We bring you the behind the scenes story of how electric car startup Fisker Automotive spent over a billion dollars, took down a government loan and ultimately delivered about 2,000 cars, a small fraction of what it originally promised. Read more »
The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
Almost one in four electric cars sold by 2020 in the U.S. will be in California, according to a new report from Pike Research. Read more »
The new car year is fast approaching but not every model is ready to be produced. That presented a problem for Nissan and its 2013 Pathfinder. The solution? Use the designs to create a virtual reality experience of the vehicle with Microsoft’s Kinect as the interface. Read more »
Tesla Motors needs to make a profit and is counting on the Model S to get it there. The electric car company began shipping the sedan last month, and it has collected about Model S 12,200 reservations now, compared with roughly 11,500 by the end of June. Read more »
Overall, between 2012 and 2017, more than 900,000 light-duty PEVs will be sold in the United States. But there remain hefty inhibitors to mainstream plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) use, including limited vehicle driving range and large battery packs, not to mention steep prices. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Ford is finally showing off its biggest push to date into the electric car market: an electric version of its Ford Focus. For GigaOM TV’s Green Overdrive show, we bring you a test drive! Read more »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Nissan will deliver a fleet of new taxicabs to New York City starting in 2013. The new model, dubbed the NV200 minivan, is less a traditional cab and more of a comfortable mobile office with more amenities, outlets and leg room than an office cubicle. Read more »
When it comes to electric cars, it’s already slow going, so why make electric car charging more confusing, says GigaOM Pro analyst Adam Lesser, who takes a look at the early emerging market for electric car charging networks. Read more »
With eVgo rolling out subscription model pricing plans for its EV charging network in Houston and Dallas, it’s time to take stock and consider the ramifications for customers of making charging networks more difficult to access. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Updated: Electric car startup Fisker Automotive pushed its long-delayed inaugural electric car to market before it was market-ready in order to try to meet government milestones, according to a former Fisker employee that left the company. Read more »
Electric-car startup Coda officially drove its first ready-to-ship electric car off the assembly line at its plant in the Northern California city of Benicia, California, on Monday morning, saying that the move is the start of its customer sales. It’s been a long time coming. Read more »
The solar industry has begun 2012 with some trepidation, with many on the warpath to cut costs and reduce output. These moves give the market a chance to reduce inventories and get production more in sync with demand. But recovery will likely come slowly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Watch the Super Bowl ad for GM’s electric Volt, complete with confused aliens. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As we look toward the next year, the cleantech sector faces many challenges, which we examine in detail in this 2012 outlook. Renewable energy generators encounter an increasingly difficult subsidy environment, and key cleantech innovations like electric vehicles face an uphill climb in terms of connecting ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Whether you like the Chevy Volt or not, if you are a supporter of electric cars, you should be disheartened by the news that the Volt won’t meet its 2011 sales goal after all. Not hitting the goal will have a greater impact beyond GM. Read more »
I look at the numbers for whether the DOE and Obama will be able to meet the goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Wireless giant Qualcomm has jumped into the electric vehicle market by acquiring the assets of a company, called HaloIPT, out of New Zealand that has developed wireless electric car charging tech. Read more »
Is A123 Systems a company that is good at announcing deals but can’t profit from them? After cutting its 2011 sales forecast last Friday, A123 on Monday announced a licensing deal with Japan’’s IHI, which will make a $25 million equity investment in A123. Read more »
Blazing fast networks, cheap silicon, always-on devices and a torrent of data will fundamentally change everything — how we consume media, how we work, and even who we are. We examined 10 areas that show how connectivity is profoundly changing the present and future of technology. Read more »
Looks like GM is planning to compete even more directly with Nissan’s all-electric LEAF. According to reports, GM is supposed to announce on Wednesday that it will start selling an all-electric city car, designed for urban markets in the U.S. and based on its minicar Spark. Read more »
It’s been over a month since the Solyndra news came out, but it’s still dominating. Because it just won’t go away, here’s my top five list of projects that the DOE also backed with loan guarantees and that are showing some early signs of success. Read more »
Cleantech, meet mobile. The intersection between these two industries has grown over the past twelve months as companies increasingly look to use smartphones as a platform to enable their services. This trend will accelerate in the future as more and more companies realize that mobile phones ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The team approach is becoming popular in the electric car development space. General Motors and LG Group announced Thursday a plan to co-develop electric vehicles in order to speed up their deployment. Read more »
The car, and in particular the electric car, is the latest device to get plugged in to the cloud. Coulomb Technologies, which makes networked electric-vehicle charging stations, plans to start selling cloud-based services for managing electric-vehicle charging. Read more »
Utilities know by now that they need to adopt steps manage electricity supply and demand if electric cars become popular. The trick is to figure out what to do. The Electric Power Research Institute released a report on Tuesday that addresses the utility concerns. Read more »
GPS can provide an important function for the emerging electric car industry: battling so-called range anxiety. On Monday, electric car charging company Coulomb Technologies announced that it has partnered with navigation company TomTom to offer charging locator, reservation and information services for plug-in car drivers. Read more »
Recent developments in the vehicle industry suggest that 2011 could be the year of the car as a major platform for apps. From BMW’s support for Apple’s iPod Out feature to the emergence of Nokia’s Terminal Mode, a system that integrates mobile applications and the car, automakers and app developers are jumping on board the in-vehicle app movement. This report examines that landscape, its major players and their offerings, and how the market is shifting from device to car and, eventually, to the cloud. Increased broadband speeds, electronic vehicles and social apps such as those powered by Twitter will play major roles on this journey. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Ford, BMW, Geely, Nissan and Google. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
U.S. startup Nuvve is setting its sights on the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) market with a 30-car project in Denmark that it says will sell plug-in car battery power to help stabilize the grid. Can the model scale? Read more »
Nissan’s got a new ad out that shows a world in which gas powers everything instead of electricity: Gas-powered hair dryers, gas-powered MP3 players, even gas-powered dentist drills (scary). Read more »
Electric vehicle battery-switching evangelist Better Place is digging deeper into the world’s biggest electric car market to come — China. Read more »
Wireless charging is an appealing concept for many of us who loathe the sight of messy power cords or the need to find outlets in public. Carmakers like it, too. Toyota announced a deal Wednesday with WiTricity to bring wireless charging to cars. Read more »
The smart grid industry’s focus is now shifting to the true purpose of the smart grid movement: applications that will improve the efficiency, reliability and versatility of the electric grid. This report analyzes six key smart grid application trends that will help shape the industry landscape in the years to come: distribution automation, data analytics, demand response, carbon management, home energy management and electric vehicles. The applications that prevail in this new arena will define the smart grid experience for industrial, commercial and residential customers. Along the way, new business opportunities that arise from these applications will become available for the providers of software, systems, devices and services, and enhance customer awareness and control of energy consumption. Companies mentioned in this report include Echelon, Google, EnerNOC, ZigBee and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Is the greentech industry headed for a breakout year or is it retrenching for hard times to come? The first three months of 2011 provided evidence that could support both assertions, with a big rise in venture capital investment and a big drop-off in global energy financing. Solar power remained the largest green technology sector in terms of venture capital investment, while in the world of electric vehicles, GM’s Chevy Volt hybrid and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf — the first two mainstream plug-in vehicles — hit the showroom floors in significant numbers. Meanwhile the smart grid sector’s relative dearth of VC investment was more than made up for by the massive round of acquisitions. Companies mentioned in this report include NRG Energy, Microsoft, Silver Spring Networks, Tesla and BrightSource Energy. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
At Green:Net next week, we’ll be exploring how adding IT technologies to anything from the power grid, to data centers, to buildings, to lighting can lead to energy efficiency and a more sustainable consumption of increasingly-constrained resources. Read more »
Freescale Semiconductor and Fuji Electric Systems are forming a new partnership focused on hybrid and electric vehicle tech. The two companies announced plans to collaborate on a type of power semiconductor for electronic powertrains, as well as other products for green cars down the road. Read more »
