Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The deal closed in late March, Aupeo CEO Holger Weiss – who will continue to head up his 20-person team – told me. It’s big news for the connected car industry, but also for Berlin, a city whose startup scene has been eagerly awaiting the validation of a major exit for the last couple of years. Frustratingly, though, the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

According to Weiss, the deal will see both parties extend their reach:

“They’re buying technology, customer relationships and an experienced and gifted team. We’re already in Mercedes, BMW and all those other guys, and have been focusing strongly in the last 12-18 months on the connected car.

“Panasonic understands strategically that the internet-enabling of cars will [change] the use of the internet in the car fundamentally. You have the possibility of taking your smartphone and connecting it with the car, but the level of integration and according technology that are required to provide stable streaming while driving at 180mph is something a regular consumer-focused service cannot do.”

The deal is reminiscent of Harman’s 2010 purchase of Aha Radio, whose in-car Aha platform is found these days in vehicles from Subaru, Honda and Acura. Aupeo, meanwhile, has partnerships with Mercedes, BMW, Mini and Pioneer for its platform, which covers news and weather, radio, podcasts and audiobooks, and also uses text-to-speech technology. As for Panasonic, that company is already involved in Chrysler’s Uconnect platform — as is Harman, albeit as developer of a hands-free communication system — and Chevrolet’s MyLink.

The January announcement said Panasonic and Aupeo would “create customized cloud-based solutions, optimized for the automotive market”, and it now looks like a lot of that work will happen in Berlin.

According to Weiss, Aupeo will remain in Berlin as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America, and will keep its name (and consumer apps and services). Berlin will become the “development hub” for Panasonic’s connected services strategy, he added.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space

Much of the battery innovation that has occurred over the years has happened in Japan and Korea (via giants like Panasonic) and much of the battery manufacturing happens in China. But California now has some 40+ battery companies, spurred by the Silicon Valley venture and startup ecosystem, through strong university research and through federal funds from the Department of Energy. Of the 13 battery startups I recently profiled, almost half of them are based in California.

The CalCharge accelerator launched last spring, and provides battery companies and entrepreneurs with a space to collaborate, share resources, find and recruit talent and coordinate on solving problems. A battery entrepreneur that has utilized CalCharge told me earlier this year that one of the great things about the accelerator program is that companies can share battery lab equipment, which can cut down dramatically on their startup costs.

Updated at 2:25PM on Friday to correct that CalCharge isn’t using a $120 million grant from the DOE. That $120 million grant was allocated for the Joint Center for Energy Research.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Tesla’s Model X could make the electric SUV a hit
• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Opportunities for the future of batteries

It’s not just those who gunned for the electric car, or even the emerging power grid market, that have experienced disappointment and shifted their focus. Wilmer tells us that Leyden has tweaked its plans over the past year, and is now focusing on the tablet market as well as providing batteries for gasoline cars with start-stop technology. Previously the startup was looking to sell batteries for laptops, and electric bicycles, and then wanted to move into newer and tougher ones like electric cars.

Leyden had a deal with distributor Dr. Battery to sell cylindrical cell batteries, like the AA batteries in a flashlight, which it announced last year. But the company is no longer selling to Dr. Battery, said Wilmer, who became Leyden’s CEO earlier this year. The laptop market isn’t showing enough growth because consumers prefer thinner notebooks or tablets, and cylindrical cells also aren’t in demand for e-bikes, said Wilmer. UPDATE: Dr. Battery’s CFO,  Fan Chun, told me that his company’s relationship with Leyden hasn’t ended. In fact, Leyden is still shipping cylindrical cells to a contract manufacturer hired by Dr. Battery to assemble the cells into battery packs.

But the company has been working on developing flat and rectangular pouch cells that fit into slimmer consumer electronics. Leyden more recently has announced an effort with chipmaker NVIDIA to design tablets, which they hope will catch the eyes of tablet makers. Leyden also is courting makers of chargers for smart phones and devices for personal Wi-Fi hot spots. The company is shipping its battery cells to customers, who have put those cells in consumer electronics, but Wilmer declined to disclose the brands or types of gadgets.

Leyden also is hoping to see its batteries in gasoline cars outfitted with stop-start technology, which use a battery pack to keep the air conditioning, radio and other electronics running while a car stops momentarily, say, at an intersection when the light turns red. The battery also kick-starts the engine after the light turns green. This technology could lead to 5-10 percent better fuel economy and lower tailpipe emissions and is starting to show up in Europe.

With the slow roll out of electric vehicles, going after more mature and reliable markets certainly makes a lot of sense. But competition in those segments already is intense. A123 also targeted the stop-start market and designed a battery pack for it. And there are non-lithium ion battery developers who are pushing their way into this still niche opportunity.

Then there is the question of how startups can compete with battery giants such as Panasonic and LG Chem who have long established their presence in the consumer electronics business and are no less interested in putting their products in cars. Incidentally, Sony apparently is looking to sell its lithium-ion battery business because it’s having trouble competing with other large battery makers, particularly those in Korea, Reuters reported. Panasonic also isn’t doing so well with its lithium-ion battery business.

The prospect will probably not get too much rosier for battery startups in the near future. Boston-Power, for example, has transformed itself into essentially a Chinese company, to take advantage of low cost financing and Chinese domestic markets. So the question is how many more battery developers will follow A123 into the bankruptcy court or get scooped up, perhaps cheaply, before reaching that point?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010

The past two weeks have seen some depressing news on the cleantech front: inverter manufacturer Satcon Systems declared bankruptcy, PV module manufacturer JA Solar got a delisting letter from Nasdaq and Sunpower shut most of its Philippines factories. But the worst news came with two particular announcements: Better Place, the ambitious Israeli electric vehicle start-up, pushed out its CEO and evangelist-in-chief Shai Agassi, while A123 Systems, the Massachusetts-based battery manufacturer which was once the darling of the advanced battery industry, announced bankruptcy.

Is this the long-awaited cleantech apocalypse, or will some of these fighters rise from the mat? The short answer is this: those with effective business models (i.e. Better Place) have excellent prospects; those who don’t have a viable product to sell in the marketplace (i.e. A123 Systems) won’t be rising from anywhere.

All the news of the past few weeks certainly hasn’t helped cleantech, as an investing concept, to gain any respect. The fundamental problem with cleantech is that the name itself is a useful fiction: any company with a technology that might somehow be labelled environmentally positive can affix itself with the cleantech label and start selling shares. That leads to a bucket filled with a variety of companies with no real relationship to each other: from natural gas drillers to solar module manufacturers to high-tech laundromats.

In addition, most of the sectors that these companies play in are very hard to disrupt, such as energy and transportation. For a new company to compete, long lead times and many years prior to cash-flow positivity are to be expected. Meanwhile the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who backed such enterprises are quick to head for the exits when their expected 10x returns didn’t materialize within two years.

Thus cleantech as a whole was doomed to fail simply because it was a square peg of a marketing term that could never have fit into the round hole of expectations. That doesn’t mean that every cleantech investment will be a failure. The acid test for success will be the business model that the company is betting on. Many of them are still relevant and filled with value, even in the age of dropping PV and battery prices. Others are just plain bad bets.

Which brings to mind A123 Systems. I first became aware of the importance of the company’s technology when talking to model plane hobbyists. They were willing to pay a lot of money to get their hands on the first batch of production batteries from the company because they offered something unique: increased density at lower rate. The A123 battery, I realized, had a chance to disrupt the entire transportation sector.

Unfortunately, so did every other battery manufacturer. And there in lie the weakness in betting on A123′s: they were competing against dozens of other battery companies, most of whom had deeper pockets and access to cheap, government-subsidized capital. Thus LG Chem, AESC and Panasonic won the first round of the transportation battery wars. And A123 ran out of cash before they could even get to the second round.

The good news for the car and grid storage industries is that even if A123 won’t be able to compete anymore, its ghost certainly will. That’s because the factories in Massachusetts and Michigan have been acquired Johnson Controls, a company with pockets even deeper than LG’s and Panasonic’s. Thus the equipment and manufacturing spaces that once belonged to A123 will continue to crank out advanced batteries, albeit under a different logo. Johnson Control’s next generation chemistry, based on a Nickel Cadmium Aluminum cathode, will be even more energy dense and safer than A123′s iron phosphate chemistry and will have a shot at being a transformative battery technology for both the grid storage space and for the vehicle industry.

The Better Place situation is very different from A123′s. Better Place planned on launching a network of battery switching stations that would allow subscribers to their system limitless driving range. The idea was that Better Place would bring the wireless communications business model to personal transportation. They opened the first network in Israel and, lo-and-behold, the subscribers didn’t show up. Yet.

The problem with writing an obituary for Better Place is that the underlying business model is still very sound. I’ve spend a lot of time examining that model and various iterations of it. It makes sense. And it makes money. The problem, unfortunately, has been in the execution of the marketing plan. The Israeli car market is held hostage by a small oligarchy of leasing firms. Better Place chose to thread the needle by having those leasing firms be their distributors while at the same time not sharing enough profits with them. The leasing companies balked at becoming a middle-man, and froze Better Place out of the market.

The solution to the impasse is for Better Place to either re-mold its Israel operations as a head-on competitor to the leasing companies or to renegotiate its contracts with them. That’s a relatively simple fix. It will lead to a much higher market penetration and a flood of sales. It is my opinion that Better Place will eventually succeed in the market and will quickly thereafter be faced with EV network competitors. The company still has quite a bit of cash on hand to restructure its Israel operations and then can worry about international expansion.

Here are two companies that were both looking to disrupt the transportation industry with their respective products. One couldn’t compete with the large Asian behemoths. The other stumbled in the details of a specific local market. Both are being buried by the cleantech punditocracy. A123 Systems is definitely down for the count, although its tools will be put to be good use by Johnson Controls, which purchased them. Better Place, on the other hand, has a lot of fight in it and could mount a spectacular, albeit bruising, comeback.

This article originally appeared on IDC Energy Insights.

IDC Energy Insights provides research-based advisory and consulting services focused on market and technology developments in the energy and utility industries. IDC Energy Insights serves a diverse global client base, including electric, gas and water utilities, IT vendors, independent power producers, retail energy providers, oil and gas companies, equipment manufacturers, government agencies, financial institutions, and professional services firms. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company.

Images courtesy of Better Place, A123 Systems.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace

Bsolar showed off its solar cells at a German trade show last month and announced a 730KW project in Japan that will use its new cells. The venture-backed company, founded in 2007, is bringing its solar tech to the market for the first time, and its cells could produce over 20 percent more electricity compared to conventional, single-sided cells, according to Yossi Kofman, co-founder and CEO of bSolar.

Bifacial solar cell research has been around for about four decades, but bifacial cells are still more of a novelty product today. Bringing the tech to market successfully requires overcoming technical challenges, including finding ways to produce bifacial cells cheaply. The technology may be attracting more attention these days as conventional silicon solar cells become low-price commodities and manufacturers scramble to boost their products’ performances to gain a competitive edge. “Everyone is looking for high-power and differentiated products, and that’s what we are providing,” Kofman said.

BSolar took silicon wafers and engineered into them the ability to capture reflected light on both sides. That means the cells’ backside can absorb light and contain electrodes to ferry the electricity produced out of the cells. The use of boron is a key to making bifacial cells, and a lot of research has been done by both companies and universities to investigate this chemical.

Nothing boron about it

What makes boron a good candidate is not just that it makes the rear side of a solar cell more receptive to light. It also promises to be a good alternative to aluminum, which historically has been used to minimize the loss of electrons during the energy production process. But aluminum, when interacting with silicon, can create enough stress to bow or break silicon wafers, particularly with the use of thinner silicon wafers. As solar companies look at using thinner silicon wafers to reduce costs, they also are considering using boron to replace aluminum to reduce breakage. Using boron also improves the efficiency of the front side of the cells to convert sunlight into energy, Kofman said.

But boron doesn’t make an easy substitute, or else bifacial cells would have become widely available by now. Getting the boron layer right during solar cell production is difficult, Kofman noted.

A solar panel with bifacial cells requires different designs than traditional solar panels. For example, a conventional silicon solar panel is covered in layers of polymer materials to protect solar cells and a piece of glass as the top cover to let the light in. The same or similar setup will have to need to be created to cover the backside of the panel, said Bhushan Sopori, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“The technologies are there. The big question is the additional costs of doing it – how much reflected light can be harvested and do the benefits justify the cost?” Sopori pointed out.

Companies that have been working on bifacial cells include Sanyo (now part of Panasonic) in Japan and Shinsung in Korea. Sanyo’s cells are silicon wrapped with amorphous-silicon layers, and the design is very different than what bSolar and others are creating.

BSolar is making bifacial solar cells with monocrystalline silicon wafers, which are harder and more expensive to make, but they also can convert a higher rate of sunlight into electricity than the more popular multicrystalline silicon. Solar panels with bSolar’s bifacial cells could produce 20-25 percent more energy than single-sided solar panels when they are installed on a flat rooftop, the ideal setting for getting the most reflected light, Kofman said.

The startup has a 30MW factory in Germany that it acquired from Systaic during a bankruptcy proceeding, said Kofman, who declined to disclose the company’s production cost. BSolar has only raised $10 million in venture capital since its inception, including $3 million from Genesis Partners and some investors from Japan, Kofman said. That $10 million is awfully low to bring a technology into commercial production, even though bSolar is using mostly standard factory equipment. Kofman wouldn’t say whether the company used any part of the $10 million to buy the German factory.

Solar panel makers who have agreed to give bSolar’s cells a shot include Aleo Solar, Asola Solarpower and Solar-Fabrik.

Photos courtesy of bSolar

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• The race for cost-effective and efficient solar power

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Connectivity in offices, home, cafes, trains, parks, cars and planes — I say bring it on. I have already shifted most of my life to the “cloud,” and it is not much of a surprise that I am a shameless believer in connectivity. That is why I am excited about Aeromobile, which is making it easy to use your phones on planes, including transatlantic flights.

Aeromobile is a UK-based company that is jointly owned by Telenor, a telephone company, and Panasonic Avionics, which recently became a majority share holder. Panasonic has developed the satellite technology that makes the connections work. Aeromobile is working with several airlines such as Emirates to wire their planes for connectivity.

Last week, Virgin Atlantic, part of the Virgin group, announced its intentions to offer a service powered by Aeromobile. For now, the service is restricted to Virgin Atlantic’s new Upper Class cabin, and only flights between New York and London.

AeroMobile allows passengers to use their own mobile phones in the air. Even better, the new entertainment system is smartphone, tablet and USB compatible, giving passengers the choice to read, watch or listen to their own media. The re-designed cabin will also soon be available on the Mumbai service, from October this year. (from WallPaper magazine)

Virgin Atlantic, on its website, adds:

Instead of spending a fortune using satellite phones, this new system’s charges are almost the same as they would be if you were roaming from another country. Plus, the calls and texts will be added to your mobile bill after you’ve flown, so there’s no nasty credit-card bills. As long as your phone is activated for international roaming, you can use it to make calls, receive texts, and, on BlackBerrys, receive email. By the end of 2012, we expect Aeromobile to be available on 13 of our aircraft. (Some countries like the USA don’t allow mobile phone use in their air space. In these cases, the system will automatically switch off.)

They actively encourage you not to use data roaming for Internet access as it is going to result in a cardiac-inducing phone bill.

While I am excited about the ability to send and receive SMS, I don’t much care about the phone calls. What I really want is in-flight Internet access on long transcontinental flights. The nearly 22 hours of flying time to New Delhi without connectivity makes me jittery. As for SMS messages — iMessage, Facebook Messenger and What’s App do just fine for me.

Lufthansa’s Flynet

Whenever flying across borders, I prefer Lufthansa, which is one of the more punctual and efficient airlines in a world dominated by penny-pinching and shoddy service providers such as United, American and Delta. And they fly pretty much everywhere. What makes them even more attractive  – they are promising to wire their entire fleet by the end of 2012 for WiFi access, though I’ve yet to be on a Lufthansa flight departing from San Francisco that has WiFi. But hope springs eternal. Even the APEX’s editor blog assures us that…

Lufthansa is offering in-flight high-speed Internet on about 60% of its long-haul fleet, and expects to complete installations of Panasonic Avionics’ Ku-band satellite-supported system across the remaining 40% by the end of 2012.

A former customer to now defunct Connexion by Boeing, Lufthansa reignited in-flight Internet service – dubbed FlyNet – in late 2010. It started with its Airbus A330s, moved to the A340-300s, and is now fitting A340-600s and Boeing 747s.

Today, I don’t normally get on a domestic flight without WiFi — think Virgin America. I bet soon, we will have similar expectations of international flights as well.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• LTE-Advanced: what it is and isn’t
• The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player
• Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Cleantech and investment in 2013