Investment
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It's not unheard of for the fans of well-loved brands—e.g. Tesla—to decide to buy shares in the company. It's somewhat less common for companies to reach out to their customers en masse and pitch all of them on buying shares in the company. That's apparently what the Blink charging network has done, according to numerous posts in electric-car forums from members who use its stations. DON'T MISS: Got A Blink Charging Station? ChargePoint Offers Up To $2,200 For You To Switch (Oct 2013) Many electric-car drivers who enrolled in the Blink network to use its public charging stations...
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Jaguar Land Rover owner denies stake in electric-car maker Faraday Future: updated report
Most reports on startup electric-car maker Faraday Future tend to describe it as "struggling," and that may be an understatement. It halted work at its Nevada-based production facility in 2016; the startup company's main backer, China's LeEco, acknowledged this past May it was experiencing...
Sean Szymkowski -
BMW, Mercedes invest in 'flexible car ownership' startup Fair
How would you know that the standard model for individuals buying new cars is dying? Sure, you could point to car sharing services like Car2go or Zipcar. Or you might point to ride hailing companies like Lyft or Uber. Maybe you think the subscription model for the Hyundai Ioniq Electric...
John Voelcker -
Ikea invests in hybrid-vehicle builder XL Hybrids
XL Hybrids carved its niche in the vehicle-electrification segment by offering hybrid conversion kits for regular gasoline-powered vans, commercial trucks, and pickups. Thus far, the Boston-based start-up has found success and a recent round of venture capital funding raised another $22 million...
Sean Szymkowski -
China's five-year budget for renewable energy: $360 billion
Despite a recent downturn, the Chinese government is moving full-speed ahead to invest heavily in renewable energy. The country's national regulators have already promoted renewable energy as a possible cure for the country's notoriously-bad air pollution. But China has placed more emphasis on...
Stephen Edelstein -
Electric cars pose 'resoundingly negative' threat to oil companies: analyst Fitch
Electric cars could threaten the oil industry, a leading credit agency believes.
Stephen Edelstein -
Investors are calling on automakers to cut carbon emissions more aggressively.
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Chinese investors make 'long bets' on electric-car companies
Several U.S. electric-car companies have gotten help from Chinese investors.
Stephen Edelstein -
Elio Motors Raises $22 Million From Small Investors, Still Needs $130 Million More
As one website put it--in a piece tagged to lure Tesla Motors fans--Elio Motors is "the other automotive startup" to which those fans should presumably pay attention. But even Tesla CEO Elon Musk hasn't proposed "crowdsourcing" his product-development funds. Given that Elio now seems to have raised...
John Voelcker -
Elio Motors Offers Shares To Public In 'Crowdfunding' Investment Quest
When Paul Elio said in April that his startup carmaker, Elio Motors, was pursuing crowdsourced funding, most journalists likely imagined sites like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. In fact, the investment opportunity is slightly more formal than that. Elio needs to raise roughly $230 million to start...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Transparency On Orders, Sales, Production Fades: Do Owners, Investors Care?
On February 11, electric-car maker Tesla Motors will release its 2014 earnings and hold a conference call for financial analysts to discuss them. If recent patterns hold, the company won't disclose a number of the important operating metrics that reveal how well it's doing. In fact, over the last...
John Voelcker -
BMW: No Interest In Tesla Cooperation, Musk Was Posturing For PR
Regardless of recent comments by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, BMW says it has no plans for a partnership with the electric-car maker.
Stephen Edelstein -
It's a vision that seems like something from a future century: a carmaker preparing to phase out combustion engines altogether. The notion that an entire brand could walk away from the hydrocarbon-fueled engines that power more than 1 billion vehicles on our roads--and have done since 1885--is inconceivable. And yet that's what one industry analyst suggests famed German luxury maker BMW is preparing to do. Tesla investor Ron Baron manages mutual funds at Baron Capital; his funds have roughly $250 million invested in Tesla Motors, he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" program three weeks ago. Baron...
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Toyota Too Reveals It Sold Some Tesla Shares, As Daimler Did
Well, that makes two: Toyota confirmed yesterday that it had sold a portion of its shares in electric-car maker Tesla Motors. The Japanese company's sales appear to have taken place at roughly the same time that German automaker Daimler sold its 4 percent stake in Tesla, adding $780 million in cash...
John Voelcker -
Daimler Cashes In On Tesla Stock, Sells Share In Electric-Car Maker
In early 2009, German luxury car maker Daimler effectively saved Silicon Valley electric-car maker Tesla Motors by purchasing 9.1 percent of the company for a reported $50 million. Now, more than five years later--following a remarkable rise in Tesla's stock price--Daimler has largely cashed out...
John Voelcker -
Rockefeller Oil Heirs Will Divest Fossil-Fuel Stocks From Family Funds
The Rockefellers will divest fossil-fuel stocks from their charity.
Stephen Edelstein -
Tesla Needs Cash? $6 Billion Required Through 2025, Says Goldman Sachs
Carmaking is very, very, very expensive. A conventional vehicle platform or architecture generally costs about $1 billion to design, engineer, test, certify, and put into production. And the various models derived from that architecture usually last about seven years. Multiply that by multiple...
John Voelcker -
Blood And Gore: Coal Is Becoming A Stranded Asset
In case you hadn't noticed, it's Halloween. So how could we not comment on an article whose byline reads Gore and Blood? Their topic may be slightly esoteric, but it has big implications for our energy future. It's all about stranded assets--those that lose economic value well ahead of their...
Antony Ingram -
Hands up all those of you who'd forgotten that Fisker Automotive still exists? The company might not have produced a car in over a year, but the struggling firm is still yet to declare bankruptcy too, as it sits in some kind of automotive hibernation until an investor or buyer can be found. Fisker is worth a mere fraction of the $1.4 billion that originally went into the company, including its $192 million Department of Energy loan. As AutoBild reports (via our sister site Motor Authority), a German group is said to be interested in acquiring the company, for a mere $25 million. The...
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Why Silicon Valley Venture Firm Kleiner Perkins Bet On Fisker, Not Tesla
Venture capitalists fund a lot of startup companies, and most of them don't pan out. So famed venture firm Kleiner Perkins' stake in Fisker Automotive--which is still trying to sell itself, but hasn't built a car for 12 months--could be viewed as just another failed investment. On the other hand...
John Voelcker -
What's Going On At Fisker These Days?
At this point, many auto journalists have a pre-written obituary for Fisker Automotive all ready to publish if that company declares bankruptcy. Which, so far, it hasn't. And according to Reuters, its remaining executives are working furiously to arrange a buyout to avoid that fate. In fact, the...
John Voelcker -
Fisker Hires Investment Bank To Find Funding, Partner Companies
Fisker Automotive, often referring to in the media as "struggling," is looking for additional funding and a carmaking partner. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the company has now hired an investment bank, Evercore Partners, to assist in those quests. Fisker...
John Voelcker -
Goodbye, Solar? Greentech Investors Shift To Electric Cars, Consumer Tech
The green technology investing boom has slowed. But if you ask investors, greentech isn’t disappearing, it’s just changing. Between 2006 and 2007, cleantech and greentech emerged as hot terms in the investor vernacular. Startups focused on big-picture energy needs, including solar and...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Irate Investor Sues Fisker: A Little Lesson In Venture Capital
This is the week when driving impressions of the 2012 Fisker Karma have started to appear, as Fisker invites in waves of automotive journalists for a half-day of driving in and around Los Angeles. (We'll have our report early next week, but we had a brief drive a few weeks ago, and another with...
John Voelcker