Slashdot Mirror
Venture Capitalism To the Rescue
theodp writes "Al Gore, Bill Joy, and a Norwegian cutie — a TH!NK open electric car — grace the cover of the latest NYT Magazine, which asks: Can the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins reduce our dependence on oil, help stop global warming, and make a lot of money at the same time? While Kleiner Perkins — which funded Genentech, Netscape, Google and others — has a number of other green-tech bets, a partner says its goal is 'to make a lot of money for our investors,' not to save the environment."
That's the exact same mission statement as Generation Investment Management.
Sure, the stock market's bad. Really bad. Oddly, that's what makes for very good timing here - because even though a lot of people have less money to invest, there's a lot of other folks who are looking to take their money from places they used to believe as 'safe', and put it where some of it will make money back to recover from recent failures. That includes mutual fund companies, and several other sources of megabucks.
There's also a lot of potential researchers who can spend a lot of time on these projects, at relatively competitive rates. And a lot of existing data to pull together from university projects that individually have been starved for resources. That, and there's a slight possibility some politicians may be able to make a sane infrastructure to provide at least some support in upcoming budgets.
Sounds like excellent timing to get a massively multiple-approach research project like this underway. It might even save a small part of our economy through the continuing troubles.
Ryan Fenton
provided they take the long term view. It is no coincidence that the UK Green movement has definitely aristocratic supporters, because an aristocracy tends to think about its grandchildren (to the extent of things like planting trees that will not mature in their own lifetimes, for the sake of future generations.) I like to think that really sophisticated venture capitalists will be planning now for a comfortable retirement in 30-40 years time - and will therefore be worrying about what the world will be like then. Hedge funds are full of people with a short term attitude - anybody who shorts stocks has that - who just assume that they can accumulate so much wealth that they can insulate themselves from everything short of global meltdown. Which has just worked out so well...but real venture capitalists are an engine of progress. Without them no USA (who funded Columbus and the first colonies?), no canals, no trains, no telephone, no modern medicine.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
EEStor is another interesting electric-car-related Kleiner Perkins investment http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/dealflow/archives/2005/09/kleiner_perkins_1.html. They have patented technology for super capacitors with over ten times the energy density of lead acid batteries. Being capacitors without electrochemistry, the power density (charge/discharge rates) is also very high.
The trick is that they use a doped barium titanate dielectric with a very high permittivity structured as a sub-micron grain composite interspersed with thin Aluminum oxide and glass layers to lower the breakdown voltage. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStor. The big gain over normal capacitors happens because the energy content of a capacitor goes as the voltage square, and the overall relative permittivity exceeds 10000.
The internal combustion engine is obsolete.
Because too many folks in the past, wanting to do good, have started investment funds or invested in things to make a change and lost their shirts.
By stating the obvious (to us anyway), they're letting any potential investors know that they're not going to spend money on losing propositions just to save the planet.
I would also like to add, if they really want green investments to pay off, they should also lobby Congress to get rid of the many oil industry subsidies and tax breaks. That would make oil more expensive - actually, it should allow oil to be priced so that it reflects its true costs. The oil industry is a prime example of how tax and government subsidies can distort a market to the point that one of the most inefficient and polluting fuels had become predominant and other sources of energy have a hard time competing in the market place because of the false reduced costs imposed by Government. I think adding even more tax breaks and subsidies to an energy solution is not the way to go. We need to eliminate the current ones on oil, gas, and coal. And it will help reduce the amount in the tax code.
Imagine driving on a warm summer night with the wind blowing through your hair and hearing nothing but the sounds of nature.
Imagine crossing the road on a warm summer night, a gentle breeze blowing through your hair and hearing nothing but the sounds of nature ... and then: BAM! Hit by an electric car."
There are some small electric cars in London, they're eerily silent.
Just to clarify, I do think that this is a good technology and it is the future, but I am sure that there will be accidents because the cars are silent.
Why do people insist on making electric cars ugly as hell?
The CEO is giving a speech at a board meeting: "And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit."
http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=G41AMWKD2J779JFDMBDRM9CAKAKJ63T5&sitetype=1&did=4&sid=52630&pid=&keyword=end+of+the+world§ion=cartoons&title=undefined&whichpage=1&sortBy=popular
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Electric Cars are coming from everywhere, in different sizes and shapes, with different concepts. Some will append the electric motor to a a ignition engine generator (making it a hybrid). Some are tricycles using solar back-up power. Others are super-sport cars. It is all very interesting.
Back in February I was so amazed with the variety that I posted in my blog thirty different electric and hybrid cars from all over the world. From the established auto industry of Japan and the US down to individual projects, this is a really special moment for entrepreneurs, inventors and creative people. The blog post is in portuguese, but there are pictures and reference links for all 30 electric car models.
Sorry for the plug. Cheers.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
A link to the full article is here.
It's too bad for the all the small private companies that have been investing in green vehicles. The government just gave the big guys $25 billion dollars to retrofit their plants to make "more efficient" vehicles. It's hard to compete against free government money. This waste will contribute to more problems in the future. Why make a risky bet on alternative energy? Just invest in the same old inefficient technologies, and then when it's way too late to switch over, the government will bail you out.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
There's some huge number of dollars involved-well over a trillion by now just in this decade- in keeping the military in the mideast, and I think there might be..one or two..people left who don't think it has anything to do with oil. Same with nuclear power, all the big fuss over iran is over nuclear technology once you get down to it, because the tech itself is inherently unsafe/dangerous-the potential anyway. Put those ongoing costs directly on the electricity bill from nuclear and directly on the prices people pay at the fuel pump for oil products, and that would help get a fairer real life price. Stop funding it from the general tax fund, that's a clear big business subsidy.
Now, conversely, who is going to war or worried about war over access to sunshine or wind or wave power? It doesn't exist, but access to crude oil and natural gas and uranium is a huge problem and it leads to war and threats of war. That's a real cost-in money and blood- that the proponents of those energy forms fail to admit to.
Al Gore invented global warming so he can rip you off and get even richer... Now he stands to make hundreds of millions while we all suffer from this made-up global holocaust.
Good thing the hyperlink wasn't on the Norwegian Cutie part or some readers may have been tricked into clicking on the article before realizing it's a car. Actually I bet some of us still were...
Unfortunately, the best projects in Green Tech may never get funded, because most VCs look for 5 to 1 returns in 18 months, and some projects, surprisingly, take longer than that to monetize.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Is there likely to be a cultural problem in the USA with electric cars being smaller than most internal combustion engine cars? Will there be a low take up in the USA due to the vehicles not being macho enough? Wondering if anybody can tell me what sort of take up there is in the US for other small (gasoline powered) cars that we have lots of in Europe, like the Smart car, or other small hatchbacks. In Europe the US is seen as loving really big vehicles, sometimes more powerful than people actually need (e.g. 4x4 SUVs for just taking children to school and soccer). It's a trend that's happening in Europe as well, but limited due to a lot of our older towns not just being able to cope with such big vehicles: it makes sense in big old cities to have a small car because it's easier to park and manouevre, maybe not such an issue in the US car-planned cities.
Really curious if this cultural tendency towards big cars will slow down the take up of small electric cars in the US, any thoughts?
Choosing to lose money everywhere means you lose money; choosing to lose money in selected places may actually mean you secure your future, since most socially "irresponsible" business practices are short sighted.
Tell that to the folks who are investing their life savings. It's easy to tell the other guy that it's socially responsible to lose money on occasion, but it's whole different ball of wax when it's your money. I wish more "activists" would understand this instead of demanding that others pay for their ideas and values.
Having worked in the past with lightning simulators, I have a fair amount of experience of different capacitor technologies, and I can assure you that there will be energy loss in these things. That heat will have to be dissipated, and the dissipation means will reduce the available energy density. There are many other problems, including the varying voltage as the cell discharges, which means complex inverters are needed to supply the motor controller. I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest that the timescale to get this to production volume comparable with bread and butter Diesel or gasoline engine production lines is going to be 30-50 years, which is too late to make a difference. For niche markets it may do very well, but no, the IC engine is not being obsoleted by this.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And 5 to 1 return in 18 months? Er, depends on the size of the stake and the expected life of the company. No simple rule here.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You saved me from an embarrassing post...
No, this isn't another "Global Warming doesn't exist" troll. This is about energy. Electricity, specifically. It has to be generated somehow. Sure, hydro, wind, and solar are great sounding ideas. To some extent, they already work, and no doubt can be made better if investment is done in R&D, and deployment, for those technologies. But, imagine something on the order of 100 million cars which need to be charged, possibly twice or thrice, every day. That is a massive amount of electricity which is not currently being generated that needs to be generated.
Where will it come from? Right now, probably *not* from clean energy sources. People don't want to build more nuke plants; I believe hydro electric's generating capacity is already pretty much tapped out and there's not a lot of sites to build new damns; Wind and Solar are both spikey, and currently just aren't available in nearly the quantities necessary anyhow.
That leaves coal, oil, natural gas, and maybe something like propane (but, I think most propane comes from oil, doesn't it?)
Even allowing for generation from carbon-based fuels, it would require new power plants to be built and brought online, which if you believe in global warming, you don't want to encourage, because once a power company has invested in building the plant, the government is probably not going to shut it down (at least in the USA), so that means that you now have many additional carbon-based power plants and will continue to have them for 50-100 years.
So, unless people want to build a lot of fission nuclear power plants (which the public doesn't seem too enthusiastic about; McCain suggested it and that whole conversation died in about 30 seconds), electric vehicles simply are not a viable solution to global warming. Maybe, someday, if we can get cheap, clean, safe fusion nuclear power, electric vehicles might become a great option, but not right now. If electric *did* become super cheap in massive quantities, electric vehicles still might not be the best option - with cheap electricity, something like hydrogen or some other type of synthesized fuel might be a better option. Hydrogen has containment/safety issues, but still, chemical fuels that you can carry in a tank, and nearly instantly re-fill at a fueling station are likely to always be a better solution than electric, unless someone can find a way to instantly recharge an electric vehicle.
Is there likely to be a cultural problem in the USA with electric cars being smaller than most internal combustion engine cars?
Yes. If it looks like Detroit had no hand in its design(by its cheapness/smallness being a non-Detroit element), has less than 5-6 cylinders(GM tried with the Quad-4 resulting in worse performance for higher-rated versions), and only drops below $20000 used, there is a cultural problem.
You still have a sizable and non-ignorable audience that wants to see the return of affordable land yachts. They would rather have a revamped version of the 1990's Impala SS/Classic or even try to get an Police Interceptor at an auction over something that seems a bit too undersized for US roads. These people will not be impressed with much less.
They will not give up their *block engine unless they see *block performance under the hood, for something that isn't in the stratosphere in price, and looks like it did come out of Detroit (and not some far-off part of the world).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The trick is that they use a doped barium titanate dielectric with a very high permittivity structured as a sub-micron grain composite interspersed with thin Aluminum oxide and glass layers to lower the breakdown voltage.
Bah. Why didn't they just use Rockwell Automation's Retroincabulator
Moreover, whenever fluorescent score motion is required, it may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.
-metric
Well.... Think is a Norwegian car, and Norway produces the most hydroelectric power in Europe. Sure, we close down the plants during the night to get cheap coal electricty from mainland Europe, but during the day, it's mostly hydroelectric.
Another way to get clean fuel is to use atomic energy. Yeah, wast is an issue, but it's still clean in the climate discussion.
A thrid thing to consider is that oil and coal plants are cleaner than the cars, and it's also easier to caputre CO2 from a plant than the cars driving around all over the place.
Actually, most of the alternatives of producing power is cleaner than using a combustion engine in a car 100% of the time already, and the potential is even greater.
This is blinging
Just to clarify, I do think that this is a good technology and it is the future, but I am sure that there will be accidents because the cars are silent.
Has nobody actually seen any science fiction films that show future cars? They all go 'woooooooosh', as they go by. Yeah, they have silent propulsion, but to deal with the obvious problems, the NHTSB mandated in 2012 that all cars producing less than 65dB of noise have Whooooooosh Generators installed as a safety measure.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well. . . those seem like reasonable answers.
There's still the economic argument - if a lot of people start using electric cars, we will likely go through at least a period of time where electricity costs increase due to the increased demand. It might be that over time, new power plants will come online, which might reduce the cost, but I'm very afraid of what electric vehicles will do to electricity prices in the US, if they ever become popular.
Oil companies are spending the most on alternative energies, really. They're just not really interested in selling them until the oil's all gone.
True, but as I said here in Norway, we actually turn off the hydropower during night, because we can import it cheaper from those plants you cannot turn off (nuclear, coal, etc.) which haven't got the same demand during night as they do during the day. I guess the same would go for charging your car during the night in US as well. Your plants produce the same amount of electricity during night as during the day, but it's all a waste, since the need is not the same.
Just something to think about. If they would make electricity cheaper during the night, people would wait until then before charging their cars, etc. if possible.
Yeah, we'll probably be needing more and more power plants, but things can be done, the question is: Are people/government willing to do it?
This is blinging
Charging cars at night sounds great but. . .
I get up in the morning, my cars all charged up. Great. So, now I'm ready to drive to work, which might be a 40 or 50 mile commute. My car might have a maximum electric range of 60 or 70 miles, say. So, I get to work, but my car batteries are almost dead. I'd sure like to be able to plugin at work, so that 8 hours later, when I'm done working, I can drive home. But that means charging my car during the day as well as at night.
If my car is a hybrid, I can at least drive home on gasoline, but to get the most benefit from electric vehicles, you want people doing most of their daily driving using the electric instead of the gas, which means you pretty much have to accept that people will be charging during the day, as well as at night.
As for differential pricing of electricity day vs night, I think they already do that some places in the US. I have some friends who live in Arizona, and I believe that they have a differential pricing scheme out there (because air conditioners use up so much electricity during the day, I think), so people wait till night to do things like laundry, running the dishwasher, etc).
You know, I'm just thinking - your comment about them turning off the hydro plants at night made me think of something - if someone can ever come up with high-temperature superconductors, it occurs to me that Norway and the other European countries might be able to have a nice way to make some additional import revenue by selling their excess hydro power to the US, Canada, and Central/South America, and maybe parts of Asia(?). I believe, because of timezone differences, it's still afternoon and evening in the Americas when it's night and early morning in Europe, no?
Then, as the US is shutting off the lights, so to speak, at night, we could be selling excess generation capacity to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Oh well, yet another good reason why economical high-temp Super Conductors would be one the most important discoveries of the century (in whatever century it happens), if it ever happens.