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Venture Capitalism To the Rescue

Posted by kdawson on from the doing-well-by-doing-good dept.

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."

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. EEStor, Another Kleiner Perkins investment by Eukariote · · Score: 3, Informative

    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    The internal combustion engine is obsolete.

    1. Re:EEStor, Another Kleiner Perkins investment by Eukariote · · Score: 2, Informative

      By independent accounts they have been realized. Lockheed Martin for example has taken out a license and confirmed the performance claims that EEStor makes http://gm-volt.com/2008/01/10/lockheed-martin-signs-agreement-with-eestor/. When the technology will make it to the market is still a bit of an open question. In 2009, supposedly. But given the big vested interests in the oil industry, I would not be surprised if it will be delayed.

  2. Ugly by ildon · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why do people insist on making electric cars ugly as hell?