Venture Capitalism To the Rescue

theodp writes "Al Gore, Bill Joy, and a Norwegian cutie — a TH!NK open electric car — grace the cover of the latest NYT Magazine, which asks: Can the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins reduce our dependence on oil, help stop global warming, and make a lot of money at the same time? While Kleiner Perkins — which funded Genentech, Netscape, Google and others — has a number of other green-tech bets, a partner says its goal is 'to make a lot of money for our investors,' not to save the environment."

Great timing, actually.

[RyanFenton]

Sure, the stock market's bad. Really bad. Oddly, that's what makes for very good timing here - because even though a lot of people have less money to invest, there's a lot of other folks who are looking to take their money from places they used to believe as 'safe', and put it where some of it will make money back to recover from recent failures. That includes mutual fund companies, and several other sources of megabucks.

There's also a lot of potential researchers who can spend a lot of time on these projects, at relatively competitive rates. And a lot of existing data to pull together from university projects that individually have been starved for resources. That, and there's a slight possibility some politicians may be able to make a sane infrastructure to provide at least some support in upcoming budgets.

Sounds like excellent timing to get a massively multiple-approach research project like this underway. It might even save a small part of our economy through the continuing troubles.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Electric Cars ... the Silent Killer

[Eukariote]

The noise difference is not nearly as large over 50 km/h because then the road/tire noise starts to dominate over engine noise. Electric cars are silent only at low speeds.

They're coming from everywhere

[rcastro0]

Electric Cars are coming from everywhere, in different sizes and shapes, with different concepts. Some will append the electric motor to a a ignition engine generator (making it a hybrid). Some are tricycles using solar back-up power. Others are super-sport cars. It is all very interesting.

Back in February I was so amazed with the variety that I posted in my blog thirty different electric and hybrid cars from all over the world. From the established auto industry of Japan and the US down to individual projects, this is a really special moment for entrepreneurs, inventors and creative people. The blog post is in portuguese, but there are pictures and reference links for all 30 electric car models [simplesmente.com].

Sorry for the plug. Cheers.

stealth tax sibsidy

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some huge number of dollars involved-well over a trillion by now just in this decade- in keeping the military in the mideast, and I think there might be..one or two..people left who don't think it has anything to do with oil. Same with nuclear power, all the big fuss over iran is over nuclear technology once you get down to it, because the tech itself is inherently unsafe/dangerous-the potential anyway. Put those ongoing costs directly on the electricity bill from nuclear and directly on the prices people pay at the fuel pump for oil products, and that would help get a fairer real life price. Stop funding it from the general tax fund, that's a clear big business subsidy.

  Now, conversely, who is going to war or worried about war over access to sunshine or wind or wave power? It doesn't exist, but access to crude oil and natural gas and uranium is a huge problem and it leads to war and threats of war. That's a real cost-in money and blood- that the proponents of those energy forms fail to admit to.

Re:Electric Cars ... the Silent Killer

[froon]

One solution is to add speakers. [wired.com]

Re:stealth tax sibsidy

[Original Replica]

I just don't think big oil is the major recipient.

Perhaps you are un aware of the windfall profits of the major oil companies since the start of the Iraq War.

"By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry's history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion. [msn.com]

"Exxon beat its own one-year-old record for the biggest corporate profits ever by 3 percent. Put together with the announcement by the No. 2 U.S. oil company, Chevron, of an $18.7 billion year, up 9 percent over 2006, plus the earlier results of Shell and ConocoPhillips, and that's more than $100 billion in profits from four companies. It's all thanks to the historic 35 percent climb in worldwide crude oil prices in the second half of 2007, ending the first week of this year when oil briefly touched $100 per barrel...Exxon Mobil's profits are 80 percent higher than those of General Electric, which used to be the largest U.S. company by market capitalization before Exxon left it in the dust in 2005. The new economy? Microsoft earns about a third as much money. And next to Exxon, the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, looks like a quaint boutique, with annual profits of about $11 billion." [usnews.com]

Just because they aren't getting money straight from Uncle Sam like the military industrial contractors are, don't think that this war hasn't served to make oil far more profitable than ever, and don't think that is any surprise to the oil man in the Whitehouse.