[Editors note: Architect Robert Noble wrote this article with Glenn Croston]

The San Diego area is the home of numerous cleantech businesses that are developing innovative green cars (Aptera, V-Vehicle Co.), developing alternative fuels (GreenHouse International, Synthetic Genomics Inc., Sapphire Energy), finding alternatives to petrochemicals (Genomatica, Verdezyne), and providing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions (KEMA, Kyocera, Envision Solar).

Assisting our growing cluster is a network of non-profits, trade groups, government agencies, universities, and investors who share a common interest in cultivating a green economy. These groups collaborate on many projects, strengthening our vision for more green businesses, jobs, and investments in cleantech innovation. But while they share common goals, local green groups are also distinct in many ways and often compete for money, members, and media; their varying perspective, focus, message, membership, and goals can be confusing. If you’re an entrepreneur, how can you find support for the green innovations you hope to commercialize? Where do investors look for opportunities and advice? Where can founders find the resources they need to move their ventures forward?

We’ve compiled a listing of these groups to help San Diego entrepreneurs and others find the resources they need to grow green, and to help San Diego’s green economy grow.

—The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) is the cornerstone in developing San Diego’s green business cluster. As a non-profit, the CCSE works to advance the adoption of renewable energy, green building design, clean transportation options, and energy efficiency by providing workshops, information, and training.

—Cleantech San Diego is a membership-based non-profit industry association that sponsors events for businesses, investors, and others working in the cleantech cluster. They summarize their mission on their website, saying, “Cleantech San Diego advocates for new sources of investment capital, workforce development, international trade, federal and state research funding, targeted regulation, and sustainable land use planning and development.”

—San Diego Clean Enterprise Program, which is administered by Cleantech San Diego through a partnership with the City of San Diego and the mayor, which provides interest-free financing for energy efficiency improvements for small businesses. Cleantech San Diego also is working with the rest of the green community to support funding and grant applications, such as the effort to win $260 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) for local solar projects.

—San Diego Gas & Electric committed to develop a distributed solar power generation system in the San Diego region in 2008. So it’s no surprise that …Next Page »

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Aptera, the sleek carmaker backed by Google and Idealabs, didn’t respond to my inquiry earlier this week about reports of an internal split in which founders Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony had left the company. But in an online report published today by The San Diego Union-Tribune, Aptera officials rejected accounts that Fambro and Anthony were ousted in a boardroom showdown.

The company’s status is a keen issue to some 4,000 people, including celebrities Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, and Shaquille O’Neal, who have put down $500 deposits to be the first to buy one of the three-wheel, two-seater vehicles. The Aptera 2e, the company’s first production vehicle, resembles a wingless plane and is expected to cost between $25,000 and $40,000. Aptera is based in Vista, CA, about 30 miles north of San Diego.

Citing a statement issued by Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur, the Union-Tribune says the carmaker had to adjust its production schedule “to align with financing realities.” Instead of producing its first fuel-efficient model in the fall of 2009, as Aptera announced at the beginning of this year, Wilbur says the company will complete its first vehicles in 2010. About 10 of Aptera’s 40 employees have been laid off.

The company, which has raised at least $27.5 million from Google, Idealabs, and other venture investors, is seeking additional funding, according to Popular Mechanics. Aptera says it also intends to resubmit its application for a $75 million loan from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentives Program.

Aptera says co-founders Fambro and Anthony were not asked to leave. Fambro remains on the board, but has taken a leave of absence from the company until next year. Anthony is now the CEO of Flux Power, a startup in the San Diego area that is developing battery-management systems. In another online account published by Popular Mechanics magazine, Fambro also voiced his continuing support for CEO Wilbur.

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You know how Hollywood always goes overboard with gizmos and hijinks when it’s trying to represent young people doing science? (I’m thinking especially of 1980s movies like WarGames, Real Genius, and Weird Science.) Well, the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA, looked exactly like that last Friday as the annual “MIT Energy Night” event showcased dozens of energy-related research projects and entrepreneurial ventures, from photon-trapping dyes for solar concentrators to a Matrix-like project for extracting electrical energy from human body heat.

Organized by the MIT Energy Club and sponsored in part by local venture firms General Catalyst Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and RockPort Capital Partners, the packed-to-capacity event was a celebration of the amazing variety of energy-related labs, projects, initiatives, clubs, and prizes at MIT. I wandered in around 6:00 p.m., got my green drink-ticket wristband, and spent the next couple of hours checking out the demos on solar, wind, and geothermal energy; building technology; electric vehicles; nuclear power; and even the out-of-favor but far-from-outmoded coal, oil, and gas industries.

Student-led poster presentations were the main dish at the event, but I was even more interested in the local energy companies who sent employee-ambassadors to the event. A quick rundown:

A123Systems—This Watertown MIT spinoff (NASDAQ: AONE), which makes advanced lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles, power tools, and the like, has garnered plenty of news lately for its wildly successful IPO. Like most of the other companies present, it seemed to have recruited its youngest employees to run its table—most of them looked like undergrads.

DyPol—I first ran into this membrane technology startup, a spinoff of Paula Hammond’s chemical engineering lab at MIT, at a venture-sponsored university research symposium last April. They’re working on a green, layer-by-layer method for building polymer membranes that, the company hopes, will be used in the next generation of methanol fuel cells to make the devices more efficient. But Juliet Duffy, an MIT Sloan MBA student who’s working for the company, told me that in order to generate revenue while methanol fuel cell technology matures, DyPol is also investigating nearer-term applications for its membranes, such as water filtration. Duffy says the company is seeking a seed investment so that it can rent and equip local lab space.

EnerNOC-–This Boston-based public company (NASDAQ: ENOC) has pioneered the area of “demand response”—Internet-mediated management of electrical demand, which helps utilities forestall construction of new energy generation plants to meet peak demand. It isn’t an MIT spinoff, and oddly enough, there isn’t a single MIT degree among its senior management team. But it’s involved in MIT’s energy entrepreneurship culture as a sponsor of the 2009 MIT Clean Energy Prize competition.

FloDesign Wind Turbine—Based in Wilbraham, MA, FloDesign won the $200,000 MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize in 2008 and continues to test prototypes of its new jet-engine-like designs for wind turbines that sidestep the “Betz Limit.” (That’s the physical law that prevents open-fan wind turbines from extracting more than about 59 percent of the available energy from wind.) A staffer told me the turbine designs portrayed on the company’s posters, videos, and web materials are actually quite outdated, and that it isn’t showing off its latest designs in deference to …Next Page »

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It’s getting harder for San Diego’s stealthy cleantech startup Achates Power to continue flying beneath the radar. In a regulatory filing today, Achates discloses it has raised $12.125 million out of a $20 million venture round.

The company, which says in its filing that it was founded in 2007, has been developing a radical new design for a high-efficiency two-stroke automotive engine. Achates’ website says its technology was inspired by turn-of-the-century German aviation engineer Hugo Junkers’s Jumo, “the most famous engine in diesel aviation history.” Achates also notes it has been granted six U.S. patents with over 200 claims that define the patents.

Achates and its founder James Lemke have rebuffed several previous queries I’ve made about the company and its technology. While conventional engines have a single piston in each cylinder, Achates’ engine calls for two opposing pistons. The company says its approach delivers more power in less space, and boosts fuel mileage up to 100 miles per gallon. Achates apparently has begun testing a 4.2-liter engine, and has plans to license its technology to automakers.

The cleantech startup has previously acknowledged receiving an undisclosed amount of venture funding from Sequoia Capital, RockPort Capital Partners, Interwest Partners, and Madrone Capital Partners.

Madrone’s Jamie McJunkin, Sequoia’s Greg McAdoo, and RockPort’s David Prend are all listed as directors, according to the company’s regulatory filing. It also looks now like Achates is filling out its corporate structure. David Johnson is now listed as president and CEO, a position previously held by founder Lemke, an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego. Achates regulatory filing also shows that Cary Convis, vice chairman of Dana Corp., and the former chairman of Toyota, North America, is on the board—apparently as an independent director.

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“What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?”
“No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”

It’s one of the many memorable exchanges from “The Matrix.” But next time, Keanu Reeves should just talk to Christina Lomasney about getting some Modumetal armor—so he truly won’t have to worry about dodging anything.

Lomasney is the co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based nanotech startup Modumetal, which has grand plans to reinvent the metals industry, not just body armor. Three months ago, Modumetal announced it had raised more than $1.5 million from the Alliance of Angels, Second Avenue Partners, and WRF Capital, to advance its development of nanolaminated structures—fundamentally new kinds of metals that are stronger and lighter than steel and can be used to make better armor, structural components, and corrosion- and heat-resistant coatings. The 17-person company has also raised just under $1 million in government contracts and grants.

But first, let’s flash back to 2007. In a formative meeting, Lomasney and her fellow co-founder (and former University of Washington physics labmate) John Whitaker were talking with Dan Rosen, chair of the Alliance of Angels, about the idea behind their company. “They looked like the cat that ate the canary,” Rosen recalls. “My comment was, ‘Do you guys really understand what you have there?’”

In what can be a telling exercise for any entrepreneur, Rosen asked them to write the Wall Street Journal article that would appear the day Modumetal was successful. They wrote two. The first said that all U.S. auto manufacturers had adopted Modumetal to make their cars, increasing their fuel efficiency by 50 percent. The second said the military had announced that new vehicles using Modumetal technology have saved 10,000 lives. “Both were very interesting glimpses of the future,” Rosen notes.

Fast forward to last week when I sat down with Lomasney (see photo, left), a Boeing alum, to discuss where things are going with Modumetal, hear more about its strategy, and get a tour of the facilities. Those ambitious Wall Street Journal milestones haven’t been met yet, but if anything, the vision for the company has grown.

Lomasney is not one to make speculative or unfounded claims. Her one-word summary of Modumetal’s culture is “competent.” Last summer, she said the company was transitioning from military to transportation applications. So when she now says, “We’re the next ArcelorMittal”—the world’s largest steel maker—you sit up and take notice. As she explains, the metals industry has not changed that …Next Page »

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A lot of people modify their cars, but the alterations to the hybrid Toyota Prius I was test-driving last week were more than just a fancy paint job or cool rims. In addition to the standard regenerative braking battery, I was packing an A123 Systems Hymotion L5 lithium ion battery that charged by plugging into a wall socket. The Prius had been modified and lent to me for a few days by Bellevue, WA-based Green Car Company.

The mechanics at Green Car Company had installed the Hymotion battery in the trunk of the car, right behind the socket where the power cord to charge the car plugs in. The Green Car Company rents and sells a variety of environmentally friendly cars and bikes, including biodiesel vehicles. It also performs maintenance and modification for those cars, such as the plug-in module for the Hymotion battery.

Hybrid cars are growing more popular all the time, and many companies are competing to develop the best possible battery—long-lasting, easily recharged, and cheap. The L5 battery has a longer life than the standard Prius battery, though it requires a power grid to charge. It also makes the gas engine of the car more efficient, improving the overall energy efficiency of the car compared to standard hybrids. A 2009 modified Prius at Green Car Company costs $41,999, while a standard Prius costs $22,516, according to Kelley Blue Book. Toyota is developing a plug-in version of the Prius, but according to Green Car Company, that version will actually cost more than modifying the current, standard Prius.

The main idea of installing the plug-in battery is that drivers will be able to travel 100 miles or more on every gallon of gasoline, with a range of 30 to 40 miles on just the battery itself. One of the nicer points for me was that even if the battery did deplete all the way, the car would then become a standard Prius hybrid and use its factory-installed battery.

The plug-in battery maker, A123 Systems, based in Watertown, MA, acquired Toronto-based Hymotion and Hymotion’s plug-in hybrid modules in May 2007. A123 developed the nanophosphate lithium ion battery, which has a longer life and charging ability than standard lithium batteries. Hymotion used these A123 batteries in its conversion kits even before being acquired. Last Wednesday, A123 announced it had received $249 million in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy, part of the $2.4 billion in federal grants given out for companies working on technology for electric vehicles. A123 plans on using the money to expand and improve its lithium ion battery manufacturing capabilities in the U.S.

To give people an opportunity to test-drive a car installed with a Hymotion battery, …Next Page »

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At a press conference in the bustling lobby of Boston’s South Station this morning, Google and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (known to locals as the “T”) announced that they’ve collaborated to make route and schedule information for all T trains and buses available inside Google Maps.

It’s all information that’s already online at the MBTA’s own Trip Planner website (which includes embedded Google maps), but now it’s accessible to Google’s large number of users, who can go to the “Get Directions” tab of a Google Map, click on the new “By Public Transit” link, and see a list of transportation options, with route maps and estimated trip times for each.

For example, for my own commute from my apartment in the South End to Xconomy’s office in Kendall Square, Google Maps suggests several options: take the #1 bus down Massachusetts Avenue to MIT, then walk (38 minutes); take the Silver Line bus to the Broadway T station, then take the Red Line to Kendall Square (37 minutes); or walk to Boylston Street, then take the Green and Red Lines to Kendall Square (43 minutes).

Using the Street View feature of Google Maps, potential T riders can get a photographic look at locations like bus stops, to better prepare for their trip. The service also works on mobile versions of Google Maps, for Web-capable cell phones such as iPhones, Blackberrys, and Android phones.

“There’s no excuse now not to feel a level of comfort [riding the T] because of the navigability of this new system,” said Dan Grabauskas, general manager of the MBTA.

Between eight and 10 other cities (including San Diego and Seattle, Xconomy’s other hometowns) have already partnered with Google to put their transit systems’ information into Google Maps, according to Steve Vinter, engineering director for Google’s Boston-area headquarters in Kendall Square.

Getting a new city involved in what Google calls its “Google Transit” program involves two ingredients, Vinter told me after the press event. “There’s a technical part and a non-technical part,” he said. “The technical part is there’s a lot of data that has to be available in a certain format, and it has to be exchanged, and there has to be a system set up to make sure it’s up to date. The non-technical piece, obviously, is a commitment to share the information and to work through the obstacles to get the partnership to be successful. In this case, it’s all come together and it’s working great.”

Vinter says Google didn’t have to do much to clean up the data supplied by the MBTA. “It was in the format we’d requested, but I think it was some work on their side to get it all organized and pulled together. That’s what the big accomplishment was here.”

Of course, the transit directions that Massachusetts residents get from Google Maps is only going to be as accurate as the MBTA’s own data. And as it turns out, there are concerns about whether that data is as up-to-date as it could be. At South Station, I spoke with Jonathan Kamens, a Boston resident who said that the MBTA’s published information about where T buses stop in his neighborhood has been wrong for the last six years. “Now they’re putting that incorrect data into Google Maps, where it will be orders of magnitude more accessible,” Kamens said.

The MBTA may already have identified Kamens as a potential troublemaker. In an unfortunate example of what I saw as overbearing policing, a transit police officer interrupted our interview and threatened to remove Kamens from South Station after she saw him hand me a flyer detailing his unsuccessful attempts to get the MBTA to update the bus route information for his neighborhood. The officer said a permit is required to distribute printed information on MBTA property—even if that printed information is being handed to a journalist. The officer said Kamens was allowed to talk to me all he wanted—he just couldn’t hand me any information on paper. [Update: Kamens has blogged about the incident here.]

I asked Vinter whether putting transit system information online via Google might create an opening for a crowdsourced solution to the MBTA’s alleged data accuracy problems. In Google Maps, after all, it’s possible for any user to correct Google’s own information about the physical locations of street addresses simply by dragging a location marker to the right spot on the map.

“Google has a lot of tools for crowdsourcing,” Vinter agreed. “I think the correction process, as you might understand, is a little more complicated. Changes have to be done in a controlled way and reviewed. I think what this is going to do is make the information that’s there much more publicly visible and accessible, and it’s going to create the opportunity to get a broader review of what’s correct and what’s not, and hopefully allow us to get that feedback loop to happen.”

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Local Motors, the Wareham, MA startup building crowd-sourced cars, has announced that starting at noon Wednesday, customers can go online to get in line to buy a Rally Fighter, the company’s first production vehicle. The $50,000 car, which we’ve described in the past as “half muscle car, half dune buggy,” contains a 265-horsepower, 3.0-liter, clean diesel BMW engine. Buyers can put down $99 today to buy a number in line, put down $5,000 later to lock in a build date, and pay the remaining $44,901 on delivery.

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Imagine that after a long day on the road, you drive your new electric car into your garage, the battery almost drained. But you don’t worry about running a cord to the charging station and plugging into your vehicle—the garage takes care of recharging for you, without you doing a thing. When you leave for work the next morning, there is no charging cord to stow—and therefore no danger you’ll back out of the garage without having remembered to detach it (average bill a few grand for damage to the power unit and your car). You just hit the road again fully charged.

That’s the vision Eric Giler, CEO of Watertown, MA-based WiTricity, will be demonstrating this morning (Boston time) at the First German Electric Vehicle Congress in Bonn, Germany. WiTricity is a 19-month-old MIT spinout that has sparked the imaginations of people around the world with demonstrations of firing up laptop computers and charging cell phones through wireless delivery of power. (For company funding, employee count, patent filings, and other stats see fact box on the last page of this article.) But tomorrow morning, Giler will be presenting his vision of what could become a second major market for WiTricity, after consumer electronics: charging electric vehicles.

“You spend $100,000 on a car, and you have a cord to plug it in,” says Giler a bit disdainfully, speaking of the main electric vehicle on the road today, the Tesla Roadster, which starts at $101,500. “[But] imagine if you can just drive in your garage and your car charges—that’s what we’re doing now.”

Giler will be on stage today demonstrating two configurations for how the electric vehicle charging station of the future might look. One is where you drive into a garage and your car is charged from underneath, via something like a mat on the floor. The other is a wall mounted or upright charging station, where you tool up to the unit and power is transferred between it and the car’s bumper.

Whichever one wins out, and maybe both will, WiTricity calls electric vehicles (EVs) a “zero-billion-dollar market”—meaning sales are essentially nothing right now, but as prices come down and competitors like the planned Chevy Volt and other mass market vehicles hit the road, the market will be huge. And, the company figures, since all EVs will have to charge up in some manner, there should also be a big opportunity awaiting WiTricity’s elegant, easy-to-use solution.

Some quick background here. WiTricity is the fruit of a discovery a few years back by MIT assistant professor of physics Marin Soljačić, who, after being awakened by a cell phone beeping in the night because no one had charged it, realized he might avoid that problem forever if he could find a way to tap wirelessly into the wired electric power already flowing throughout his house and have it charge the cell phone for him.

His answer depends on what’s called highly resonant magnetic coupling. Basically, a specially designed coil (WiTricity’s transmission unit) is connected to a small electronics module that converts the normal 60-cycle alternating current that you’d find in your home or office to a higher frequency and voltage—inducing an oscillating magnetic field around the coil. If a different coil designed to resonate to the same frequency is near enough to the source, power is transferred between the two coils (think opera singer shattering a glass). There’s a lot more to it, of course, which you can read all about here. Soljačić won a MacArthur genius award for the invention last fall.

Chances are you have already heard of this story, as Soljačić and WiTricity have been written up from the New York Times to Scientific American to Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Giler says the technology works from distances of a few centimeters to a few meters and at power levels from a few milliwatts to several kilowatts—and that it is completely safe for people and animals, producing magnetic fields under the limits set by the FCC and in other guidelines. “Safe, efficient power transmission over distance,” is a company mantra.

But let’s steer the conversation away from basic physics back to the electric car, which is the really new thing for WiTricity—and which Giler says hasn’t been publicized before. He revealed …Next Page »

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Terrafugia, the Woburn, MA, startup whose project to commercialize a “roadable aircraft” has attracted a worldwide following, said today that it’s completed flight testing of its initial proof-of-concept vehicle and is ready to build a second, “beta” aircraft.

The company also released extensive new video footage from test flights of the proof-of-concept plane by its test pilot, retired Air Force Colonel Phil Meteer. (We’ve embedded a couple of these videos below.)

The proof-of-concept vehicle, which Terrafugia has displayed at museums and air shows and flown 28 times from an airport in Plattsburgh, NY, is the only aircraft the company has built to date. In an announcement today, Terrafugia said it’s gotten all the data it can out of the prototype—not only demonstrating that a folding-wing aircraft fit for roadway driving can also fly, but testing its basic handling, performance, and stability on the road and during take-off and landing.

These tests constituted the first stage in a four-stage process of getting the Transition to market, the company said. It has already started work on stage 2, the beta prototype, which will incorporate modifications based on information collected during the stage 1 tests.

Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich—who will give a special presentation about the company at the Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (XSITE), coming up June 24—told me in March that the craft’s maiden flight on March 5 and its subsequent test flights bring “a new level of credibility” to an effort that many observers have dismissed as quixotic.

Two of Terrafugia’s newest videos follow below.

Test 1146, May 6, 2009

Test 1151, May 6, 2009

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The coming generation of electric and hybrid gas-electric vehicles will need safer, longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries. Boston-Power—the Westborough, MA-based known up to now mainly for its “green” lithium-ion laptop batteries—wants to supply them, and it’s pursuing federal stimulus money to fuel its bid.

At a planned media event today featuring Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, the company will introduce a new “green” lithium-ion battery for electric and hybrid cars called Swing. To build the new product, the company is unveiling plans for a 455,000-square-foot manufacturing facility to be located in Auburn, MA, a Worcester suburb about an hour’s drive from Boston.

Boston-Power says the proposed facility could create 600 new jobs, and both the company and state officials are describing it as a major step toward making Massachusetts into a vehicle battery mecca. “This is the state of innovation,” says Christina Lampe-Onnerud, Boston-Power’s founder and CEO. “It’s a state that is committed to clean technology and has been for a long time. We put Boston-Power’s headquarters here for the same reason. We believe manufacturing should be close to the innovation.” (Below is a complete interview with Lampe-Onnerud, who will also be a featured speaker at the June 24 Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship.)

Indeed, Boston-Power’s project, along with similar efforts at Watertown, MA-based A123Systems, could give the state a key foothold in the reborn auto industry if, as expected, federal bailout conditions force American automakers to retool for a new generation of greener vehicles. A123 landed a deal in April to supply Chrysler with lithium-ion batteries based on its MIT-bred nanophosphate technology. (Those batteries, however, will be built in Michigan rather than Massachusetts, thanks to a $100 million tax-credit lure extended by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.)

Boston-Power’s plan to build in Massachusetts hinges on its ability to lasso a big chunk of federal stimulus cash. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, known colloquially as the stimulus bill, provides $2 billion for “facility funding awards” for “manufacturers of advanced battery systems and vehicle batteries that are produced in the United States, including advanced lithium ion batteries.” Boston-Power is applying for $100 million of that money. It also plans to hit up the Department of Defense for funds designated in the proposed 2010 federal budget for the construction of manufacturing facilities that contribute to national security.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has pledged up to $9 million for the Auburn facility—but that money is in the form of matching financing, meaning Boston-Power will have to secure the federal money first. The company says it’s “working closely” with state officials, including Governor Patrick, energy and environmental affairs secretary Ian Bowles, and Representative Jim McGovern (a Democrat who district includes Auburn), to pursue federal and state incentives.

Lampe-Onnerud says building the Auburn facility will cost far more than the $100 million the company is seeking from the U.S. government, but that “it’s enough to get private investors to believe that you can do battery manufacturing in the United States.” Without some pump-priming in the form of federal stimulus spending, she says, the financial markets might not back risky technologies in areas like energy and clean technology. “What I think the Obama Administration has realized, to its credit, is that if we want to be a player, the government has to help,” Lampe-Onnerud says. “It will not happen on its own.”

Boston-Power isn’t saying much yet about the Swing product itself, except that it will set new standards in the vehicle battery business for safety, lifetime, weight, cost, environmental sustainability, and energy density. (Lithium-ion batteries have a higher energy density, or energy output per weight, than most other battery technologies, and both A123 and Boston-Power have come up with engineering tricks that make it even higher.) But Lampe-Onnerud says the Swing builds on the same basic technology platform as the Sonata, which is marketed by Hewlett-Packard under the Enviro brand name. She adds that the manufacturing blueprints and procedures the company has already developed for its Sonata factories in Asia can be adapted relatively easily to make larger-format batteries for cars here in the United States.

And using an existing building—a warehouse off I-90 once used by the rapidly downsizing Filene’s Basement bargain clothing chain—will hasten the project, Lampe-Onnerud says. “This factory will be up and running full speed within three years, which is very fast in the battery industry,” she says. “We have experience with this type of manufacturing in Asia, so I think it’s a low-risk investment for the government.”

Boston-Power and other applicants for the battery-manufacturing grants have already submitted proposals to the government, and the Department of Energy plans to announce a list of grant recipients as early as July. Governor Patrick, Secretary Bowles, Rep. McGovern, Lampe-Onnerud, and other officials plan to promote the Boston-Power proposal at a noon ceremony today at the Auburn site.

Xconomy spoke with Lampe-Onnerud about the project Friday evening; a transcript follows.

Xconomy: How much of the actual cost of the proposed Auburn plant would be covered by the $100 million stimulus grant you’re seeking?

Christina Lampe-Onnerud: It’s not the whole amount, by far, but it’s enough to get private investors to believe that you can do battery manufacturing in the United States. For a company like ours, cash flow is everything. I believe that Boston-Power, 10 years out, will be a smashing success. But it’s tough in the early years because you’re growing the company at the same time you’re growing the top line. Revenue needs to grow and you need to establish market share at the same time as you’re innovating. This will allow us to …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Modumetal, an advanced materials startup, is closing a new round of equity funding worth between $1.5 million and $2 million, according to co-founder and CEO Christina Lomasney. The round includes existing Seattle-area investors Alliance of Angels and Second Avenue Partners, as well as new investor WRF Capital.

Modumetal “grows” what are called nanolaminated structures in vats using a patented process. These nanomaterials are essentially new kinds of metals that are stronger and lighter than steel. The original idea behind the company was to make better armor and structural components for the military and other applications, and the company has been supported in part by U.S. government grants. But Modumetal is now seizing some new opportunities, both short-term and long-term.

“Our vision has really expanded quite a lot,” Lomasney says. “This is turning out to be a much bigger market opportunity than we realized. This idea of creating a new dial for controlling material properties is really important to overcoming performance limitations in materials design.”

In particular, the new funding will be used to expand Modumetal’s effort in creating new kinds of coatings that resist corrosion in manufacturing lines, and withstand high temperatures in engines and turbines so they’ll run more efficiently. All while replacing toxic metals like chromium and cadmium, which are used in most anti-corrosion materials. It’s not the sexiest sounding application, but Lomasney says anti-corrosion and thermal barriers add up to a staggering $500 billion market. She says Modumetal’s first large-scale products will hit the market this year, targeted at aerospace manufacturers and the maritime industry, as well as transportation, military, and oil and gas sectors.

“This is a company that creates a brand new industry,” says Dan Rosen, chair of Alliance of Angels. “One of my co-investors said, ‘Am I wrong, or is this the biggest invention in metallurgy since the Bronze Age?’ You’re going to be able to create metals that have never existed before.”

Modumetal has grown (in a vat?) to 15 employees. I first reported on the company last summer, and will have more on its technology and strategy soon.

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It has been almost five years since a team of aerospace entrepreneurs funded by a software billionaire claimed the Ansari X Prize, the $10 million prize competition to develop the first reusable private spacecraft.

Since then, the frustrated space enthusiast who established the X Prize as a way to re-ignite astronautical innovation, Peter Diamandis, has won some prizes of his own. He was the inaugural winner of the 2006 Heinlein Prize for his efforts to deliver humanity to space; a Lindbergh Award in recognition of his pioneering work in creating incentive prizes; and an Arthur C. Clarke Award for innovation.

As the chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, based near Los Angeles in Playa Vista, CA, the 48-year-old Diamandis says his goal now is to make the X Prize “the gold standard of incentive prizes that are well-promoted, well-executed, and hit the mark” in terms of targeting technology breakthroughs in such fields as energy, astronautics, transportation, medicine, genomics, and exploration.

In anticipation of his talk at San Diego’s MIT Enterprise Forum, I recently asked Diamandis how the X Prize Foundation has changed since it wrote a $10 million check in 2004 to spacecraft designer Burt Rutan and his investor, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

For one thing, Diamandis says, the foundation has grown almost tenfold—from five people to a staff of 45. The foundation also is working more rigorously now on what he calls “prize methodology,” developing the principles, procedures, and rules for prizes that will drive key breakthroughs in such fields as life sciences, exploration, energy, global development, education, and the environment. Among other things, he says the group has been working with scientists at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to develop prize methodologies for a possible “Ocean X Prize” in three possible areas:

—Ocean exploration. Since the U.S. deep submergence vehicle Alvin was launched 45 years ago and Russia’s MIR submersibles are over 20 years old, Diamandis says the foundation is considering a prize to create new technologies needed to explore the “Challenger Deep” of the Mariana Trench, 7 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

—Ocean floor mapping. Diamandis says we know more about the surface of Mars than about the bottom of the ocean. So a prize for mapping the ocean floor could encourage the development of new underwater mapping technologies.

—Ocean conservation. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a region of the Pacific Ocean where plastic trash accumulates into vast masses of unsinkable drifting litter. The X Prize Foundation is considering a prize that would spur the development of innovative ways to “heal” such garbage patches.

To Diamandis, it is only a matter of time before incentive prizes become as important to innovation as venture capital. Diamandis says he’s heard Rick Burnes say that venture capital also seemed like a “very strange idea” in 1970, when Burnes co-founded Charles River Ventures in Waltham, MA. “Now venture capital is everywhere,” Diamandis says. “I think the same thing will happen with incentive prizes.”

With the success of the Ansari X Prize, similar …Next Page »

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The five track winners for the MIT 100K business plan competition were announced on Friday. These teams will compete in the finals on Wednesday, along with the winner of its sister contest, the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition (that team will be announced next Tuesday). All five track winners, and three of the five Energy Prize finalists (all those with MIT ties), gathered Friday night at Bob Metcalfe’s house in the Back Bay for a small celebration of their making it so far.

Metcalfe, now a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners, has hosted a party for the 100K finalists for many years. As is also the tradition, finalists select one team member to stand on the stairs leading to the second floor, while guests gather in the foyer below them to hear their very short (60-second or so) pitches. I’ve been to several of these gatherings, and others that are similar—and always enjoy them. This year, though, the teams seemed to have risen to another level in terms of both their poise and the sophistication of their pitches. For the first time, I came away pretty sure that not only would a few of these plans turns into real businesses, but that one or two might even be significant businesses. (So, hey—remember when Xconomy spotted you.)

Below are my capsule descriptions of the eight finalists (out of some 260 that entered the two competitions), along with a few impressions. Congratulations to all:

—-Ksplice (100K Web/IT track winner): This teams wins the prize for most rarin’ to go, for sure. When someone asked who wanted to start things off, Waseem Daher’s hand shot up as fast as an Olympic badminton player reacting to a smash. What he was so eager to talk about is technology that enables the installation of operating system and application updates on running systems, without the need for rebooting the computer or restarting the application. The initial target market is enterprise systems, where such updates mean downtime and lost productivity, according to Daher. Although Ksplice only works on Linux systems right now, he envisions every operating system and application employing the technology for software updates. Impression: strikes a universal chord in computer users—big potential royalty market.

—YouTea! (100K Product and Services track winner): Urinary tract infections strike 11 percent of women each year, according to team spokesperson Alex Herzlinger. YouTea! has a new way to deliver a preventative medicine through “a low-calorie, great tasting” drink, I guess called YouTea!. The team was also a finalist in the Harvard Business Plan competition, where it said it planned to the deliver YouTea! first in powdered form, then in a bottle. Impression: Big market need, but might consider a new name (I thought they were saying UT, as in the University of Texas, hook ‘em). And, even if it really does taste great, there’s always the question of how many people will take preventative measures in the first place (see Cambridge Eyenovations below).

—Sun Point (Energy prize finalist, winner of renewables category): Eric Cohen described a passive solar tracker, with no motors, gears, or drive train (at least I think I got that right). It goes …Next Page »

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It was a pretty busy week for deals in the Northwest, with activity in consumer Internet, security software, gaming, and biotech.

—The most talked-about deal in the Seattle startup community was Urbanspoon’s acquisition by New York-based IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), which owns dozens of popular websites like Citysearch and Evite. Financial terms were not disclosed. Urbanspoon, an online restaurant guide and iPhone application, will remain autonomous, said co-founder Ethan Lowry. New-media expert Warren Gouk of Cascadia Capital added some analysis about what the deal means for consumer Internet startups.

—Luke reported that Seattle-based ZymoGenetics (NASDAQ: ZGEN) licensed the rights to eight of its drug candidates to a new startup called Seattle Life Sciences, in exchange for an equity stake in the company. It’s all part of ZymoGenetics’ strategy to cut R&D costs on programs outside its core business, while it looks to push sales of its drug for surgical bleeding and development of its treatment for hepatitis C.

—Bellevue, WA-based Intelius acquired Spock, a people search engine in Redwood City, CA. Financial terms of the deal were not given. Intelius provides identity theft protection and background checks, among other services.

—Seattle-based Wetpaint, a social publishing startup, formed a partnership with MSN Entertainment to create fan sites that will start rolling out this quarter. Financial terms of the partnership were not announced. MSN will use Wetpaint’s software to power social websites where fans can create content and connect with each other.

—Seattle’s Big Fish Games gobbled up Grubby Games, a development studio in Vancouver, BC. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed. Grubby Games makes titles like Incredibots, Professor Fizzwizzle, and My Tribe. Big Fish says it plans to release a new brand based on Grubby’s technology next quarter.

—Ryan reported that Likewise Software, based in Bellevue, WA, raised $10 million in Series C funding from existing investors Ignition Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Intel Capital. Likewise makes software that helps companies track and secure access to computer networks.

—Seattle-based Geospiza, a bio-software startup, inked a partnership with Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE) to help genomic researchers store data and access it in the Internet cloud, as Luke reported. Financial terms were not disclosed. It’s the first time a major gene sequencing company has taken the leap into cloud computing.

—Seattle startup Vigilos closed $1.4 million from Northwest Venture Associates, and is in the process of raising $300,000 more. Vigilos makes security software that helps organizations like the FBI, U.S. Navy, and Washington State Department of Transportation monitor sites remotely.

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Seattle-based Vigilos, a security software firm, announced today it has closed $1.4 million in equity capital, led by Northwest Venture Associates, and is in the process of raising an additional $300,000. Vigilos makes software that helps organizations like the FBI, U.S. Navy, and Washington State Department of Transportation remotely monitor sites. The technology is also designed for hospitals and chemical and food processing plants.

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The Rally Fighter is half dune buggy, half muscle car. Designed for off-road racing in the deserts of the Southwest, it looks a lot like any ride you might see on the cover of Road & Track. But what’s different about the Rally Fighter is that it’s a product of the Web 2.0 revolution: it was the winning design in an online competition that Wareham, MA-based Local Motors conducted last fall among its growing Web-based community of amateur and freelance automotive designers.

Crowdsourcing the design process through regionally-themed online design contests is half of Local Motors’ business model. The other half is “mass customizing” the actual vehicles at a network of what the company calls “micro-factories.” If you’re going to start a car company these days, you might as well try a radical new approach—and that’s definitely what co-founder, president, and CEO Jay Rogers is doing. My December 18 story has all the history and details.

On Friday, I reconnected with Iraq vet and Harvard MBA Rogers by phone to get the latest news about Local Motors—and to ask him for his opinion about other vehicle-related events in the news, including the first flight of Terrafugia’s “roadable aircraft” and this week’s unveiling by GM and Segway of the P.U.M.A., a multi-passenger vehicle that balances on two wheels like the famous Segway Personal Transporter. I also probed a bit about the seeming disconnect between Local Motors’ self-avowed green mission—he talked a lot back in December about the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, and about how to make cars lighter and more fuel-efficient—and the fact that the company’s first product is a racecar built to tear around the desert. He had some interesting responses, which you’ll see toward the end of the following transcript.

Xconomy: We last talked in mid-December. What’s been happening at Local Motors since then?

Local Motors CEO and co-founder Jay Rogers

Jay Rogers: We just passed our first anniversary, and one of the big things that stands out is that on the day of our birthday, March 25, we were invited to a Web-based conference [organized by Canadian automotive journalist Michael Banovsky] with Bertone, one of the top two automotive design houses in the world. It was an incredible recognition of what we have achieved in just 12 months. We are known enough that people see us as a design firm that has put together something notable. It shows the power of Web 2.0 to create a new entity. These older design houses don’t have the bandwidth to create a lot of new concepts, and as governments and everyone else around the world are looking at how to reinvigorate stale parts of the auto industry, we make a very compelling alternative.

Since December we have also run two or three more competitions. We just finished Chicago and the Carolinas and are about to launch Detroit. That is going to be much more toward the practical end than the conceptual end. We are going to do a design for the budding entrepreneurs in Detroit. A lot of machinists and pattern makers, as you can imagine, are out of work. What they need is a jobber’s car—a coupe with a roach coach or a hold for a set of tools, something that’s economical and isn’t a big truck. It’s going to be a real exercise in how Local Motors can target a vehicle that is relevant to a local area, especially one that is as embattled as Detroit.

The other thing is that we are in negotiations right now in Phoenix, Arizona, and here in Massachusetts to place our first micro-factory. We don’t have anything to announce just yet, but we are in some very exciting negotiations and are going to end up with a very good location in one or the other place, or it could very well be both.

We were also applying for the federal assistance program from the Department of Energy for new vehicle manufacturing concepts. At the time we last talked, GM and Chrysler were looking to hog a lot of that money. But this week, those companies were determined to be non-viable, which means they are not eligible for those loans. Which means we have a much better shot at getting some money. That’s a very positive thing.

One more thing we did which was actually very exciting was that we began to flex our muscles in the competitions, and instead of just doing exterior design, we ran an interior design competition for the Rally Fighter, our first model. Critics were saying “You can’t open-source the design of a car,” but this showed an entirely different face of our design competition. The winning concept is now going to be the interior of the Rally Fighter.

We are also breaking down [the design competitions] into discrete parts. We needed an air extractor for our engine bay, and we got 50 to 60 side-vent ideas in about six days. We posted it Friday night and we were done by the next Wednesday. Because this was so successful, we are going to be running more discrete engineering projects as competitions, instead of us doing them ourselves. It’s great for us to go to the community like this.

X: How is the Rally Fighter coming? When I visited, you had a full-scale model, but it was made of blue foam.

JR: The Rally Fighter’s body is going to be frozen this week. That means the look and feel, all of the micro-details, which is a huge achievement for us. If you were to look at it today, you’d see a …Next Page »

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It’s only been a few days since last I rounded up the deals news from New England’s tech and life sciences firms, but there are still a few transactions worth mentioning.

—Millennium, the Cambridge, MA-based subsidiary of Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, paid $4 million up front to Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN) for a worldwide license to the Bothell, WA-based firm’s antibody-based cancer drug technology. Millennium will also pay for development of the product candidate and royalties on any eventual sales.

—Watertown, MA-based A123Systems inked a deal to supply Chrysler with advanced lithium ion batteries for its new line of electric vehicles, the first of which is expected to hit the road next year. A123 will build a plant in Michigan to manufacture the batteries.

—Epix Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:EPIX) commenced an exchange offer for $100 million in debt in a bid to avoid bankruptcy. The Lexington, MA-based firm also sold certain market rights to its cardiovascular imaging agent, gadofosveset trisodium, to Lantheus Medical Imaging of North Billerica, MA, for $28 million.

—Bedford, NH-based Segway teamed with General Motors to develop a new electric-powered, two-wheeled, two-seater vehicle. The firms have already begun testing prototypes of the vehicle, called Project P.U.M.A. (for Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility), which can go up to 35 miles per hour.

—Enterprise sales software maker Basho Technologies, of Cambridge, MA, raised $2 million in an initial close of its Series B round. Harbor Island Equity Partners of Wilmington, NC, led the deal, which was joined by Wilmington Investor Network, an angel group.

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I had to check the calendar when I heard about this to make sure it wasn’t still April Fool’s Day. It appears that Bedford, NH-based Segway and Detroit-based General Motors (NYSE: GM) are joining forces to develop a new electric-powered, two-seater vehicle that, like the famous Segway Personal Transporter (PT), balances on two wheels. The idea is to get people around town quickly and cleanly; like the PT, the new vehicle will be far more maneuverable than a conventional automobile, with a very small turning radius.

Segway and GM unveiled their collaboration in a press release this morning in advance of the New York International Auto Show, which begins April 10. The companies have already been testing their prototype vehicle, called Project P.U.M.A. (for Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility), around the streets of New York (see photos and video below). The prototype, which resembles a pedicab without the cyclist in front, can travel at speeds up to 35 miles per hour.

The 300-pound vehicle runs on a lithium-ion battery that lasts up to 35 miles between rechargings, GM says. It tilts on its wheelbase, balancing on two wheels using “dynamic stabilization” technology similar to that developed for the Segway PT. (Technically the vehicle has six wheels, including two additional “landing-gear” wheels in front and two in back to catch it when it’s not moving.) The “keys” and dashboard controls for the P.U.M.A. apparently reside in an iPhone-like removable wireless device.

“We are excited to be working together to demonstrate a dramatically different approach to urban mobility,” Segway CEO Jim Norrod said in the joint announcement. “The Project P.U.M.A. prototype vehicle embodies this through the combination of advanced technologies that Segway and GM bring to the table to complete the connection between the rider, environment, and others.”

Of course, Detroit has a decades-long history of announcing concept vehicles that never make it into production, and it is not at all clear from today’s announcement—which full of language about “capabilities” and “demonstrations”—that GM and Segway actually intend to manufacture the P.U.M.A. as a consumer product. A cynic might be excused for commenting that today’s news is an attempt by GM, which is in desperate need of a new image, to clothe itself in the aura of innovation that surrounds Segway, the company built by iconic New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen (an Xconomist).

This is the second Detroit-New England collaboration announced in as many days. Yesterday Chrysler and A123Systems said that Chrysler will use A123’s nanophosphate lithium ion batteries in its new ENVI line of electric vehicles. But both the Segway and A123 projects are dependent on the continued survival of the two car companies, which are hemorrhaging cash and have been targeted for major restructuring and possible bankruptcy by the Obama Administration.

P.U.M.A. video:

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If struggling automaker Chrysler survives its current financial crisis, it will likely come out the other end with a different owner (the Obama Administration wants it to link up with Italy’s Fiat) and a different lineup of vehicles. In fact, it’s already working on a line of electric-only automobiles, including five Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler models displayed at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January. And today the Auburn Hills, MI-based carmaker announced that A123Systems of Watertown, MA, will supply advanced lithium ion batteries for the vehicles, the first of which is expected to hit the market next year.

Under the agreement announced today, A123 will build a plant in Michigan to manufacture its nanophosphate lithium ion battery cells, which can be combined into battery packs large or small enough to suit the size of each vehicle. Using the same battery cells in all of its upcoming electric-drive vehicles, Chrysler says, will reduce development time and system costs and help increase production volumes. The cells will end up inside the company’s so-called “ENVI” line, which includes the Dodge Circuit EV, the Jeep Wrangler EV, the Jeep Patriot EV, the Chrysler Town & Country EV, and the Chrysler 200C EV concept car (see photo; click for a larger version).

“We’re very proud to have been selected to supply advanced battery systems for Chrysler’s family of ENVI electric-drive vehicles,” David Vieau, A123’s president and CEO, said in a statement issued by Chrysler. “This bold move by Chrysler changes the game and greatly improves our country’s ability to modernize our transportation fleet. We’re confident that our collaboration with Chrysler will serve as proof that American innovation is alive and well and ready to lead the new global market for fuel-efficient electric vehicles.”

Chrysler says the deal with A123 will help it respond to calls from government and the public for a new generation of cars that create fewer greenhouse gas emissions and that reduce the nation’s dependence on petroleum. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm welcomed the news, saying the Chrysler-A123 alliance “will create new jobs in the state, deliver benefits to consumers and contribute significantly to bringing more environmentally friendly vehicles to market.”

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