most battery-powered electric cars have long recharge times that require drivers to leave them overnight. But Tesla Motors is working on a fast-charging procedure that it says will charge the Model S to around 80 percent battery life in 45 minutes.

The Nissan Leaf, one of the cheapest electric cars on the market, can only travel around 100 miles before needing to recharge. Tesla Motors cars have some of the longest ranges in the industry, with the Roadster traveling more than 200 miles before a recharge and its newest car, the Model S, traveling up to 300 miles between charges. But The Model S is a little pricey at $57,000 before government incentives for purchasing an electric car.

Instead of planting crops or building cities like in some of the most popular social games today — Zynga’s CityVille or Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social — in Trash Tycoon you clean up trash, build worm farms and try to convert what starts off as a mess into a vibrant “upcycling” community. The company is capitalizing on momentum built up in the social game space by companies like Zynga, which recently filed for an initial public offering to raise up to $1 billion.

“Trash Tycoon is our first game in the green space,” Guerillapps co-founder Raviv Turner told VentureBeat. “We want to try and motivate consumers to do the right thing.”

TerraCycle, a real-world recycling company that positions kiosks around major cities, is a sponsor for the game. Whenever a Trash Tycoon user recycles something through a TerraCycle kiosk, they earn points in the game that they can spend on virtual goods — similar to the way other social games give points for signing up for services.

Guerillapps plans to make other social games geared toward sustainability. It has an upcoming social game based on fitness and personal health that will interact in the real world much in the same way Trash Tycoon does, Turner said.

While Trash Tycoon is initially only available on Facebook, the company plans to port it over to other platforms such as mobile devices and Google+ soon, Turner said. The company is also planning to make an HTML5 version of the game, which is largely seen as a successor to the Flash technology that powers most modern web browser applications and works on most mobile phone browsers.

“Green is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re using a social gameplay model proven by those like Zynga and applying it to the market segment of health care and sustainability.”

The company has raised $500,000 so far, and it’s in the middle of raising another round of funding to start making its other games. But it has the benefit of positioning itself as both a gaming company and a cleantech company, Turner said.

“We get traction and interest from both traditional gaming investors and publishers and also investors interested in health and green,” he said. “It’s right at the border of combining gaming and sustainability.”

Guerillapps is based in New York, N.Y., and has six employees. It was founded in 2009, and Trash Tycoon has been in development for around eight months, Turner said. CarbonFund.org and TreeHugger.com are sponsors for the game. Guerillapps was a finalist at VentureBeat’s Who’s Got Game competition at our annual GamesBeat conference in San Francisco in July.

The Dutch “plant control freaks” behind PlantLab want to farm indoors under purple light. It’s not just for the looks, though. PlantLab has recently developed a set of technologies for optimal indoor farming so that food can grow anywhere from the sunless heart of an office building to an abandoned factory. Picture a 5-star hotel for lettuce, as opposed to the motel provided by a standard glasshouse.

PlantLab stacks “Plant Production Units” on top of each other to make maximum use of space. Plants don’t need the entire light spectrum of sunlight to produce energy, so PlantLab uses LED lighting which emits only blue and red light, giving the growing rooms a weird, disco-like atmosphere.

Because of the indoor growing environment, no pesticides are required and 90 percent less water is used than in greenhouse growing. In the traditional glasshouse, the temperature rises when the sun shines on the glass so the plants need to be cooled with water. Inside a Plantlab growing room, the temperature is much lower and the conditions are kept constant, eliminating the need for water-based cooling.

Automation software controls the environment to provide each plant with optimal levels of light, water, heat, humidity and nutrition and dozens of other growing parameters. The company has developed mathematical models, called Plant IDs, for each plant type, which automatically control the 56 different environment parameters in a production unit to ensure optimal growth.

The first indoor city farm using PlantLabs’ technology will be in a disused factory in Amsterdam. It’s run by Philip Traa and NwA architects.

“We are starting a cooperative,” says Traa, “where Amsterdam members pay us a membership fee every year and then buy the vegetables at cost. Indoor farming must be transparent for customers so they can come and see and taste in our city farm.”

The first crops are lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and cress. Harvesting will start at the end of 2011. The farm will provide 2,000 Amsterdammers with a regular supply of vegetables.

The advantages for cities could be considerable, in terms of reducing traffic and making better use of currently disused space. Amsterdam, for example, has 1.4 million square meters of vacant office space.

“If you grow in the middle of the city where the market is, you have less transportation and lower CO2 emissions,” explains Traa. “A glasshouse is only one floor. We can grow on 100 floors in a skyscraper, or in the heart of the building, since you don’t need sunlight. Solar panels on the side of the building can provide energy for growing.”

Globally, Traa sees the Middle East as the biggest potential market because outdoor growing conditions are so harsh there. Other high-potential areas are China, South Korea and Japan. “Japan has little farmland. China has so many people to feed in the cities. South Korea has both big cities and not enough farmland,” Traa explains.

PlantLab’s approach to growing food indoors currently costs more than alternatives like glasshouses, since LED lighting is expensive and a considerable amount of energy is required to run the plant production units. The Amsterdam farm will use approximately 1 megawatt of electricity per year, the equivalent of around 1,000 homes.

“To be sustainable, that megawatt needs to be green,”  Traa maintains. “We think the energy required will be 25-30 percent less in 2 years.”

But the energy requirements of the plant production units could be offset by location. A large part of the energy currently used in food production is spent on transport, with supermarket fruit and vegetables clocking up massive numbers of gasoline-powered food miles. Also, LED lighting and solar panels may get cheaper while oil prices are likely to rise, which should increase the attractiveness of PlantLab’s solution. Also, since indoor growing is predictable, food can also be grown on demand leading to less waste and stable pricing.

PlantLabs’ vision is a strange combination of hyper-intensive farming with local growing using no pesticides. It’s energy-intensive, but then so are glasshouses and flying in blueberries from Africa. 1 billion people already don’t get enough to eat and the world needs to produce 100 percent more food by 2050 to feed the growing population.

“When you want to feed the world you need to grow intensively,” says Traa. “The organic way is only a solution in the Western world.”

The green heart of the future city may be in a sunless basement.

California’s electric-car advocates are often “true believers,” and they can be single-minded in the pursuit of what they believe is right.

But the nuts-and-bolts experience they’ve gained during the state’s 15 years of electric-car use can be invaluable–which is why policy-makers and car companies take their views seriously.

Usually.

Which brings us to the strange case of California Assembly Bill 475, and why it has upset advocates so much that they want it vetoed or completely rewritten.

AB 475 is a bill, backed by General Motors [NYSE:GM], to allow Chevrolet Volts (and other plug-in cars with engines too) to use certain charging stations legally.

Plug-in cars, with engines too

Public charging stations have existed in California since the first wave of electric cars started to arrive in 1996. In 2002, a law was passed that restricted parking in certain “EV spaces” to Zero-Emission Vehicles.

About 800 electric-car owners have paid the state $18 for a “Zero Emission Vehicle” sticker that marks their car as authorized to park in these spaces. But not all charging-station spaces in California require electric cars to display the stickers, though some do–no one seems to know how many.

California Zero-Emission Vehicle parking permit, from DanielBusby.com

Because they didn’t exist at the time, the 2002 law said nothing about plug-in hybrids (e.g. the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid) or range-extended electric cars (e.g. the Chevy Volt).

These cars have plugs, but also gasoline engines, so they’re not zero-emission vehicles. So they can’t get the ZEV sticker, and hence are illegal at charging stations that require a sticker to use.

Drafted by Betsy Butler, staff, GM

The bill that became AB 475 started out by adding language to make this new type of plug-ins eligible for the stickers.

The largest number of plug-in hybrids today are Volts, leading GM to assist the staff for sponsor Assemblymember Betsy Butler in drafting the bill. The company did so, it says, at the request of Volt owners who wanted legal access to chargers.

A subsequent draft of the bill eliminated the need for electric-car owners to get the sticker. At that point, Plug-In America and other advocates got involved to address several concerns about the bill’s new language.

GM: We’ll work with you

GM said it would work with the advocates, recounted advocate Chelsea Sexton, to refine the new draft so it addressed their concerns. After months of meetings and revisions, the bill was passed by the Senate on August 18. Butler introduced it in the Assembly on Friday, August 19, where it was passed on Monday, August 22.

But the final bill contained none of the revisions urged by advocates. Instead, it used the same wording that had brought Plug-In America and others into the process in the first place.

Sacramento Electric Vehicle Gathering, June 18, 2011

California Governor Jerry Brown has until October 9 to sign or veto the bill. If he does neither, it passes into law.

Plugged in isn’t always charging

The final wording requires any vehicle parked at a charging-station space to be “connected for charging purposes,” i.e. plugged in. Or as GM representative Shad Balch put it, “Your charging cord is your parking permit.”

Balch stressed that GM sees the overall goal of AB 475 as ensuring spaces with charging stations are occupied only by vehicles “using the space as intended–to charge” and to ensure that it does not in any way simply provide a better, “preferential parking” space for any random electric car.

But whether a car is charging is different from whether it’s plugged in. If that little green light on a Prius Plug-In or Volt dash is green, it’s done charging, whether or not the plug is still inserted into the socket. If it’s orange, the car is still charging.

Unfortunately, the requirement that a parked electric car be plugged in at all times makes illegal a practice called “charger sharing,” which Sexton and others say has worked well for 15 years now.

Share with your friends, kids

Here’s the problem: Suppose you’re driving an electric car, you want to recharge while you shop, so you pull in next to a plug-in vehicle already hooked up to a public charger.

You can see at a glance whether it’s done charging. Let’s say the light on top of the dash is green, meaning the car has fully recharged. And, let’s say the owner left a sign on the dash–as electric-car drivers may do–saying, “If my car is done charging, you can unplug it IF you need to charge.”

So you unplug the Volt, close its charger door, and plug the cord into your own car to start recharging. It’s called “charger sharing.” Simple enough, right?

Under the new law, Sexton points out, that would mean the first guy’s car could be towed away, because he would now be illegally parked.

You couldn’t get ticketed for unplugging. At least, not yet: GM has said unplugging an electric car is “tampering” and should be viewed as vandalism–like smashing car windows or slashing tires–that carries criminal penalties.

Doing the right thing gets harder

The net effect is to reduce access to charging stations, advocates say. And they base their claims on 15 years of experience: If every electric car at a charging spot must be plugged in, so-called “charging” could come to take as long as the owner needs to spend doing whatever she planned to do while the car was parked.

Ask yourself: Which is easier, leaving a sign saying “unplug me if I’ve finished,” or interrupting your business to walk out to your car, unplug it, and move it to a different space further away just as soon as it notifies you it’s charged up?

Precluding this additional access to a charging station would seem to ill-serve all plug-in drivers, including the Chevrolet Volt owners whose interests GM says it’s representing.

Scenes from dedication of electric-car charging station at Creekside Inn, Palo Alto, CA

She said, he said

Yet when Plug-In America raised alarms about the loss of sharing, Sexton says, the office of sponsor Assemblymember Betsy Butler told the group, “General Motors didn’t want changes.”

GM says that while it recognizes that advocates had concerns, it didn’t see them as critical–so when the Assemblymember reached out, the company said it was fine with the bill as written.

Advocates: Kill the bill

Electric-car advocates are now so upset that they now either want AB 475 killed altogether, or to revert to the original language that added plug-in hybrids to the list of vehicles eligible for a sticker. A Plug-In America action alert has, the group says, generated hundreds of letters to Governor Brown’s office urging that he veto the bill as written.

A letter sent by Plug-In America to Assemblymember Butler 10 days ago says, in part:

Plug In America enthusiastically originally endorsed AB 475 at introduction (February 15, 2011), which would have simply added plug-in hybrids to an existing EV parking law. Unfortunately, the current amendments to AB 475 will actually make it more difficult for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to share charging infrastructure.

We now oppose this bill because it will hurt the consumers who it was designed to help and will not accomplish its stated goal. This, in turn, could reduce the demand for the next generation of clean efficient vehicles which run on clean domestic electricity.

GM: No backing down

GM is sticking energetically to its guns.

2011 Chevrolet Volt test drive, Michigan, October 2010

Shad Balch, who works with Volt owners in California and is GM’s front-line representative both to the broader electric-car community, has written and posted numerous approving comments on AB 475.

One can be found on Volt portal MyChevroletVolt; it’s worth reading for the countervailing comments from advocate Mark Larsen and others.

About AB 475, Balch says confidently, “This is the best public policy.” In a lengthy interview with GreenCarReports, he made other points:

• It is an entirely voluntary protocol, so any individual parking lots, municipalities, and others are free to adopt its provisions or not
• Even if lots do adopt it, localities can enact their own laws to override it–which could maintain charger sharing where it’s an established community protocol

But asked if he thought this was a good model for other states to adopt, Balch said it would be “a good start.”

Bad blood like EV1 days

Balch said that GM had not engaged other automakers–like Nissan, Tesla, Fisker, or Toyota–in discussions over the language of the draft bill, nor was he aware of any participants from other makers present at any discussions.

But since advocates called for a rethink, bad blood has boiled up between GM and the advocacy community, to a degree not seen since GM took back and crushed its EV1 electric cars starting in November 2003.

As AutoblogGreen notes: “The funny thing is, one of Chevrolet’s slogans is ‘It’s more than a car, it’s a community.’ Hmm.”

The difference could be based on outlook: GM seems to have a much darker (or less idealistic) view of how its customers and other electric-car drivers will behave than do advocates.

“Less altruistic” electric-car buyers

Rob Peterson, who works in GM Communications, wrote on a Facebook group for Volt owners:

Today, the EV community is filled with well-intended owners/advocates who are pushing for a faster adoption of electric vehicles, but this community will soon grow to include others who drive electric cars for less altruistic reasons.

You’re already seeing dissension among the troops, as owners of pure EVs are pushing to have Volts excluded from public charging as they believe either their EV miles have inherently more “goodness” than those of a Volt or they have specific [knowledge] to understand how much liquid fuel a charging Volt has on board.

Electric vehicles are coming, and we need to be prepared for tens of thousands of electric-car, extended-range electric, and plug-in hybrid owners–some who may not have the same values that those of us in the community share today.

GM’s dark fears seem to envision a scenario in which drivers of battery-electric vehicles (like the Leaf) feel free to unplug plug-in hybrids (like the Volt) from charging stations, rationalizing that, “They have an engine to get them home, whereas I’ll be stranded if I can’t charge.”

Under that scenario, Volt owners consistently lose–which would explain why GM wants unplugging anyone’s car, ever, to become illegal.

2011 Chevrolet Volt being recharged via a plug.

Sexton points out that there’s absolutely no indication that this has happened to date, or that it will happen in the future. “There’s no reason to believe the vehicle population will ever outgrow the driver population’s ability to behave considerately,” she said. “GM’s entire point of view is based on a fallacy.”

And she noted the plug-in vehicle population will grow slowly as a proportion of the overall vehicle pool–slowly enough to let issues be resolved if they arise.

Why did it get so ugly?

But the dispute has gotten surprisingly ugly. In comments on Sexton’s first blog post and in concurrent Twitter discussions, Balch said advocates’ concerns are “misguided” and an attempt at “spreading misinformation,” among other characterizations.

The tone of the discourse seems doubly odd given that GM invited Sexton to be part of its first Volt Advisory Board, followed by an amusing sequence of articles she wrote about pretending to “hide” her Volt to prevent the company from taking it back.

Just six months ago, that got her slammed by some advocates as “in GM’s pocket.” My, how times change. For the record, Sexton chuckles, she has less vested interest than most of the other parties–she doesn’t own a plug-in vehicle.

But to Plug-In America and other advocates, the question has expanded beyond the bill’s language to include: Why is General Motors fighting for it so fiercely?

The company has shad some success after three years of wooing electric-car advocates bitter over its crushing of EV1s. Balch admitted that engaging with electric-car advocates is a primary part of his communications role.

Unclear what’s to be gained

But battle-scarred advocates say GM is reverting to type–notwithstanding its bankruptcy, restructuring, new management, and the launch of a plug-in vehicle. “The current stonewalling and refusal to engage … most closely resembles the EV1 standoff,” said a frustrated Sexton.

Why that has happened remains very unclear.

When asked why GM is fighting the advocates so strongly, Balch simply reiterated, “We have a good public policy, and we’re standing behind it.”

GM out on a limb?

But it’s possible the carmaker has gone out on a limb. GM may be the only electric-car maker that supports AB 475 as now written.

Nissan Leaf spokesperson Ryan Reynolds recharges a Leaf.

While Nissan’s government affairs representative is away on vacation this week, Nissan said she had already expressed its concerns to Governor Brown’s office. The company, said Katherine Zachary, is “looking to fully understand the considerations and nuances of the bill.”

And Silicon Valley startup Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has expressed its own concerns with the bill to the governor’s office as well.

New draft altogether?

On Wednesday, Plug-In America, Sexton, and others met with Governor Brown’s staff and were asked to draft an amended version of the law that would address their objections. They did so, and have submitted it for consideration.

We’ll keep you posted on what happens with AB 475.

And, tell us, what do you think: Should it always be illegal to unplug an electric car at a public charging station? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.

This article by John Voelcker originally appeared on GreenCarReports.com, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.