If you’ve been following the moves of electric vehicle infrastructure maker Better Place over the years then you’re well aware that its world ambitions will need a lot of capital. On Monday morning the company announced that it is raising a whopping $350 million in a series B round to help it build out its network of charging and battery swap stations across nations like Israel and Denmark. That’s one of the largest rounds for cleantech ever, and is similar in size to the massive fund-raising done by thin film solar company Solyndra. Better Place has now raised about $750 million.

Better Place’s latest round will be led by HSBC Group, which will put in a whopping $125 million and will own 10 percent of the company’s shares. The round also will include new investors Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Lazard Asset Management, and existing investors Israel Corp., VantagePoint Venture Partners, Ofer Hi-Tech Holdings, Morgan Stanley Principal Investments, and Maniv Energy Capital, among others. Better Place’s Chief Financial Officer Charles Stonehill said the funding “goes a long way toward validating and enabling,” their business model.

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On the cusp of a new generation of electric vehicles and the buildout of a smart grid, connected cars — vehicles linked to the power grid as well as communication networks — have the potential to give us a transportation system for the digital age. Smart charging infrastructure, energy storage tech and devices, telematics, the vehicles themselves, and even smartphone apps for automotive platforms, all add up to a sizable market opportunity.

A web of key players is starting to take shape as entrepreneurs and global corporations race to carve out a piece of the nascent EV market, as government agencies dole out billions of dollars to jump-start that opportunity, as big thinkers churn out innovative ideas and business models based on the intersection of information technology and advanced vehicles, and as the pressure to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles grows. Listed alphabetically, not order of importance, here’s Earth2Tech’s top 15 most influential people in the connected car space.

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Not only world leaders, United Nations delegates and environmentalists were disappointed in the weak accord reached in the 11th hour of the Copenhagen climate talks — the markets for carbon allowances didn’t like the deal either. Bloomberg is reporting that on the first day of trading since the accord announcement, European and UN carbon prices have seen their biggest drop since February because of the vague and unsubstantial outcome. Businesses and investors — which showed up in unusual force over the two weeks of the convention — were looking for more aggressive, if not legally binding, agreements that would provide clarity for the carbon markets, help put a solid price on carbon and give support for clean energy-related business plans.

Bloomberg says the European Union carbon-dioxide allowances declined as much as 8.7 percent on the European Climate Exchange in London, and the UN’s Certified Emission Reductions credits fell as much 7 percent, the most since Feb. 20. Henry Derwent, president of the International Emissions Trading Association called Copenhagen “a step backward” for signals that will support carbon prices, says Bloomberg.

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While I’ve been skeptical of electric vehicle infrastructure Better Place’s grand ambitions to sell EV service like cell phones and cover small countries with its network, there’s one region that is actually a good fit with Better Place’s EV dreams: Denmark. I sat down with some of Better Place’s team on the ground in Denmark at a hotel outside of the Copenhagen climate negotiations on Wednesday and took a test drive in the first car for the Renault Better Place partnership, the Fluence (the sedan-looking car in the photo to the left and below), which is supposed to come out in 2011.

Here’s Better Place’s basic strategy in Denmark: partner with the state-owned utility Dong Energy, who is also an investor in Better Place, offer Danish residents EVs that are cheaper than internal combustion cars (internal combustion engine cars in Denmark are over 100 percent taxed and very expensive) and appeal to the small size of the country and progressive residents. The pieces and partnerships all seem to fit, however, the hurdles ahead will be raising enough financing to build out the infrastructure and seeing how many Danish consumers sign up for the Better Place plan.

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COPENHAGEN — Danish people have a unique feeling called “hygge,” which is commonly described as warmth or coziness. It can often be found indoors, when the conversation flows and warm (or alcoholic) beverages are involved, and it’s a way to cheer up and connect with others in the long, cold dark winters of Denmark (and no, it’s not like hyphy).

I experienced a bit of hygge minutes after finally sitting down in the well-lit and warm Bella media center here, on the night before the United Nations Climate Change Conference begins Monday.

It’s hard not to feel some sense of warmth and companionship after waiting in hour-long lines in Copenhagen’s freezing cold weather (6 degrees C, a little above zero) to get a badge to attend the summit.

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Over 5,000 miles away from the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, where tech entrepreneurs often have an undying faith in the free market, world leaders will be meeting to make major policy decisions over the next two weeks that will determine not only how the world will tackle climate change, but also how the business of building green technology will unfold. While it’s looking like a legally-binding agreement on emissions cuts might be put off until 2010, negotiators at the UN climate talks starting in Copenhagen next week will determine how aggressive countries will be with their emission targets and how the world will put a price on carbon.

At stake for greentech companies is how big or small their markets will be, how long until those markets pick up and how to determine the price on carbon, which is an integral key to many greentech firms. As Frost and Sullivan’s Renewable Energy Analyst Zeinegul Hassan put it in a research note this week, future investments in clean technology are “heavily dependent on the outcome of the 15th Conference of Parties,” commonly known as COP15.

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The grand ambitions and the business model of Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure startup Better Place are nothing if not controversial, but the man himself has the speaking skills of Steve Jobs. And in his description of why Copenhagen is important, in this video clip made by Found Object Films, the UN Foundation and TckTckTck, I think he’s basically right. Agassi says that no matter what happens at the summit, its importance is in creating a high level of public awareness about the climate crisis, and showing governments that the public stands behind action against climate change (hat tip Triple Pundit).

“There’s not a lot of policy that is required from governments, but the signal, the importance, ‘we’d like this thing to happen,’ is critical. It’s amazing what a galvanized shared vision does to a political body.”

The auto industry has gone through bailouts and bankruptcy since Shai Agassi, CEO of electric vehicle infrastructure startup and the former second-in-command at software giant SAP, declared that we’re about to enter the era of Car 2.0. With the allocation of billions of dollars in stimulus funds for smart grid technology, electric vehicle development and car charging infrastructure, movement toward a transportation system for the digital age — in which vehicles are connected to the power grid as well as communication networks — has picked up momentum. Here are the key players and technologies you need to know about.

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Nearly 6 times as much as an average American spends on gasoline each year — that’s how much electric vehicle infrastructure startup Better Place expects the batteries it needs for its charging network will cost to buy over the next 2-3 years, according to an interview in the UK Guardian this week with Better Place Denmark chief Jens Moberg. Moberg says he doesn’t expect industry battery manufacturing costs to drop below €8,000 ($11,440) until after 2012, when higher production volumes could help lower costs.

By now, you might be familiar with Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi’s plan: basically building out a network of charge points and “swap stations” for batteries, which will be owned by Better Place. Agassi often talks about modeling the business plan for this system after cell phone operators, but instead of building a network of cell towers and selling minutes, the startup aims to set up a network of charge and exchange spots and sell miles. In order to do that, however, it needs (among other things) to stock up on batteries for each customer — a hefty investment for a startup.

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What happens when you take the cost of the battery — generally the most expensive part of an electric car — out of the sticker price for electric vehicles? That’s the question explored in a new study released this morning from UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Economist Thomas Becker has modeled “adoption rates of electric vehicles with pay-per-mile service contracts” and switchable batteries — basically the Better Place model.

But just as the Better Place survey we wrote about earlier this morning suggests a significant portion of drivers seem to think there are more electric vehicle options actually available today than there really are, it seems too early in the game to say electric vehicles will become competitive with conventional cars within the next few years based on mass deployment of Better Place’s swapping and mileage plans.

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