Zenn Motor has come to the end of its life as an electric car maker. The Toronto-based company’s announcement late Thursday that it has ceased production of its Zenn LSV model and laid off 15 employees who supported sales, marketing and production of the vehicle, marks the final shift to focus its efforts and financial resources entirely on a bet that ultracapacitor startup EEStor will make good on its ambitious performance claims.

The transition for Zenn from manufacturer to a would-be supplier for automakers and specialty vehicle companies has been months in the making. Last fall, CEO Ian Clifford told reporters the company no longer planned to sell its first highway-speed electric car, the cityZenn, and that it would “shift focus away” from its existing product, the Zenn LSV low-speed electric model.

Continue reading this story

Algae into fuels: It might be one of the great green hopes for weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, but it sure won’t come cheap. Aurora Biofuels, an Alameda, Calif.-based startup using biotechnology to create algae strains for biodiesel production, has just announced a new funding round of $15 million. This third-round financing brings the startup’s total fundraising to $40 million.

This announcement comes on the heels of news that longtime oil exec Robert Walsh has stepped down from the chief executive post at Aurora, and that the startup’s chief financial officer Joe Geesman has retired. Today Aurora’s new chief financial officer, Scott McDonald, (also announced today), said in a statement that the startup has “ample reserve in the bank.” Even so, this latest round will be “critical,” he said, for the company as it “expands its field of operations and further optimizes its technology.”

Continue reading this story

If you want a smart lighting system that helps cut energy use and maximizes efficiency, you gotta lose the dumb fixtures and go with tech that has computer intelligence written into its DNA. That’s the premise of Digital Lumens, a 2-year-old startup based in Boston, Mass. that is combining LED (light-emitting diode) systems with networking and software for industrial facilities. Founded in 2008, Digital Lumens crept out of stealth mode this morning, detailing for the first time its plan to carve out a slice of the growing market for efficient lighting.

“We’ve merged together LEDs with networking software,” Pincince explained. He said the company has taken a “very, very energy efficient fixture,” and added “local intelligence.” Each fixture has an on-board computer and mesh networking capabilities, allowing the system to adjust to variables such as whether daylighting is available, the state of a neighboring fixture or if a particular work area or machine needs to be illuminated at a set time. The system can also be programmed, and provide data about usage and occupancy to facility managers through Digital Lumens’ energy management system, dubbed “LightRules.” According to Digital Lumens’ release this morning, LightRules can also be used to respond to demand response calls and can be integrated with third-party systems, such as carbon accounting software.

Continue reading this story

If you think of an electric vehicle startup hoping to go public in the near future, Tesla Motors is probably what comes to mind. But another green car venture, Smith Electric Vehicles, also has its eye on an initial public offering that it hopes will help fund a major expansion over the coming years. CEO Bryan Hansel told us in an interview on Friday that the company’s IPO should be expected “sooner rather than later.”

Because Smith develops electric trucks for commercial fleets, in contrast to the eye-catching electric Roadsters, the company tends to fly under the radar. But Smith has big ambitions, and if its scheme succeeds to help fleets switch over some or all of their vehicles to run on electricity, it could play a key role in reducing emissions from the transportation sector.

Continue reading this story

Early stage startups competing for the MIT Clean Energy Prize have a lot more than the $200,000 grand prize winnings on the line. Winning the annual contest also means a team, with students making up at least half of its members, will get a spotlight in front of big players who can help take a neat experiment to the next level — at last year’s award ceremony, winner Husk Insulation out of the University of Michigan had the attention of Google’s director of energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, the state energy and environmental affairs chiefs for Massachusetts, the CEO of utility NSTAR, and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

Today the MIT Clean Energy Prize has named the 24 semifinalists (hat tip Mass High Tech) who have a shot at winning the grand prize and basking in that spotlight in May. These teams — selected by a panel of judges from academia, industry and government — represent what the contest organizers see as “some of the most promising clean energy technologies and business ideas coming out of universities this year.”  What are the ideas for cleaning up the transportation sector? They range from renewable fuels to bike sharing tech. Here’s a look at the five teams that made the cut in the MIT Clean Energy Prize transportation category.

Continue reading this story

Quiet Khosla Ventures-backed startup Transonic Combustion has garnered attention over the last few days after revealing the geeky details of its scheme for a more efficient fuel-injection system. The company, which presented at the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Summit last week, represents only one of a raft of startups working on technology that could help boost the fuel efficiency and reduce the emissions of the world’s vehicle fleet long before electric cars go mainstream.

Continue reading this story

As the stimulus and the recession both leave marks on the cleantech industry, cleantech investors, along with entrepreneurs, are adjusting to a new landscape. And CMEA Capital is one venture capital firm that seems to be navigating it successfully, so far. The company backed A123Systems, the lithium-ion battery manufacturer whose much-celebrated initial public offering surpassed expectations in the midst of an IPO drought in September, as well as Solyndra, the thin-film solar startup that received the first renewable-energy manufacturing loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy.

We recently sat down with Maurice Gunderson, senior partner at CMEA, who previously co-founded venture-capital firm Nth Power, to discuss his thoughts on the future of the greentech industry, and the how CMEA – and its portfolio companies – are prepared to thrive in the new economy. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Continue reading this story

The ARPA-E summit this week was flush with startups looking for government grants and VC dollars — and some looking for both. Energy-storage startup Sun Catalytix, which just won $4 million from ARPA-E in January, now plans to seek a new round of venture capital, Sun Catalytix director (and Ethernet inventor) Bob Metcalfe told us in an interview. The Cambridge, Mass.-based startup already has raised $3 million in seed funding and hasn’t yet determined the amount of its Series A round, but Metcalfe said it would be in the “single digit millions” as the ARPA-E contract is helping it keep its capital needs down.

The idea behind the technology, developed by Dan Nocera at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is to use an intermittent source of energy, such as solar power, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. When the energy is needed, the hydrogen and oxygen can either be recombined to produce electricity, such as with a fuel cell, or the hydrogen can potentially be converted into a liquid fuel, like ammonia, and used to power vehicles.

Continue reading this story

EVO Electric, a U.K.-based startup developing a more efficient electric motor for hybrid and electric cars, will be getting a whole lotta attention in Geneva on Tuesday due to a major new partnership. The 3-year-old company has scored a deal with Lotus Engineering, and EVO’s motors are being featured in a plug-in hybrid concept sports car — the Evora hybrid — expected to be unveiled at the Geneva International Motor Show on Tuesday.

The Evora hybrid is expected to look like this regular Evora sports car, which came out in September.

The Evora 414E Hybrid concept car is a plug-in hybrid version of Lotus’ currently available Evora (pictured above), which represented Lotus’ first new vehicle since 1995 when itstarted rolling out in Europe in September. The hybrid concept includes two EVOdrive motors, each providing 204 horsepower and 295 pounds of torque per foot, as well as EVO’s electric generator technology to help run a 35kW range extender system.

Continue reading this story

Gary Conley, the entrepreneur who founded concentrating solar company SolFocus, is at it again. Last month he launched b2u Solar, a startup which uses the sun’s heat for industrial applications like drying, curing and commercial baking, and is one of a crop of startups working to take advantage of the higher efficiency potential of heat compared to electricity.

At the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week, Conley claimed b2u’s technology can deliver the equivalent of 40 to 60 cents per watt – and 2.5 to 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour – by generating heat directly, instead of producing energy that is then used to make heat. That makes it potentially competitive with natural gas today, and the economics look even better if the heat is also used for air conditioning, as well as heating, Conley said. (It may sound counterintuitive, but heat can be paired with a chiller to generate cool air).

Continue reading this story