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Cleantech

Energy storage company EEStor put out a press release on Tuesday saying it’s still alive and making progress on its technology. Read More »

Why are there so many snake oil salesmen and scam artists in the energy space? Read More »

 
 

Solyndra's ground breaking ceremony in 2009

Politicians, in office and retired, need to do their homework and pay special attention to connecting with tech and greentech startups. The majority of these companies won’t succeed. Read More »

Was Tesla Motor’s CEO Elon Musk on the right track when he said he’d bet on capacitors over batteries for the future of electric cars? A group of high-profile investors seem to think so and have backed ultracapacitor startup Ioxus with $21 million. Read More »

At the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk says he bets that it could be capacitors — rather than batteries — that will deliver an important breakthrough for electric transportation, an interesting comment from a CEO whose products are based on … Read More »

With no word in sight from Zenn Motor’s endlessly-controversial partner on which it bet the farm — EEStor — the CEO of Zenn Motors, Ian Clifford, has officially stepped down this week. Clifford will shift into the role of Vice Chair of the Board of Directors. Read More »

Latest on Zenn: Losing Money, Distancing from EEStor?

While Zenn Motor came to the end of its life as an electric car maker four months ago, there’s still no word on progress from Zenn’s controversial partner — on which it bet the farm — EEStor. In fact Zenn seems to be distancing itself. Read More »

EnerG2, a company working on synthetic carbon materials for energy storage devices, hit pay dirt last summer with the award of a stimulus grant under a DOE program. Today, in Albany, Ore., the startup at last kicked off construction of the factory made possible by that … Read More »

The Reality of Cutting U.S. Carbon Emissions: Natural Gas

Despite all of the innovations and investments in solar, wind, and the smart grid, the reality of cutting carbon emissions out of the U.S. energy portfolio will rely on natural gas, which will make up 40 percent of the U.S. energy market according to a report … Read More »

Khosla-backed Recapping – An EEStor Competitor?

Here’s one reason why greentech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla might have been a bit skeptical of stealth energy storage company EEStor last year — looks like he’s invested in a company that could be a competitor called Recapping (that is if EEStor ever releases a product). Read More »

Zenn Ends Vehicle Production, Lays Off Staff in EEStor Bet

Zenn Motor has come to the end of its life as an electric car maker. The Toronto-based company’s announcement late Thursday that it has ceased production of its Zenn LSV model and laid off 15 employees who supported sales, marketing and production of the vehicle, marks … Read More »

Solar Power and Batteries Pair Up

One of the most commonly cited problems about solar power is that it’s intermittent, meaning that it’s not always sunny when electricity is needed. That means customers can’t count on being able to generate exactly as much solar power as they need to meet electricity demand … Read More »

More Must Reads

EEStor, the energy storage developer, has no shortage of skeptics. That comes with the territory when making ambitious claims about turning energy storage on its head while revealing little evidence as to how. And while Canadian electric vehicle maker and EEStor backer Zenn has bet … Read More »

Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn has been pretty clear in press interviews about its future plans with stealthy energy storage firm EEStor. Back in September Zenn said it planned to ditch its previous car manufacturing business in order to act as a supplier to … Read More »

Can making stealth bombers and radar systems translate into a successful clean energy and energy efficiency technology business? Defense contractor Lockheed Martin, like competitor Boeing, seems to think so. In a briefing on Wednesday Lockheed Martin executives described the defense firm’s overarching energy strategy, … Read More »

When Darryl Siry, former Chief Marketing Officer for electric car maker Tesla, calculated the “implied value” for secretive ultracapacitor maker EEStor at over $1.5 billion, based on the entirety of Zenn Motor’s market cap, he was being somewhat cheeky. But the reasoning behind the calculation … Read More »

Ultracapacitors, energy storage devices that can deliver quick bursts of intense power and withstand more charge and discharge cycles than batteries, could provide a twoferdisrupt the vehicle market and revolutionize the power grid. That’s the basic pitch from developers of next-gen … Read More »

Ultracapacitors are the hyperactive version of energy storage — they have ultra-fast charge and discharge times, but lag behind batteries in terms of the amount of energy they can store. Because of their unique characteristics, entrepreneurs and investors have seen them as an area of breakthrough … Read More »

Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn Motors has been stating its grand vision for a while: to supply a range of automakers and grid operators with energy storage technology created with partner EEStor. That’s what Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told us at the Fortune Brainstorm Green … Read More »

Public officials might be well advised to steer clear of controversy, but when it comes to energy storage startup EEStor, its investor Zenn Motor — and the companies’ bold claims about the disruptive potential of EEStor’s ultracapacitor technology — a couple of Congressmen are plowing right … Read More »

Canada’s Zenn Motor has its eye on Michigan and funding from the U.S. government to develop electric cars using energy storage startup EEStor’s controversial ultracapacitor technology. According to a letter (dated June 29) from Congressman Mark Schauer, which was posted late yesterday on Read More »

If Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn Motor Co. once saw lithium-ion batteries as a possible alternative to devices from its controversial investment in ultracapacitor developer EEStor, the more standard technology is now officially out of the running for its future cars. According to … Read More »

While the green-leaning venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins look like they own about 20 percent of buzzy energy storage firm EEStor, Vinod Khosla — an affiliated partner at Kleiner and head of his own firm, Khosla Venture — appears to have a different perception … Read More »

Stealthy energy storage maker EEStor continues to make headlines, despite the fact that the company has yet to deliver its device that has such revolutionary claims. But the latest news comes via an audio interview that was conducted by an unknown interviewer with EEStor’s … Read More »

Seven months ago the CEO of plug-in car maker Zenn Motors, Ian Clifford, said that the underlying factor of its exclusive deal for small- and midsized cars with high-profile energy storage startup EEStor was the fact that the bigger automakers didn’t want to take a … Read More »

It’s about time two of greentech’s highest-profile investors got together on a deal. This afternoon V-Vehicle, an auto startup that was founded in 2006, came out of stealth and unveiled that it has gained investment from the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins — John Doerr … Read More »

The Urban Dictionary, the user-generated slang web site, recently had a word of the day which I thought was particularly fitting for cleantech companies and entrepreneurs: the chronoptimist, someone who constantly underestimates the time it takes to complete a task (chronologically optimistic.) While entrepreneurs … Read More »

The market for supercapacitors, energy storage devices that can charge quickly and store energy in a relatively small package, is poised to power up significantly over the next five years. While capacitors have traditionally been used for quick bursts of speed, rather than endurance, companies and … Read More »

How many milestone test announcements does it take for secretive ultracapacitor developer EEStor to reach commercialization? We’re thinking it’s like the old ’70s song: You ain’t seen nothing yet. But here’s the latest — on Thursday, Zenn Motors, EEStor’s electric vehicle partner and investor, said … Read More »

Adding digital intelligence to the power grid is getting all the attention right now from Congress, investors and entrepreneurs, but a next-generation smart grid without energy storage is like a computer without a hard drive: severely limited. Energy stored throughout the grid can provide dispatchable … Read More »

Lithium-ion batteries found in consumer electronics and the latest electric vehicles (Tesla’s Roadster and GM’s Volt) have a couple of major hurdles: They can be flammable and unstable, and the higher the energy density, the more volatile the technology. That’s the problem that Mohit Singh, founder … Read More »

For Deeya Energy, good things come in threes. The Fremont, Calif.-based startup, which is working on energy storage technology for three applications — replacing diesel generators, stockpiling renewable energy, and stabilizing the electric grid — has just closed a third round of financing. The … Read More »

Does yet another announcement about a successful test from secretive ultracapacitor developer EEStor mean a step closer to actual production? Yesterday, EEStor announced that it received third-party verification of the energy storage capacity of a key material used in its technology. The … Read More »

Updated: Zenn Motor‘s first highway-speed electric car, the cityZenn, is still on the way, but it may take a bit longer to get to market than originally planned, thanks to the slow moves of its energy storage partner EEStor. Zenn Read More »

Electric car makers and clean energy developers can’t take all the credit for a battery boom, but they have earned a nod from analysts for their potential to boost an industry already on the rise. According to new research from SBI Reports, the market for … Read More »

If cleantech startups want to get into government contracting — an option with increasing appeal given the state of today’s private markets and the size of projects covered by stimulus spending — why not ride the coattails of one of the giants? That’s the route opened … Read More »

John Doerr, the prominent cleantech venture capitalist for Kleiner Perkins, gave his standard earnest speech before a Senate Committee hearing on how greentech investing can spur the economy on Wednesday morning. As per usual, he first chided the U.S. for not doing enough to cut … Read More »

Add another log to the rumors igniting around energy storage startup EEStor. According to a patent application with World Intellectual Property Organization that was recently published online (via bariumtitanate.blogspot.com), military-industrial giant Lockheed Martin is researching developing body armor and utility garments that could include … Read More »

It’s looking pretty official that EEStor won’t be able to reach two important milestones for its automaker partner ZENN Motors by the end of 2008: delivering a prototype energy storage device and a having a third-party verify the high level of permittivity of the powders it’s … Read More »

Looks like EEStor, the high-profile Texas energy storage startup, finally got its patent. According to the U.S. patent office it was issued on Dec. 16 (hat tip GM-Volt.com). A lot of the details of the patent, which was filed Aug. 13, 2004, have been online … Read More »

We’ve always wondered why, if high-profile Texas energy storage startup EEstor has such disruptive technology, it did an exclusive deal with small Toronto-based electric automaker Zenn Motor Co. for small- and mid-sized cars. EEstor’s energy storage technology can supposedly provide 10 times the energy … Read More »

EEStor, the stealthy startup whose Electrical Energy Storage Unit (EESU) could revolutionize the auto industry, has yet to show off a production version of its EESU. The Cedar Park, Texas-based startup said in 2007 that it would be in production by mid 2008. Then that … Read More »

Ultracapacitor Startups to Charge Your Car: While many electric car makers are chasing the better battery, ultracapacitor startups are developing devices that allow for rapid recharge and can survive many charge cycles – VentureBeat. Report: Ocean Power Market to Hit $500M by 2015: Our buddies over … Read More »

A bailout, a debate and a flurry of cleantech press releases could have had you distracted. Here are the important headlines from the week. Google, No. 2 Cleantech Venture Investor in Q3: Google has taken such an enthusiastic role in investing and promoting clean energy that … Read More »

We still haven’t seen exactly how secretive EEStor’s ambiguously named Electrical Energy Storage Unit (EESU) works, but the Cedar Park, Texas-based startup has been racking up the technology partners. Light Electric Vehicles Company (LightEVs) says it has signed an exclusive agreement with EEStor to use … Read More »

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