VentureBeat

Two companies have been tapped as the first recipients of an investment from a program called RechargeIT, run by Google’s philanthropic arm: Aptera Motors, a Carlsbad, Calif. company that is gearing up to sell a futuristic three-wheeled car; and ActaCell, a battery company that hopes to help make electric cars both cheap and safe.

Each company is receiving $2.75 million from Google.org (although ActaCell also has other new investors). The announcement comes as RechargeIT is releasing the results of a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) test showing that a modified Prius can get over 90 miles per gallon.

The 230+ miles-per-gallon Aptera has received plenty of attention over the past few months, and a post here on VentureBeat asking whether readers would drive the odd-looking vehicle continues to get responses indicating that yes, quite a few people are interested in the $30,000 car. The Google investment is also only part of a total $24 million round that should bring the company closer to its production goals.

However, ActaCell is appearing for the first time with this investment. The company, spun out of the University of Texas at Austin and based in the same city, is working on a lithium-ion battery technology that it thinks might be able to change the dynamics of the electric car market. At the moment, li-ion is by far the preferable battery type in terms of performance, but it is also far more expensive than competing technologies like nickel-metal hydride (NiMH).

Outside of the funding details, CEO Bill Ott didn’t want to say much about the technology when I spoke to him. However, he was willing to admit that there are a few broad problems that ActaCell wants to tackle. One of the top priorities is safety — li-ion batteries are famous for exploding or catching on fire in laptops. Cars, obviously, need to operate without either of those things happening.

Just as important is the cost. Ott suggested that a major component of cost is in the materials that go into li-ion batteries, which often include “precious commodities” like cobalt and nickel. “If you want to build a successful company,” he told me, “you have to have a low-cost material.” Also important is extending the life of the battery so that it needs to be replaced less often.

The company plans on releasing the details of initial tests of its batteries later this year, and Ott says that they should be commercializing the technology by 2010, around the time they’ll need another round of funding.

Major competitors to a technology like ActaCell include A123, a li-ion maker that is loaded with cash and appears to be contemplating an IPO, and secretive EEStor, a maker of so-called “hypercapacitors” that entered a partnership with defense giant Lockheed Martin this year. EEStor, by the way, hates talking to press, but a new mystery blogger has been talking about the company; if you’re curious about their progress, try checking it out.

The total investment taken by ActaCell was for $5.85 million. The round was actually led by DFJ Mercury, with participation from Google.org, Applied Ventures, and Good Energies.

In the solar cell market, there are three broad categories. Thin-film manufacturers produce cells that convert little of the sun’s energy to electricity, but are dirt cheap. Opposite thin-film, companies like Spectrolab and Emcore make highly efficient, but very expensive cells. Between are the standard solar photovoltaic makers, with average efficiencies, and average prices.

The result is a pricing balance that gives each group a slice of the overall market. But what if it were possible to have the low production costs of a thin-film maker like First Solar, plus the 30 percent-plus efficiencies of a Spectrolab? Most industry pundits would say such disruptive technology is a pipe dream, but Wakonda Technologies is claiming to be able to make it happen.

What makes Spectrolab’s technology so expensive is the necessity building its cells atop a single-crystal wafer, a sheet of material that is painstakingly manufactured as a flawless whole in order to precisely control its electrical properties. Wakonda, a newly-emergy Medford, Mass. startup, says it has the ability to “simulate” those wafers with a cheap metal foil, much as thin-film makers do. Think of it as a bit like replacing expensive real diamonds with cubic zirconium.

Unfortunately, Wakonda isn’t giving many real specifics on its technology. Its credibility instead relies on an all-star cast of backers. The venture firms helping supply its $9.5 million financing include Advanced Technology Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. Notably, Wakonda also has the financial support of Applied Ventures, the investing arm of Applied Materials, a large tech company that has some of the most advanced thin-film manufacturing technology around.

If Wakonda’s technology lives up to the early claims of thin-film manufacturing prices with over 30 percent cell efficiencies, it will not only leapfrog the existing solar industry, but will also be less expensive than any existing energy generation technology, including coal, natural gas and nuclear.

Still, talk is cheap, and Wakonda’s technology has yet to move out of the labs. And in case it does meet its targets and leapfrogs the existing solar industry, it still has some contenders, such as the ultra-cheap solar concentrating technology that Sunrgi claims to have. Here’s to both of them living up to their promises.

SunEdison, a solar services company based in Beltsville, Md., has taken $131 million in venture funding and $30 million in debt to finance its rapid expansion and ongoing projects, including some of the largest solar installations in the United States.

In the booming market for solar installations, there is a profusion of different business models, serving markets from residential to business and military, and selling or leasing panels, or simply selling their electricity. SunEdison often handles the up-front costs of installation for its large corporate and institutional clients, so the hefty amount of this particular funding is encouraging, but not terribly surprising.

Depending on how you count funding, it’s not even the largest to date. Recurrent Energy, a West Coast startup that has its own large projects, can tap into some $200 million from Morgan Stanley for its projects, although the money is not a direct investment in the company. Other companies have their own, smaller financing agreements to help fund their operations.

SunEdison’s projects to date include a 16 megawatt solar farm near Charlotte, N.C., which may be the biggest solar photovoltaic deployment in the country when it’s completed. It won’t be the largest in North America, though — that distinction will probably be held by the 19 megawatt farm SunEdison is building in Ontario, Canada. The company also does work for Wal-Mart, Whole Foods Market, and a number of other large corporations.

The bigger story here is SunEdison’s role as a facilitator. Projects taken on by SunEdison for other companies and utilities help create ecosystems of smaller companies where the installation is taking place, and pull in solar panels and other equipment from companies around the world. One example of another up-and-coming solar company benefiting from the projects is Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR), a thin-film manufacturer that has agreed to sell $500 million worth of its panels to SunEdison by 2011.

Both the $131 million venture financing and the $30 million in debt were provided by Greylock Partners, HSH Nordbank AG, Applied Ventures, Black River Commodity Clean Energy Investment Fund, MissionPoint Capital Partners, and Allco Renewable Energy Limited.