Cree launches an LED bulb for under $10
The LED chip and component maker has launched a line of low cost LEDs that it thinks could be a game-changer for consumers buying LED bulbs. The cheapest retails for under $10. Read more »
Mahindra Reva not giving up on hopes for Indian electric car market (gulp)
The almost two decade old electric car company Reva hasn’t given up on the electric car market in India, despite super slow sales of its original car. Now backed by Mahindra, Reva plans to launch a new electric hatchback called the E20. Read more »
Now on Kickstarter: a new kind of spinning energy storage device
Will Kickstarter come through for an energy entrepreneur looking for funding for a next-gen energy storage device? A startup called Velkess is looking for $54,000 to build a large prototype of a new type of flywheel, which is a like a spinning kinetic battery. Read more »
Solar makers turn a laser-like focus on boosting the efficiency of solar cells
Solar startup Alta Devices says its achieved a new efficiency for its solar cells developed for mobile gadget makers. In a difficult year solar companies are heads down focused on boosting the efficiency of solar cells. Read more »
Podcast: Why we need the LED industry
The latest GigaOM Research podcast examines the LED market: why we need it, what the new business models are, and which companies should be watched in the coming months. Read more »
5 tips for startup founders from startup founders
photo: ThinkStock
Co-founders of several tech startups have some words of wisdom to share with wannabe founders. Some might surprise you. Read more »
Our innovation economy won’t grow until we fix the broken IPO market
photo: NASDAQ
A host of factors — including electronic trading and the dominance of hedge funds — have skewed the system to incentivize short-term focus. Company CEOs need to take back control of the aftermarket. Read more »
The energy innovations of the future need today’s machines
The days of startups building custom-made, capital-intensive machines to produce next-gen energy products is over. Today’s energy entrepreneurs are using standard machines from sectors like the chip industry, the lithium ion battery industry and printing. Read more »
5 potentially disruptive, but “out there,” energy innovations
The world needs more crazy energy entrepreneurs, said Bill Gates. Well here’s five potentially disruptive but a little out there energy projects spotted at the ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
Fluidic shows a peek of its metal air batteries for off and on the grid
A well-funded startup spun out of Arizona State University called Fluidic Energy unveiled a glimpse of its zinc air batteries for one of the first times this week. The batteries are already being tested in developing countries where grid power is unreliable. Read more »
SoloPower looking more and more like Solyndra
The similarities between Solyndra and SoloPower are getting closer and closer. Read more »
From ink to batteries, startup Vorbeck gets creative with the next silicon: graphene
Check out our photos of how startup Vorbeck is working on embedding graphene into everything from batteries to bags to paper to packaging. Read more »
Big data can improve websites, cut energy bills, save lives
photo: Jordan Novet
Use cases at the Strata conference show that information gleaned from Hadoop and other big data technologies can bring companies new revenue streams and cut expenditures. Read more »
6 questions for DuPont’s CEO on startups, ethanol and solar (interview)
The leader of the 210-year-old science giant DuPont, Ellen Kullman, sits down with GigaOM to give us her take on the future of energy for a world population that will boom to 9 billion in 2050. Read more »
Getting to gross margin: Tesla’s year ahead
Tesla continues with its goal of getting EVs to the mass market after announcing its fourth-quarter earnings. But the challenges the Model S-maker faces are many, and there are limits on how much the company can scale. Read more »
First Solar’s new world record for solar cell efficiency and why it’s important
photo: Ucilia Wang
First Solar, one of the largest solar panel makers in the world, says it’s breaking a record for the amount of sunlight that its cadmium-telluride solar cells can convert into electricity. The improvement promises to deliver cheaper solar electricity for consumers in the long run. Read more »
Silver Spring finally sets terms for its long awaited IPO, raising $63M
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks has finally set the terms for its IPO a year a half after it originally filed. But the company could raise $63 million, which is less than half of what it originally planned. Read more »
A startup quietly delivers smart wires to big power players
Startup Smart Wire Grid in Oakland is making transmission lines act more like the smart infrastructure of the Internet. Using its power flow control devices, utilities can prevent outages by routing power around the transmission grid when it’s needed. Read more »
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Tesla will repay its loan to the DOE in half the time
Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledges to pay back the company’s loan to the Department of Energy in five years instead of ten. Musk says if the DOE should be criticized for failures like Solyndra it should be praised for successes like Tesla. Read more »
T-Mobile’s M2M provider Raco goes international with Sprint, Telefónica deals
photo: Flickr / D. Miller
Raco Wireless is already connecting plenty of appliances, vehicles and gadgets to the internet of things using T-Mobile’s 2G networm, but with new carrier partnerships the M2M specialist can connect those things in more places. Read more »
Live video talk: The power of storytelling for early stage energy tech
Tune in to a live discussion between Otherlab’s Saul Griffith, IDEO’s Dave Blakely and myself on why creating narratives and telling stories for early-stage energy technologies is important. The talk starts here at 1:30PM PST, 4:30PM EST (live streamed from Washington DC). Read more »
Now that’s “fast” roadside assistance: AT&T’s LTE will power GM’s OnStar
The deal runs counter to bring-your-own-connectivity approach GM and the rest of the Detroit automakers have backed in recent years. Read more »
Ford loads up Spotify as the first apps make it through its open dev program
At Mobile World Congress, Spotify debuted in its first cars appearing in Ford’s already music-loaded Sync AppLink platform. Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas also told us that its graduate its first apps from its developer program. Read more »
Bringing a little cheer to energy innovation
Following the close of a year which saw the politicization of clean energy technologies, the struggles of dozens of solar manufacturers and electric car companies, and a “cleantech cliff” for startup investing, the 2013 ARPA-E Summit could be a sober affair. Read more »
Digital lighting slowly claiming a spot in the Internet of Things
LED lighting companies are embracing new business models that go beyond just the sales of LEDs, bulbs and fixtures, and LEDs are slowing starting to occupy a spot in the widening web of Internet-dependent goods and services. Read more »
Wireless charging platform Qi lands its second automaker
Ssangyong may not have the global name recognition of the Wireless Power Consortium’s first automotive partner Toyota, but adding the Korean automaker to Qi’s roster shows the technology is building momentum. Read more »
Tesla, and its Apple-style stores, to focus on Asia, Europe this year
Tesla is using its Apple-style stores to draw in customers across Europe and Asia, and in particular jump into a new market, China. Already a quarter of Tesla’s reservations are outside of the U.S. so the bet on international growth, seems like a good one. Read more »
Podcast: PlayStation Snore? Google’s Pixel, and were Tesla’s earnings electric?
Did the lack of hardware matter at the Sony event? Will people pay a premium for a Pixel? And will Tesla’s earnings shock you? Find out! Read more »
IBM plugs big data capabilities into Deutsche Telekom’s M2M infrastructure for smarter cities
The two companies have signed a partnership aimed at providing municipalities with tools for making their cities, in particular their transport systems, smarter and more efficient. Read more »
GigaOM Pro: Three trends that could transform the energy efficient data center
You say AC, I say DC, and several other ways that energy efficiency is remaking the data center, via GigaOM Pro. Read more »
Qualcomm’s new radio chip gets us one step closer to a global 4G phone
Qualcomm’s new RF360 radio chip cold be the answer to the problem of 4G fragmentation. It won’t produce a universal LTE phone just yet, but with 40 bands supported, it will get the industry close. Read more »
Want a sheet of fresh E.coli? There’s a printer for that
A group of biohackers has built an affordable 3-D printer that can churn out sheets of bacteria to order. But that’ s just the beginning of a quest to print a leaf. Read more »
The year the Valley embraced sustainable food innovation
2013 is turning out to be the year when entrepreneurs and investors are embracing using technology to create more sustainable food products, from plant-based egg, meat, and cheese replacements, to healthier candy and salt. Read more »
Disruption: It moves in mysterious ways
Google today released a new video showcasing the user interface of its Google Glass efforts. On the surface it might look like a hands free camera, but in reality it can open up a lot of new possibilities. Just like the iPad did before it. Read more »
The “LTE-Advanced” silicon keeps coming: Altair has a new super-chip
photo: Shutterstock / alphaspirit
Altair Semiconductor may be the latest vendor to malign the term LTE-Advanced, but it does have an impressive new 4G chip. It’s new device silicon is the first we’ve seen that uses envelope tracking battery-sparing technology. Read more »
Your next Kindle could be embedded in your car
photo: Shutterstock / Rob Byron
Amazon is officially part of the connected car, having launched its first app, Cloud Player, on Ford’s Sync platform. It’s next app should be obvious. Amazon already has the technology to integrate the Kindle into the dashboard. Read more »
Tesla expects to turn its first profit in the first quarter of 2013
Electric car maker Tesla revealed in its earnings that it will generated a slightly positive net income (on a non-GAAP basis) for the first quarter of 2013, and has hit its production goals for its Model S car. Read more »
ARM is already the brains of your smartphone. Now it wants to run the network too
LSI is the latest silicon vendor to incorporate an ARM architecture into its mobile base station chips. And it’s going all out, combining 16 ARM cores onto a single module. Read more »
Startup Fenix now selling its off-grid batteries via Vodafone in Tanzania
Startup Fenix has scored a killer deal with Vodafone in Tanzania, and the telco giant will sell and market its off-grid battery to local entrepreneurs. Read more »
First ARM-based servers in production support Baidu’s cloud storage
After years of prepping for this moment, the world’s first ARM-based servers have been deployed in a production environment. Chinese search giant Baidu is using Marvell’s chips in a cloud storage application. Read more »
