Green Auto News: Daimler Investing In Tesla=Electric Mercedes-Bens

A real interesting move by Daimler to shoot Silicon Valley electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors with a pretty solid chunk of cash, equating to 10% of the electric- sports car manufactures company. A great step forward in a major manufacturer (Daimler) jumping into the green, sustainability, autos game. Like most people, I am curious whether Tesla will be successful making and selling cars or if their real cash cow will be licensing their technology to others. Time will tell...

Courtesy TechCrunch...Silicon Valley electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors got another shot in the arm today from German auto giant Daimler, which took a 10 percent stake in the company and expanded its partnership with Tesla to equip future Mercedes-Benz vehicles with electric lithium-ion batteries. Mercedes has been testing Tesla’s batteries in a fleet of 100 smart cars, and is already moving into limited production. But with this agreement, Mercedes now expects to roll out its first battery-powered Mercedes-Benz in 2010, and offer battery-powered vehicles for all of its models by 2012.

The amount invested was not disclosed, but even more valuable to Tesla is the vote of confidence from one of the world’s leading auto companies. In a press release, Daimler proclaims: “Tesla is the only production automaker selling a highway capable electric vehicle in North America and Europe.”

The money will no doubt help as well, since Tesla still needs a few hundred million dollars to produce its own $50,000 Model S, which is half the price of its first car, the Tesla Roadster. The company is still applying for $350 million in government loans to get the Model S into production, but it looks like Mercedes will have at least its B-class cars on the road first.

But as I suggested a year ago, Tesla’s real business may be in supplying the electric drive trains for other vehicles. The Roadster and Model S might just turn out to be really expensive demos. In a TechCrunch poll I inserted into that post (and again below), 77 percent of you agreed. I wonder if Mercedes has an exclusive license to Tesla’s battery technology, at least for a few years. (Update: Tesla says there is no exclusivity. According to spokesperson Rachel Konrad, “This investment obviously establishes a very close relationship between the two companies, but Tesla still plans to continue with its strategy of growing its powertrain business through sales of EV components. This investment does not preclude Tesla from growing such relationships with other automotive OEMs.”)

Obama Supports Tech Innovation and Start Ups

Poptent Crowdsources For Best Creative

Awhile ago, I wrote an article about crowdsourcing and the affect it will have on our industry. Today TechCrunch contributor Jason Kincaid broke the below story about Poptent, who’s business model is built on the idea of crowdsourching. Poptent is an unbelievably cool product that could very seriously impact the way we look at developing creative. Personally, I think it’s a fantastic business model that can provide a fantastic resource to pure media agencies, as well as prove to be valuable to some of the larger agencies who may be looking to cut costs in the “new economy.”

Poptent Lets Brands Crowdsource Advertising On The Cheap

Poptent , a startup that crowdsources advertising to the public, has just launched in public beta. The site allows advertisers and brands to post requests for an ad, which are then produced and submitted by the pool of small studios and videographers that make up the site’s members. Poptent is a sister site to XLNTads (also launching today), which focuses more on the brand marketers rather than video creators.

Poptent CEO Neil Perry says that while Poptent is designed to encourage submissions from its thousands of members, it isn’t going for the “YouTube crowd”. Instead, it’s focused on catering to small but professional teams capable of producing TV-quality ads.

To participate on the site, advertisers pay Poptent a fee of around $25,000, and then post guidelines as to what they’re looking for, along with assets like company logos. Poptent members then film and submit their ads to the site. If an advertiser finds an ad they like, they can purchase it for around $5-7,500 (oftentimes they will purchase multiple ads at once).

Some New Companies To Keep Your Eye On

Straight from the depths of Digital Influentials, a group of highly motivated and strategic thinkers in the digital advertising world, Cory Treffiletti offers his take on the economy for start ups, as well as naming some companies to watch in the coming months.

Of course we can’t talk about a Round Up of the last two weeks unless we talk about the big, stinky elephant in the room. The economy. The last two weeks have been tumultuous and things probably won’t get better before it gets a little bit worse. The ripple effects of what’s going on as a result of the mortgage crisis and the new restrictions on lending are clearly going to reach the start-up business in the coming months. It’s already becoming more difficult to raise money and belts are tightening now that the venture capitalists have returned from their summer vacations. This doesn’t mean that people won’t still fund great ideas, but you’d better do your homework and dot your “i’s” and cross your “t’s” if you hope to be successful! The angel route can be easier for gathering together the initial funding you need but don’t forget the term “bootstrapping”. Many of the companies we see and many of the ideas we hear about are capable of being bootstrapped for growth if only those in charge are thrifty and economical with their time. From my perspective, a successful start-up requires a scrappy, do-it-right-at-all-costs attitude. Those are the kinds of people that I would invest with and those are the kinds of people that are destined to be successful, especially in an economic environment such as this.Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s dive right into it, shall we?

Some of the best ideas that we’ve seen the last couple of weeks:The TechCrunch 50 last week was an amazing source of new companies and funky ideas, but one of the best that we saw was GO PLAN IT (http://www.goplanit.com). The site is definitely in beta and needs to be populated with far more cities than it currently covers, but the idea is simple and the execution is elegant. If you’re going on vacation and you don’t know how to plan the activities of your trip, Go Plan It will take care of it for you! Go there and type in “San Francisco” as your vacation destination, enter the dates you’ll be there and let Go Plan It spit out your activity itinerary including all the recommended places to go and things to see, laid out in a schedule with times and directions. It’s one step planning for people like me who have a tendency to lose interest in the research required to get the most out of your trip. It’s like a knowledgeable travel agent without all the up sell!

Another company that stood out from that conference was FITBIT (http://www.fitbit.com). FitBit is a small device that you clip onto your body and it tracks your vitals and calorie burning activity through the course of the day, allowing you to log it in and focus on a healthy means of losing weight. The idea is not new, but once again the execution is elegant! Since the device is wireless, it automatically uploads the data as soon as you’re in close proximity to the base station, taking all the work out of your hands. People fall off diets because they get lazy, but now laziness is not an excuse!

One more from TechCrunch was BOJAM (http://www.bojam.com). BoJam is a tool that allows musicians to collaborate online without any restrictions such as location or time. It is a fully collaborative environment where you upload your music, mix it remotely with the music of other people and locate additional musicians to fill in the holes. If you ever heard “The Postal Service” (a spin-off of Death Cab For Cutie) you know that good music can be created regardless of boundaries. Now BoJam makes it even easier and more cost effective (no need to pay for stamps with this model).

Last week we mentioned a couple of our favorite iPhone Applications and this week we wanted to continue the trend. The first one to highlight is REQALL. ReQall is made for people like me who can’t remember anything without writing it down. I used to have a habit of sending myself emails with notes to remind me, but ReQall keeps a running track of my little reminders while also copying me with an email, getting that urgency into my inbox. If you’re on the go and you’re juggling too many balls, this is a great application.

SEARCHME mobile may not yet be an application, per se, but if you add it to your homepage you get a very functional image-based search engine. The format is clean and for those of us who like to see where we’re going, it’s a nifty way to search.

And of course, since it’s football season, don’t forget SPORTACULAR. Sportacular is a great interface for viewing sports scores and news but it’s also the only iPhone app that I’ve come across where you can keep track of your customized fantasy team! I actually keep my wife’s fantasy team in the phone so we can keep tabs on Sunday afternoon (Yes – my wife has a fantasy football team - those of you men who read that line are definitely jealous)!