This month’s green tech meet-up featured an agenda steeped in transportation technologies, kicking off with a few words from sponsor David Moss of Infield Capital which invests in transportation related clean tech and recently participated in the Solix round. Another commonality among the presentations was the inclusion of cost comparisons to existing technologies demonstrating a consciousness of the economics of clean technology adoption.
Tim Feaver, CEO of Porous Power
Porous Power’s Symmetrix product improves lithium ion batteries. As the company’s name suggests, a key feature of Symmetrix, which is used as a separator between the two poles of the battery (anode and cathode), is about twice as porous as traditional separators leading to less internal resistance resulting in faster charge, less heat and longer cell cycle life. Additional advantages of Symmetrix are cheaper production and the fact that it is directly laminatable to electrodes without pretreatment. Lamination is essential for the flat lithium-ion batteries which are preferred in future hybrid designs. While the hybrid market is key to Porous’ future growth prospects, more immediate revenue is expected from some smaller cell applications with shorter development cycles. Specifically, Porous has an agreement with an Asian MP3 maker to be used in a player expected to start production in early 2009. The company forecasts $1M in sales in 2009 increasing to $50M by 2012. The company is seeking $750K bridge financing to be followed by a $7M Series A round.
Guy Babbit, CZero
CZero is working to develop a hydraulic hybrid retrofit kit to be used on existing truck and bus fleets. Although most people first think of electric hybrids, the definition of a hybrid is simply a vehicle with more than one power source. A hydraulic hybrid uses hydraulic pumps and a high pressure fluid accumulator in the place of an electric battery. A key limitation of electric hybrids is the ability of the battery to capture energy quickly (i.e. time to re-charge) which means some energy is not recaptured when a vehicle decelerates quickly, for example. Hydraulic hybrids can capture energy much more quickly which makes them well suited to vehicles making frequent starts and stops like garbage trucks and city buses. The CZero team has built an operating hydraulic hybrid truck based on a retrofit kit and had the chance to demo it in the CSU homecoming parade. A key challenge for CZero to make a marketable retrofit kit is to make it cheaper and less-labor intensive to install which are key goals of the second generation planned for the spring of 2009. For more information on Czero check out the RockyRadar profile.
C Russell Thomas, President and Founder of the Thomas Engine Company
Thomas bills his company’s product as a way to achieve 20-30% fuel economy improvements without sacrificing drivability. The 6-cylinder engine design uses variable compression ratio technology, reduced displacement and high turbo-charging. The engine looks substantially different than a traditional engine with the cylinders wrapped in a circle as opposed to the traditional inline design and uses a cam plate instead of a crank shaft. Beyond those differences, Thomas said that the parts were pretty standard, and importantly the engine would fit in the engine compartments of current V6 cars eliminating the need for redesign. At large production runs, the Thomas engine could be sold for $1480 per unit which is competitive with traditional engines ($1200-1300) and much less than other more efficient engines like hybrids. The company is currently testing a prototype cam plate. Thomas’ goal is to widely license the technology to different manufactures for royalties in the neighborhood of 7%.
Proterra LLC
Proterra offers a variety of products to improve transit bus efficiency. They offer fully electric buses, diesel-hybrid buses, hybrid drive-trains, rapid charging systems, and composite bus bodies. A key feature of the company’s TerraVolt energy storage system is rapid recharging in less than 10 minutes which enables to bus to more efficiently capture energy when braking (think back to hydraulic hybrids). An interesting opportunity given the rapid recharge would be to offer recharging stations along a fixed bus route, extending the range of fully electric vehicles. Proterra offered a well-fleshed out economic argument citing a payback period of 7 years on their all electric buses (with positive payback based on fleet life down to diesel prices of $1.70/gallon) and 9 payback on their diesel hybrids (payback down to prices of $1.90/gallon). The company expects to have positive EBIDTA by 2010.
The Green Tech Meetup is held on the second Thursday of every month and is designed to provide a time and place for technologists interested in alternative energy, alternative transportation, energy efficiency, green building, and recovery/recycling technology. The event is sponsored by Access Venture Partners, Sequel Venture Partners, Infield Capital, Green Spark Ventures, and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. The group will not hold a meetup in December. For information on future meetups visit the group’s website.
