Electric Vehicles: Huge Potential for Venture Capital and Green Jobs

21 Startups Are Cleaning up the Auto Industry

 

Tesla Motors Model S

The Electric Vehicle market is raising billions of dollars, and creating thousands of green jobs. Optimism reigns despite the slowness of deployment of charging stations, and the troubles at A123 Systems and its repercussions for Fisker that are giving the industry an unjustified bad name ("loser").

The list of start-up companies in this market is very long. The top 21 listed below have raised a total of $8 billion in private venture capital. They represent five industry segments: EV manufacturing, hybrid conversion kits, charging stations, batteries, and engines/transmissions technology.

EV Charging Stations not Leading the Charge Fast Enough

This is the typical chicken and egg problem. No charging stations, no electric cars; no electric cars, no charging stations. Without charging stations everywhere, the range of EV's will remain a problem, until battery and charging technologies deliver break-throughs in increased capacity and shorter charge time. Scientists say it will take 5 to 10 years to get there.

Market research firm Frost and Sullivan estimates that the U.S will have over 4 million charging stations by 2017. How will we'll get there remains a big unanswered question. An entire industry, and tens of thousands of green jobs depend on them.

Smart Grid Gets New Player, New Green Jobs

AutoGrid, a green start-up, officially launched its smart grid data analysis software with $9 million in funding.

What is the smart-grid?

AutoGrid Systems, a "smart grid" start-up officially launched its "big data" analysis software to help optimize the electric grid.

AutoGrid also announced that it has signed agreements with 2 large customers: the City of Palo Alto Utilities and the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District.

AutoGrid has so far raised $9 million from Foundation Capital, Voyager Capital and Stanford University. It has also obtained $5 million worth of contracts from the U.S. Department of Energy's ARPA-E research agency and the California Energy Commission.

Economic Policy Institute Upbeat on Green Jobs

New report by the Economic Policy Institute paints positive picture of the green economy and green jobs.

A new briefing paper by Ethan Pollack of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) titled "Counting up to Green: Assessing the green economy and its implications for growth and equity", paints a positive outlook for the green economy and its potential to create green jobs.

Assessing the size of the green economy and the number of green jobs remains an important issue. Various slightly different definitions of green jobs make it difficult to accurately count the number of green jobs, and size the green economy.

The US Government's Bureau of Labor Statistics published its own definition in Sept, 2010, and several Think Tanks have also published their own, most notably the Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Brookings Institution.