[Editor's note: As a New Year's exercise, we asked a select group of Xconomists to answer this question: "What's the craziest idea out there that just might succeed?"]

All-electric commercial boats, ships, railway engines, and aircraft. The hyper-convergence of energy generation, battery storage, electric vehicle systems development, and electric charging infrastructure has first focused commercially on cars, and now trucks. These advancements may, sooner than we have expected, transition into other highly polluting vehicle markets. As the economies of the all-electric automobile industry are understood and realized, the specific systems and technologies will migrate quickly into these other markets. Air and noise pollution will be dramatically reduced, and everyone on board will enjoy a much smoother ride. And pilots and other EV operators will love the hyper-responsiveness of their electric motors.

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Anyone who says cleantech companies are having a tough time raising money should take a look at Boston-Power. The Westborough, MA-based advanced lithium-ion battery maker is announcing today that it’s taken in $30 million in equity funding, just three months after announcing a massive $125 million Series F funding round. The company has now attracted more than $346 million in financing since its founding in 2005.

Of course, that recent money has come with some strings attached. The newest investment was led by Beijing-based GSR Ventures, a firm that led Boston-Power’s $125 million Series F round and is focused on building companies in China. Along with the September financing, Boston-Power announced that it was moving the majority of its operations to China to chase the electric vehicle market, and said it was reducing its 80-person Bay State workforce by about 35 percent.

Boston-Power, which also sells its batteries to customers like Hewlett-Packard for portable electronics, plans to add between 600 and 800 jobs in China across manufacturing and engineering roles. The company has begun construction of a manufacturing facility near Shanghai in Liyang and has established a temporary R&D site in Beijing, which will focus on customer applications of its battery technology. Both sites are expected to be complete in 2012, said founder and international chairman Christina Lampe-Onnerud.

Boston-Power also has an executive search underway, in China, to fill positions like CEO, said Lampe-Onnerud, an Xconomist. In September, Boston-Power’s Westborough-based CEO, CFO, and vice president of marketing left as part of the shift to China. Lampe-Onnerud said the pool of CEO candidates the company is considering is mixed, comprising both engineers earlier in the careers and more senior managers.

For her part, Lampe-Onnerud says she is excited to think about what she’ll do next. Alongside the September financing, Lampe-Onnerud committed to remaining with Boston-Power for at least another year, in the role of international chairman, and is helping to oversee the shift in operations.

“This opens up opportunities for me to do what I love to do, which is executable innovation,” she says of when this one-year commitment period ends. “I’ll have a chance to look at other problems that need attention.”

She says she’s interested in staying in high-tech or cleantech, and that water-related energy and transportation are areas of particular interest. We’ll have to keep our eye on her.

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There are about 25 million cars registered in California, and probably about 2 million of those are motoring around the roads of San Diego County. So it was statistically insignificant when I stepped out of the San Diego Automotive Museum today and counted at least six all-electric vehicles bathed in Southern California sunshine at the Pan American Plaza of Balboa Park.

It still seemed like a wondrous moment—think of your grandfather watching his first biplane. And the numbers are slowly improving, so perhaps some day, you too will see one of these zero-emission, gasoline-free autos with your own eyes.

Nissan began selling its all-electric Leaf in San Diego almost exactly a year ago. There were a couple of those in the parking lot. Last month, Texas-based Car2Go introduced 300 electric versions of the smart micro car in San Diego—and there were several of those in the lot too.

Now the Ford Motor Co. is coming to town with its new 2012 Focus Electric—a standard Focus body and frame that has been refitted with a lithium-ion battery pack and all-electric drive. Ford bills the Focus Electric as the first five-passenger electric vehicle (which is true if one of your passengers is a dog) that is expected to achieve a 100 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe) fuel-efficiency rating.

Focus Electric

Ford announced yesterday that its Michigan Assembly Plant began production of the 2012 Focus Electric. And today Dan Kapp, Ford’s director of power train research and advanced engineering, came to the automotive museum to tell the media that the first Focus Electrics are expected to arrive in California by March. In San Diego, the first Focus Electric is expected to plug-in by mid-February.

The price? If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Kapp says the sticker price for the Focus Electric will be $39,200, although a federal tax rebate could reduce that by as much as $7,500. Buyers will have to pay an additional $1,500, however, for the 240-volt Ford/Leviton EV charger—which is supposed to charge the Focus Electric in half the time it takes to fully charge a Nissan Leaf.

As we reported in May, Ford has long viewed California and the West Coast as a key market for its all-electric innovations. Early adoption could be problematic, though, when a Focus costs as much as an entry-level BMW 3-Series or Audi A4.

Kapp is a headliner on Ford’s “Power of Choice” fuel-efficiency road tour. He was here to highlight Ford’s latest selling point—that several vehicles in its new product lineup are fuel-efficient. So consumers have the choice of driving a monster Ford Explorer with an “EcoBoost” engine, a 40 mpg-rated Ford Fiesta, a Fusion hybrid electric vehicle, and the all-electric Transit Connect delivery vehicle.

Ford says, “nearly one-third of Ford’s vehicle lines will feature a model with 40 mpg or more in 2012.” That doesn’t seem like a tidal wave of change, but hey, the odds are improving.

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Last week, Forbes magazine announced that Auburn Hills, MI-based ALTe Powertrain Technologies, developer of the first range-extended plug-in hybrid electric vehicle powertrain for light commercial fleet applications,  made its list of America’s most promising companies. ALTe is one of only three companies listed in the Capitol Goods industry category, the only hybrid technology company, and the only company from Michigan.

“We’re ecstatic, but we’re also humbled,” says John Thomas, CEO of ALTe. “It’s rare that a pre-revenue startup gets attention of this magnitude from such a prestigious publication.”

To determine which companies made the list, Forbes enlisted CB Insights, a New York City-based data firm that tracks investment in high-growth private companies, and its Mosaic software, which helps lenders and investors allocate capital more efficiently. Mosaic created an algorithm by pulling data from 30,000 sources, including court filings, press releases, news articles, and social media, and used the algorithm to create a score that measures a company’s potential. Forbes then took the Mosaic scores and combined them with “old-fashioned reporting” to create the list of most promising companies. [CB Insights also provides the data behind Xconomy's companies database.]

ALTe’s series of significant announcements in 2011 no doubt contributed to their placement on the Forbes list. These announcements included a long-term supply agreement with battery maker A123 and electric motor supplier Remy, a preferred installer partnership with vehicle remarketer Manheim, a collaborative effort with Pacific Gas & Electric Company to test their technology on PG&E’s fleet of trucks, and a joint venture with Inmatech to produce and sell hybrid electric storage devices.

Thomas says he’s not worried at all about A123′s recent announcement of layoffs because he’s looking forward to getting the focus of their resources. Thomas’ optimism extends to the electric vehicle market as a whole, regardless of what appears to be a slower-than-expected response from consumers despite relatively high customer satisfaction.

“We’re confident, because we’re being told by our customers that we have the right plug-in technology,” Thomas says. “The lack of battery-charging infrastructure and concerns for range—all those things add up to a need for range-extended powertrains. We offer comfort to consumers.”

I spoke to Thomas as he was packing to leave for China, his second time visiting the country in less than four weeks.

“We’re absolutely engaged in business opportunities for both domestic Chinese consumption and export,” Thomas says. “China has embraced our technology even more so than the United States.”

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Waltham, MA-based A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE), the lithium-ion battery maker, has laid off about 125 employees at its manufacturing facilities in Livonia and Romulus, MI. The news originally broke the week of Thanksgiving and was reported by media outlets including the Observer & Eccentric and Crain’s Detroit Business.

The layoffs are apparently the result of lower demand from Fisker Automotive after its plug-in hybrid sports car ran into production delays. A123 invested in Irvine, CA-based Fisker early last year. Media reports quote Jason Forcier, the vice president and general manager of A123′s automotive group, and PR manager Dan Borgasano as saying the layoffs are temporary and the workers should be hired back within six months.

Forcier spoke with me last year around the opening of the Livonia plant. At the time, he noted that “the battery industry is really a rejuvenation for the whole area. This is extremely important for Michigan from an economic standpoint.”

A123 still employs about 600 people at its two Michigan plants and its research and development center in Ann Arbor, according to the Crain’s report.

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A 48-percent uptick in new company formations, a funding deal, and two acquisitions made for an encouraging week in San Diego’s innovation economy. This is our roundup of tech sector news.

—The California Public Utilities Commission approved five power purchase agreements that Soitec, the photovoltaic chip maker based Bernin, France, negotiated with San Diego Gas and Electric. The five deals represent a total capacity of 155 megawatts of new solar power for San Diego, according to Soitec. As we explained in April, Soitec says its innovation, which combines concentrating Fresnel lenses and high-performance PV chips, operates twice as efficiently as conventional solar cells. Soitec plans to manufacture its solar modules in the San Diego area, creating about 450 new jobs. Building the solar facility will cost an estimated $500 million.

—Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) acquired HaloIPT, a UK-based startup developing wireless charging technology for electric vehicles. Financial terms were not disclosed. The technology uses inductive power transfer to charge an electric vehicle (EV). The car parks over an electromagnet, which generates an electric field that transfers energy to the EV power system. A couple days after announcing the deal, Qualcomm said it’s planning to carry out a field trial in London that calls for establishing the wireless EV charging systems for 50 vehicles.

—Cubic (NYSE: CUB), the San Diego defense contractor, conducted a series of local exercises to demonstrate new “combat ID” technology, which is intended to reduce friendly fire casualties among U.S. troops in combat. The technology integrates laser targeting with radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) and a GPS-based system in a rifle-mounted targeting scope, according to Cubic. The RFID tag, mounted on each soldier’s helmet, transits a coded radio signal that enables users to distinguish between friend and foe combatants.

—The San Diego-based Active Network (NYSE: ACTV) paid $21.5 million to acquire RTP (also known as Resort Technology Partners), a specialized IT company in Colorado that provides online reservation and registration services for Vail and other ski resorts. The Active Network already provides Web-based registration services for … Next Page »

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), the San Diego wireless technology giant, turned in a new direction today with its acquisition of HaloIPT, a startup founded last year by Auckland University’s UniServices and Arup, the engineering design giant, to develop technology that can transmit electricity without wires.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With technology from UniServices, the University of Auckland’s commercialization company, HaloIPT (Inductive Power Transfer) uses a doormat-sized electromagnetic device to generate an electric field to wirelessly transfer energy to an electric vehicle’s power system. Such energy induction is a well-known technology, and was demonstrated by Nikola Tesla as early as 1893.

But the field, so to speak, has been buzzing in recent years with increased activity. For example, Watertown, MA-based WiTricity demonstrated its EV wireless charging technology in San Diego nearly 18 months ago at the Xconomy forum on “The Rise of Smart Energy.” At about the same time, New Zealand-based UniServices and Arup founded HaloIPT, with support of the Trans Tasman Commercialization Fund and the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm displayed its own approach to wireless charging earlier this year at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. Qualcomm also said at the time that it had signed a partnership agreement in January with Powermat, an Israeli startup founded to develop technology for charging portable electronic devices. In September, Powermat said it had formed a joint venture with Duracell to develop and market wireless charging devices using its technology.

Still, Qualcomm’s purchase of HaloIPT, which is focused on electric vehicles, represents a bit of a detour into the automotive sector for Qualcomm, which rarely strays beyond its traditional focus on wireless communications technologies. Qualcomm and UniServices say they are committed to a long-term research and development arrangement to promote continued innovation in the field of wireless charging for electric road vehicles by way of inductive power transfer.

The ultimate strategy, though, could be the intellectual property that HaloIPT brings to Qualcomm’s renowned patent portfolio—enabling Qualcomm to drive a decades-old stake in the ground. Andrew Gilbert of European Innovation Development at Qualcomm hints of that in the statement released today.

“The HaloIPT acquisition will further strengthen our technology and patent portfolio,” Gilbert says. “Building on 20 years of development and innovation in wireless power at The University of Auckland and its commercialization company Auckland UniServices Ltd, the HaloIPT team, in a relatively short period of time, had established itself as a leading developer in wireless electric road vehicle charging—with HaloIPT winning industry acclamation and awards.”

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If you want something done right, the old saying goes, do it yourself. That’s exactly what XL Hybrids, a Boston-based transportation tech startup, is up to these days.

Despite a thin layer of gloom that pervades much of the cleantech industry, XL Hybrids is advancing in its quest to make commercial vans and trucks greener and more fuel-efficient. The two-and-a-half-year-old company is announcing today it has appointed Richard Canny, a longtime Ford Motor exec and electric vehicle expert (former CEO of Think Global), to its board of directors. Canny is based in the Detroit area and gives XL Hybrids some more gravitas and deeper connections in the auto industry. But there are a lot of other things going on under the hood at this ambitious startup.

“We’ve been hard at work not only in technology development but also in re-examining our market,” says Justin Ashton, the company’s co-founder and vice president of business development.

Part of that re-examination includes ending a partnership that XL Hybrids had formed about a year ago with U.K.-based Ashwoods Automotive, which makes a vehicle retrofitting kit. The plan had been for XL to adapt the kit for the U.S. market. But XL found the process was taking too long, in part because European vehicles are so different from American ones. “It made sense to work on our own,” Ashton says.

So, XL Hybrids is handling the technology for commercial fleets by itself now. “Our strategy has shifted to doing all systems development [ourselves] but working with tier-one suppliers for components,” Ashton says. That means employing large battery makers and established electric motor manufacturers, he says. “Our role is to build the hybrid architecture from the ground up.”

The architecture consists of a hybrid electric powertrain (for which XL has patents pending) that can be installed on either existing vehicles or new ones. It includes a lithium ion battery, electric motor, and control software. The computer-aided design drawing of the system (see left) resembles a space-age tuba, or maybe a Star Wars pod-racing engine, but the point of the powertrain is to store energy wasted in braking and reapply it during acceleration. XL says this results in about 20 percent lower fuel consumption and emissions for high-mileage city driving, in standard cargo vans (typically made by GMC or Chevy).

Starting in January, XL Hybrids is working with commercial fleet companies to start pilot tests of retrofit cargo vans in the Boston area. If all goes well, there will be a couple dozen vehicles on the road around New England by June, Ashton says.

But he emphasizes that there is a bigger opportunity. “This business is not about retrofit. Long term, it’s about creating a unique hybrid powertrain for a large market,” Ashton says. “We can do retrofits where they make economic sense for our customers. But we have a lot of interest from customers in what’s called ‘upfitting’”—putting the technology into new vehicles.

Of course, this could be a difficult journey for a small startup—but XL is focusing on a market it thinks it can handle. “The real challenge in transportation is finding your path to get your product to market. And dealing with some of the largest companies in the world with long product cycles,” Ashton says. “We don’t want to wait. You have to find a business model that is relatively capital efficient, that leverages existing infrastructure.” He adds, “Right now we’re focused on a niche within a niche. The commercial vehicle side is dwarfed by the consumer segment. Our strategy is to position ourselves.”

XL Hybrids was founded by a team of MIT grads in 2009 and has about 10 employees. The company has raised roughly $4 million from angel investors and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. It says it plans to raise more money next year.

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All this talk about quarterly earnings and venture stats reminded me: I never posted my favorite stories from Xconomy Boston’s third quarter.

Yes, I know it’s almost the end of October, and the third quarter ended a month ago. I must have been traumatized by the collapse of the Red Sox or something (is baseball still going on?). Go ahead, run me out of town like Theo and Tito.

This time, I’m not consulting with my colleagues. I’m a rebel, a maverick. I work alone. Without further ado, here are my favorite stories from July through September:

Top 10 Tech Stories:

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Last week, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) hosted its third annual conference on electric plug-in vehicles, titled “The Business of Plugging In.” The event drew global leaders from the realms of automotives, technology, finance, government, and policy. This year’s conference was different, says Brett Smith, Co-Director of Manufacturing, Engineering and Technology for CAR, in that is was less about hype and more about overcoming challenges.

“This year, the title of the conference was more appropriate than ever before,” Smith says. “When we were planning the event, we talked about how incredibly challenging it is to create a business model for electric vehicles. For the first time, at this year’s conference we heard car companies saying, ‘It’s really hard work, and we don’t yet know the outcome, but we still feel we have some really good ideas.’ “

Smith says one reason consumers have been slow to warm up to electric vehicles is because traditional, combustion-engine vehicles are still much cheaper and increasingly more fuel efficient.

“Electric vehicles have wonderful driving attributes,” Smith says. “But when it comes down to it, it’s hard to imagine paying between $8,000 and $20,000 more for a plug-in electric vehicle when similar economy models deliver such improved fuel efficiency. We’re talking about 40 miles per gallon compared to 60 miles per gallon. To most consumers, that’s not enough of a difference to justify paying a significantly higher price.”

Smith also says that as long as gas remains relatively cheap, it makes it “very hard” for consumers to recoup, through fuel savings, the money they spend upfront to purchase an electric vehicle. ”The car companies have a slide they show internally to a select group of individuals that shows the payback period for electric vehicles, and it’s not months, but years—dozens of years, in some cases,” Smith says. “At this point, it isn’t an economically viable decision for consumers. But there are many other reasons to buy electric vehicles.”

Among those, Smith says, are the social costs involved in owning a vehicle with a traditional engine, and the likelihood that cities and states will soon start taxing drivers who stick with cars that are hard on the environment.

“Car companies will continue to develop electric-vehicle technology for at least the next five to ten years,” … Next Page »

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Xconomy readers are no doubt familiar with Ann Marie Sastry. She’s the co-founder of Sakti3, a next-generation lithium-ion battery development company, and a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan.

Sakti3′s battery has already attracted deep-pocketed investors such as Khosla, General Motors, and Beringea. In April, the company’s solid-state batteries made the MIT Technology Review’s annual list of 10 emerging technologies predicted to have the greatest impact. Sastry herself is also earning notice in the national press. Last month, she was named one of the top 12 women in the cleantech industry by Forbes magazine.

As you can imagine, Sastry is a very busy woman, but we were able to ask her a few questions about being a leader in her field and the future of electric vehicles.

Xconomy: Congratulations on being named one of Forbes’ “Top 12 Women in Cleantech.” Why do you think so many women are attracted to cleantech?

Sastry: All emerging technology areas, including cleantech, tend to attract a broader cross sections of technologists. Keep in mind that in new areas, people don’t have to rely on a family or demographic “tradition” to become interested in joining the field. People join because of the appeal of the purpose, and the technology. So you tend to find more demographically balanced populations of workers in newer, less traditional fields.

X: Tell me about your personal journey into the field. For instance, I have known since I was a child that all I ever wanted to do in this world was write. Did you feel that way about mechanical engineering? Along the way, did you have to battle stereotypes that women don’t have the same scientific aptitude as men?

S: I find it interesting that people in general feel it is socially acceptable to say things like, “I’m just a disaster with math,” and hand the check to someone else to compute a tip at a restaurant. But no one would dream of saying, “You know, I’m just rubbish … Next Page »

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ALTe, the Auburn Hills, MI-based developer of a extended-range electric powertrains used to power light commercial vehicles, last week announced it will collaborate with the San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest utilities in the United States, on a powertrain project for the fleet industry.

ALTe will retrofit one of PG&E’s 2007 Ford F150 trucks with its plug-in series electric hybrid powertrain. PG&E will evaluate the performance of the initial ALTe-powered truck and provide real-time data and feedback.

“Pacific Gas & Electric has a fleet of over 12,000 utility trucks,” said ALTe’s CEO, John Thomas, “and the company is a leading-edge technology adopter—they’re always pursuing cleaner and greener technology. They offered one of their vehicles for retrofitting so we could evaluate our product’s true fuel economy in a mountainous setting like Northern California.”

The ALTe powertrain will include a 20kw lithium-ion battery pack, a four-cylinder engine, electric motors, and proprietary communication interface modules. The powertrain is projected to provide an initial 30 miles of driving in an all-electric mode powered directly from the lithium-ion battery pack. The vehicle can then drive an estimated additional 270 miles using a combination of battery and fuel power before the vehicle would need to be either refueled or plugged in. ALTe projects a 200 percent increase in fuel economy with increased torque, no loss in cargo capacity, and similar horsepower and towing capability as the original V8 engine.

The partnership is designed to allow PG&E to see the potential reliability and cost-saving benefits of the vehicle’s performance as it seeks to electrify its fleet while ALTe gains more exposure and gets valuable feedback on any potential ways to improve its product. Thomas says that although ALTe is working with several other large utility companies, he considers the partnership with PG&E to be an important milestone.

“PG&E is very selective in who they work with, so for them to take a risk on a small company like ours is … Next Page »

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It looks like A123 Systems is seeing some payoffs from the lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility it opened in Livonia, MI, late last year. Waltham, MA-headquarted A123 (NASDAQ: AONE) has nabbed a production contract from General Motors to provide the battery packs for an upcoming line of electric vehicles from the automaker, GM announced. The battery packs will be produced at the Livonia site. General Motors, which was previously testing the A123 technology in a development agreement with the company, did not disclose the financial terms of the production contract or which vehicles the A123 battery packs will power.

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Fremont, CA-based Leyden Energy, which is developing longer-lasting lithium ion batteries for consumer mobile devices, electric vehicles, and energy storage, said today that it has raised $20 million in Series B financing. New investor New Enterprise Associates led the round, which was joined by existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Walden International. Leyden says it expects to use the funds to expand its global sales efforts and add manufacturing capacity.

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Carlsbad, CA-based Aptera Motors, developer of a teardrop-shaped three-wheel electric vehicle called the Aptera 2e, has raised more than $2.2 million in equity and rights, according to a recent regulatory filing. The cleantech automaker, which has been awaiting a key federal loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, said in May that it plans to move its manufacturing operation from Oceanside, CA, to somewhere east of the Mississippi River. Aptera Motors has raised $44 million so far from investors that include Google and Idealab, according to VentureWire.

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China has been a Godsend to Detroit. Even as Ford Motor, General Motors, and Chrysler have stumbled in recent years, the country has provided a nice boost to sales of American cars equipped with traditional internal combustible engines.

But when it comes to electric vehicles…well, China has its own plans.

The country is spending billions of dollars to develop home-grown battery and motor technology, hybrids, and full plug-in cars, trucks, and buses. And to protect its nascent industry, the Chinese central government has recently issued draft guidelines that limit foreign investment in certain electric vehicle components and require overseas firms to disclose intellectual property secrets to Chinese companies.

“China wants to place some serious restrictions” on foreign auto makers, says Kevin See, an analyst with Lux Research in Boston. “Clearly, the companies inside China are well positioned to benefit. China wants to protect its value chain all the way to the vehicle.”

The proposed restrictions have alarmed American officials. In an April  letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow said the guidelines would block U.S. auto makers from accessing a potentially huge market for electric vehicles.

“We are concerned that these draft regulations continue China’s long history of breaking international trade rules,” the letter reads. “These new draft regulations appear to represent another attempt to illegally gain an unfair advantage over the U.S. automobile industry that will cost our country jobs.”

“If China does implement these practices, [Kirk's office] must use all its available resources—including possible legal action at the World Trade Organization—to end China’s discrimination,” the letter warns.

Since 2009, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest auto market. One trip to the country and you’ll see why.

Three years ago, I visited the Changan Ford Mazda car factory in Chongqing, China’s largest municipality, … Next Page »

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ALTe Powertrain Technologies has a lot of room to grow. Both literally and figuratively.

Inside the company’s mammoth 150,000 square foot headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI, pieces of white paper arranged on the floor neatly mark the location of soon-to-be assembled parts of its product: A powertrain kit that will convert ordinary gas-powered vehicles into plug-in hybrids.

Other than some showcase vehicles and a few engineers hunched over a laptop, the place is pretty empty. But that will soon change.

If all goes to plan, ALTe, founded by Tesla Motor veterans and backed by former Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda, will start shipping out its powertrain kits in July 2012. The startup has already secured $16.5 million in capital and is looking to raise another $100 million in debt and win a $65 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Everyone seems to be saying ‘yes’ right now,” CEO John Thomas tells Xconomy. “Two years ago, there were a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘nos’. For the first time, it looks like our financing will be in place.”

“Now,” he says, “we finally get to go big.”

Thomas is the former general manager of Tesla, the Silicon Valley-based company that sells high-end electric cars to wealthy customers. The idea was to first target customers who can afford the pricey vehicles and then expand into the larger consumer market, he says.

But given the cars’ cost and limited range between recharging, average consumers will not be purchasing them in large numbers anytime soon, Thomas says.

“We fell in love with electrification but we felt it would take a long time,” he says.

What’s needed, Thomas says, is some sort of transitional technology that could lead the way to electric cars.

Enter Andy Grove. In 2008, the legendary former Intel chairman, alarmed by rising gas prices, began to push for retrofitting cars with electric car technology.

“Grove said ‘if you can convert gas guzzlers, you can have a significant impact on foreign oil consumption,’” Thomas recalls.

Inspired by Grove’s call, Thomas and others formed ALTe in 2009 to focus on a market where they believed gas to hybrid conversion technologies could pay for themselves: commercial and government fleets which operate approximately 10 million to 30 million vehicles in the United States.

“The fleet was dying for a solution,” Thomas says.

ALTe’s technology centers on a patented hybrid control unit, which essentially serves as the cars’ brains. The technology manages everything from power demand and consumption to how the newly installed batteries interact with the car’s existing internal combustion engine.

ALTe also developed an efficient, systematic approach to creating the conversion kits, wheras other companies tended to only focus on specific pieces of technologies, Thomas says.

The company has partnered with Manheim, the world’s largest vehicle wholesaler, to install the technology on customer fleets. ALTe will ship the kits out of Auburn Hills to warehouses located near Manheim facilities across the country. Customers who wish to do their own retrofits can learn the technology in training sessions at ALTe’s headquarters.

ALTe’s technology is not cheap: $27,000 for the basic kit and $40,000 for heavier vehicles like buses and vans. But Thomas insists the technology pays for itself. By boosting the vehicles’ fuel economy from 60 to 200 percent (and meeting emission standards), a customer can recoup the investment within eight to 30 months, he says.

Thomas says Europe and India are interested in the technology, and the Chinese are particularly interested because they are both trying to control pollution and to develop their own domestic car industry.

But there are plenty of potential customers in the United States, specifically the federal government, which is requiring its cars go green, Thomas says.

“If we sold to no one but the government, we would sell our factory out,” he says.

ALTe recently formed an advisory board of companies it expects to purchase its technology, including Frito Lay, DirectTV, Waste Management, Cox Cable, NBC, and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Thomas envisions ALTe as “an umbrella company” that provides carmakers with the technology and expertise to exploit the latest energy technologies, whether its solid state lithium ion batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. An IPO or a strategic alliance with a major supplier are possible, he said.

But in the end, “we expect electric vehicles to be the answer,” Thomas says.

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Sakti3 is one of Michigan’s most high-profile startups, whose solid state, lithium ion batteries have won funding from General Motors and Khosla Ventures and plaudits by MIT’s Technology Review.

Such technology could revolutionize electric cars by packing more energy into a battery that occupies much less space under the hood than existing batteries. With less battery weight to hold it down, an electric car could travel longer distances without having to recharge.

However, I recently came across two other technologies that could give Sakti3 a run for its money. They focus on the same problems-reducing the battery’s bulk while stuffing the car with more energy-but from completely different approaches.

Be careful. That’s not just a hood you’re sitting on: Volvo is funding a $5 million research project at the Imperial College in London to create composite materials that can store and distribute energy.

The strong, lightweight materials, made of carbon fibers and polymer resins, can essentially convert parts of the car, like the hood, trunk, or wheel wall, into extra fuel tanks. That means the car doesn’t need large (or as many) electric batteries to power the engine, allowing the vehicle to travel farther between recharges. Researchers estimate they can reduce the car’s weight by 15 percent.

And unlike conventional batteries, the composite materials don’t rely on chemical reactions to work their magic. Since each chemical reaction that enables a charge degrades the battery, Volvo’s batteries will theoretically last longer.

Researchers are also trying to apply the technology to cell phones and computers. For instance, a cell phone made of the composite materials could be as thin as a credit card because it doesn’t need a traditional battery.

“Cambridge Crude:” An MIT team in Cambridge, MA, led by A123 Systems founder Yet-Ming Chiang, is working on a new class of “semi-solid state” battery technology. The research combines the basic structure of aqueous-flow state batteries with the chemistry of lithium-ion batteries. (A123 Systems recently opened the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant on the North American continent in Livonia, MI.)

The system converts a battery’s active solid state components (the positive and negative electrodes, called cathodes and anodes) into tiny particles suspended in a black goo-like liquid. The thick substance, which researchers affectionately dub Cambridge Crude, can hold more power than traditional flow batteries and is cheaper to manufacture than lithium batteries, the MIT team claims.

So when an electric car needs to refuel, drivers can either recharge the battery the normal way (plugging into an outlet) or pump in freshly charged Cambridge Crude. The result is a lighter, more energy-efficient electric car that can travel longer distances before it needs to recharge.

MIT has already licensed the technology to a startup called 24M Technologies, which spun out of A123 last summer. The company has raised $16 million in venture capital and federal research funding, including grants from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).

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Cloud computing was my big theme last week, but we also covered stories about renewable energy, and we brought back a report from the future (the way the Churchill Club sees it, anyway).

—I profiled Heroku, the Y Combinator-backed Ruby on Rails platform that was acquired by Salesforce.com last December for $212 million. Co-founder Adam Wiggins shared previously undisclosed details about the company’s crucial “pivot” prior to the acquisition, from training ground for Ruby on Rails programers to true application hosting company. Coincidentally, Heroku today announced a major upgrade of its cloud-based services.

—Speaking of cloud computing, I took a look at Emergence Capital, the San Mateo venture firm known for being one of the earliest and most active investors in Software-as-a-Service-based startups, including Salesforce.com (which brought it an 80x return when it went public in 2004).

—I attended the annual Churchill Club “Top 10 Tech Trends” dinner in Santa Clara, and came back with a post-game report summarizing this year’s featured trends and the reactions from the audience and from panelists Aneesh Chopra, Paul Saffo, Steve Jurvetson, and Ajay Royan. One of the highest ranked trends: the emergence of trusted social networks to supplement Facebook.

—In my Friday column, I wrote about the economic impact of “ephemeralization,” including the tendency of software and hardware makers to distill the functions of many old devices into just a few new ones such as smartphones and tablet computers. Ephemeralization (and its cousin, efficiency) are probably net destroyers of jobs, I acknowledged, but I listed a few reasons why there may be room for optimism about the long-term employment picture.

—Ford Motor Company listed the San Francisco Bay Area as one of the 25 regions in the country best prepared for an influx of electric vehicles, when it comes to the availability of charging stations and other infrastructure, my colleague Bruce reported.

—South San Francisco-based Solazyme (NASDAQ: SZYM), which is developing technology to turn plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuel, saw its stock price shoot up after its initial public offering last Thursday night, as Luke reported. Solazyme shares rose more than 16 percent on Friday and are up another 8 percent in trading today.

—We compiled details about four summer competitions open to startups, including the Kauffman Foundation’s Startup Open, Morgenthaler Ventures’ Health IT Startup Showcase, Evernote’s developer competition, and Kaggle’s dark matter competition.

—Google bought Sparkbuy, a Seattle-based electronics shopping startup that had just launched last November, as my colleague Curt reported. At first it looked like a classic case of Google “acqhiring” a team of talented engineers, but Google later commented that it intends to foster the Sparkbuy  business within Google.

—In other acquisitions news, Jive Software bought OffiSync, BuyWithMe brought Groop Swoop, and Twitter confirmed that it had purchased Tweetdeck.

—In funding news, Everloop raised $3.3 million, GainSpan raised $10.2 million, VuClip raised $8 million, Revel Systems raised $3.7 million, BlueStacks raised $7.6 million, Zozi raised $7 million, CrowdStar raised $23 million, RelayRides raised $673,000, MobileIron raised $20 million, Intel Capital unveiled a series of four tech-startup investments totaling $24.5 million, Google invested $55 million in wind power company Terra-Gen, and Innovalight won a $3.4 million grant from the Department of Energy.

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With the average price of gasoline reaching almost $4 a gallon nationwide, it’s safe to say a lot of people are curious about the all-electric vehicles (EV) that many automakers have been showing off lately.

Still, it’s hard to justify the $100,000-plus sticker price for a Tesla Roadster or the $33,000 price of a Nissan Leaf if the only EV charging station for hundreds of miles is in your own garage.

So Dearborn, MI-based Ford Motor, which plans to roll out its Focus EV later this year, has been studying which U.S. cities have gotten the farthest down the road, in terms of developing the infrastructure needed to support EVs. The company has listed what it calls the 25 “most electric vehicle-ready cities in the U.S.,” based on Ford’s own research and available public information.

While no metropolis is really EV ready today, the study notes the Interstate 5 corridor that runs from Seattle through Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to San Diego “is probably the most advanced in terms of planning for EVs,” according to Mike Tinskey, Ford’s manager of global vehicle electrification and infrastructure. That’s not a green light for EV owners to begin planning road trips this Memorial Day weekend, but such trips might be possible in another year or two.

The corridor stands out largely because of the “EV Project,” a modern-day federal public works project made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The U.S. Department of Energy is providing almost $115 million to install more than 14,000 commercial and residential EV charging stations in 18 major cities—including eight along the I-5 corridor. With matching funds from utilities, automakers, and other companies, total funding for the EV Project is about $230 million, which is intended to build the charging stations and other infrastructure needed to support at least 8,300 EVs.

San Francisco-based Ecotality, which is overseeing the EV Project, said last week it had installed 1,000 of its Blink Level 2 residential charging stations so far, passing a significant milestone in the deployment of plug-in vehicle chargers. A spokeswoman says most of the charging stations installed so far have been in residential units, but the company plans to accelerate the installation of publicly available charging stations in coming weeks.

It’s also worth noting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced earlier this week that the Obama Administration plans to buy 101 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids and 15 all-electric vehicles, the government’s first EV purchase, and to install … Next Page »

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