ETV Motors raises $12M Series A round from Quercus Trust and 21Ventures

ETV Motors Ltd., a Herzliya, Israel-based start-up developing innovative electric vehicle propulsion technology, has announced its Series A investment round. The round was led by Quercus Trust of Newport Beach, California, with New York-based 21Ventures co-investing.

The $12 million milestone-driven investment will, according to the company, enable ETV Motors to move rapidly ahead with a multi-year research and development program in which it is partnering with universities and development organizations.

ETV Motors also revealed details about its development of enabling technologies for hybrid range-extended electric vehicles (REEVs). The company’s activity is focused on a novel, high-efficiency, dual-power micro-turbine and a proprietary high voltage lithium-ion battery. Integration of these optimized components will result in an innovative electric vehicle propulsion platform.



"We believe that REEVs are the optimal approach," said Dror Ben David, CEO of ETV Motors. "Our micro-turbine on-board charger and 4.7V lithium-ion cathode chemistry will facilitate the coming generations of environmentally-friendly, cost-effective, light-weight and safe electric vehicles."

"There are huge opportunities for disruptive, enabling technologies in the automotive field" said David Anthony, Managing Partner at 21Ventures. 'The approach of the ETV Motors team is based on innovative science, together with a sound vision of the future of electric vehicles. At 21Ventures, we see this as a game-changing approach, and we are pleased to be working with the company."

21Ventures' primary geographic focus is Israel, where over half of the funds investment capital has been deployed to date. 21Ventures currently manages more than $250 million worth of investments in 25 companies in Israel and the United States. More than half of 21Ventures’ investments are in clean energy companies.

Quercus Trust, funded by multimillionaire David Gelbaum, has quietly become one of the most active investors in the global cleantech industry. According to Greentech Media, David Gelbaum and Quercus Trust have made at least 47 cleantech investments. Five of Gelbaum's cleantech investments, in cooperation with 21Ventures, are in Israeli startups: 3GSolar, BioPetroClean, ETV Motors, TechnoSpin Wind, and Variable Wind.

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Variable Wind raises $2.5m from Quercus Trust, 21Ventures and AquAgro Fund

Variable Wind Solutions, a Tel-Aviv, Israel-based startup developing products to improve the efficiency of wind turbines, has raised $2.5m in its latest round of financing.

A report in Globes identifies 21Ventures as the lead investor, joined by AquAgro Fund and Brooks Keret Group. 21Ventures' web site, however, names Quercus Trust as the lead investor in Variable Wind.

Quercus Trust, funded by multimillionaire David Gelbaum, has quietly become one of the most active investors in the global cleantech industry. According to Greentech Media, David Gelbaum and Quercus Trust have made at least 47 cleantech investments. Five of Gelbaum's cleantech investments, in cooperation with 21Ventures, are in Israeli startups: 3GSolar, BioPetroClean, ETV Motors, TechnoSpin Wind, and Variable Wind.

Variable Wind is led by CEO Ian Kaplan, COO Gil Ziv, and CTO Dror Nadam.

Information about Variable Wind's products for small wind turbines, large wind turbines, and urban wind farms is available on the company's web site.

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Israel Venture Capital Jounal: "Can cleantech sail through the slump?"

The current issue of the Israel Venture Capital Journal, published by the IVC Research Center, is now available online.

Entitled "High C: Can cleantech sail through the slump?" (pdf), the issue contains a list of Israeli cleantech companies and articles by cleantech investors and entrepreneurs, government officials, and service providers:

• Sustainable development is essential for our future, by Minister of National Infrastructures, Benjamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer
• Belt tightening impacts cleantech trends, by Richard Youngman, Managing Director (Europe) of Cleantech Group
• The landscape has changed, but the opportunity persists, by Zeev Holtzman, Chairman of IVC and Giza Venture Capital
  
• Adjusting to cleantech investment, by Eytan Levy, CEO of Emefcy, and Gene Dolgin, analyst at Israel Cleantech Ventures
• The next cleantech frontier: Africa, by Daniel Schwab, Managing Director of Kayema Investments, and Miriam Schwab, CEO of Illuminea Marketing & Media
• Solar thermal energy: Israel and the Obama opportunity, by David Anthony, Managing Partner at 21Ventures
• Cleantech, Clusters, and Convergence: How investors and entrepreneurs combine to save the planet, Prof. Philip Cooke of Cardiff University
• US Government Grants: An alternative source of funds for Israeli cleantech startups, by Itai Nevo and Jonathan Shapira of Goodwin Procter LLP
  
• Cleantech calls for a different VC approach, by Rafi Gidron, Orni Petruschka, Nimrod Good and Albert Olier of Precede Technologies
• Light and harmony come mainstream, a profile of Arnold Goldman, Chairman of BrightSource Energy
• Everything you (n)ever wanted to know about cow manure, by Shlomi Ben-Arush, Marketing Manager at Global Environmental Solutions
• Early stage investing in a challenging environment, by Astorre Modena, General Partner of Terra Venture Partners
• The next opportunity in cleantech: A holistic approach to the water and energy nexus, by Booky Oren, Chairman of Miya
  
• In a downturn, aggressive communication and PR are key, by Steve Schuster, CEO of Rainier Communications
  
• Yes, Israel can take advantage of opportunities in cleantech! by Sarit Soccary Ben Yochanan, CEO of ATI Incubator
  
• Cleantech IP trends: intellectual property management from a business perspective, by Sharon Dayan, VP of Business Development at GTT Global Technology Transfer
  

21Ventures and Quercus Trust award grant to support solar research at Weizmann Institute

21Ventures and the Quercus Trust announced last week that they have awarded a $200,000 grant to support the solar energy research of Professor David Cahen of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The grant will be used to further the exploratory research of novel approaches to harness solar energy in less expensive and more efficient new ways and to explore approaches for making better use of existing solar energy technologies.

“Professor Cahen’s ground breaking work has the potential to make a significant impact on the availability and the ultimate use of alternative energy sources, in this case, solar energy. Such efforts support the goal of 21Ventures and the Quercus Trust to secure a cleaner and healthier environment worldwide,” said David Anthony, Managing Partner, 21Ventures.

One area that the research will focus on is exploring the potential of various long-term light management approaches. That direction will be complemented by research on potentially low cost, novel ways to collect more energy from sunlight and the means of using that energy in daily life.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York, 21Ventures is a venture capital fund which invests in seed, early stage technology and publicly traded companies in the physical security, clean energy and mobile software markets.

The Quercus Trust, which does not have a web site, has quietly become one of the world's leading cleantech investors. Led by David Gelbaum, a former hedge fund manager at Princeton/Newport Partners, the Quercus Trust reportedly had a 20-company portfolio of clean energy stocks worth more than $400 million as of December 2007. Earth2Tech provides a breakdown of ten cleantech venture funding deals made by Quercus in the first quarter of 2008 alone.

David Anthony and David Gelbaum both sit on the Board of Directors of WorldWater and Solar Technology Corportation.

BioPetroClean raises funds from 21Ventures

Israeli water purification company BioPetroClean has closed its latest financing round, raising $5 million from 21 Ventures LLC, according to an announcement by the company and a report in "Globes".

BioPetroClean is developing bioremediation systems for cleaning waste water contaminated by oil and other pollutants, through a process called Active Chemostate Treatment (ACT). The company was founded in 2006 by chairman Hezi Marueli, CEO David Amir, and CTO Eugene Rosenberg, a world-renowned authority in the biological treatment of oil pollution and a professor at Tel Aviv University.

According to Globes, the money will be used by BioPetroClean to set up a sales network and fund several potential BOT projects.

"During the refining process, refineries produce large quantities of water, that they have to treat rather than pumping it out as effluent. We bring the quality of the water to a level that enables them to either pump it back out into the environment or improve its quality through a further treatment process to a level that will enable it to be used for irrigation or in industry," explains BioPetroClean director of business development Yael Barash.

The company's technology is currently being tested in a pilot project at a number of key facilities in Israel and other countries, and Barash gives as examples, two projects now underway in South Africa. One is at a refinery in Durban and the other was a one-time project carried out in cooperation with global energy giants BP and Shell. "We carried out a single cleaning project for them two months ago, and we're now working on the terms of a contract with them for a larger project," adds Barash.

As to the potential financial value of the contracts, Barash notes that at small sites, meaning tanker farms for ports, a project can range from $300,000 to $800,000. A facility at oil refineries and drilling sites, which are considered large sites, will cost $1-3 million. A single service (cleaning an accrued quantity of water at a specified site) will cost around $50,000 to $250,000.

ALT E to develop urban wind farms in Israel

ALT E, a startup developing and installing "urban wind farms", was recently featured in Ha'aretz.

According to the company's founders, architect Erez Ella and economist Guy Shahar, ALT E will soon install an experimental rooftop wind turbine project in an undisclosed Tel Aviv high rise building. The company is reportedly in contact with several Israeli real estate developers and also hopes to export the idea to other countries.

"We take something that in any case the developer has to build, which is the roof floor, where there is a fence or wall that is used among other things to conceal machinery and also as a safety measure," explains Shahar. "Instead of building a regular wall, he can created a kind of wall of turbines, and also save money by reducing spending on electricity in the building."

"This is primarily for buildings that are 20 stories or higher and have good wind conditions," says Ella. "The use of wind will be only one component of a variety of alternative solutions that will also include the use of solar energy."

Other Israeli companies in the rooftop wind market include Coriolis Wind, a portfolio company of Precede Technologies, and TechnoSpin Wind, which recently raised $8 million in a Series A financing round led by NY-based 21 Ventures.

For more information on the global "small wind" power market, check out this series of articles from Greentech Media.

Related content: TechnoSpin Wind raises $8m from 21 Ventures

TechnoSpin Wind raises $8m from 21Ventures

TechnoSpin Wind has raised $8 million from US venture capital fund 21 Ventures, according to a report in "Globes". The company declined to disclose its valuation for the fund raising round.

TechnoSpin was founded in 2004 but not incorporated until the end of 2007 at the start of the latest funding round. The company was funded initially by its three founders, CEO Maxim Rakov, VP Business Development Natalie Barlev, and Vladimir Kotler, CTO and inventor of the company's technology.This is 21 Ventures' third investment in an Israeli cleantech startup, following previous investments in BPC BioPetroClean and 3GSolar (formerly OrionSolar).



TechnoSpin currently has two areas of activity. One is the development and production of rotors for small wind turbines which, theoretically, should also be suitable for use in large wind turbines. The company is already negotiating the first sales of these products which, it claims, are not limited to areas with strong winds, are cheaper to produce, and can be assembled anywhere in the world. TechnoSpin's small turbines will most likely compete with those produced by the industry's two leading players, Bergey Windpower Co., and Southwest Windpower of the US.

TechnoSpin's other field of activity is the development of wind turbine gears. Turbines are operated by a generator and a gearbox, which produce torque that is then converted into electrical power. The gearbox is, essentially, a mechanical mechanism which enables the torque to be generated with the minimum loss of power.

According to Rakov, "Our goal is to launch a pilot with the gear with 11 of the world's leading turbine manufacturers, and if it is a success, the sky's the limit, since it won't be limited solely to wind turbines, but will also be suited for use in aircraft, cars, washing machines, the mining industry, metalworking - any mechanical facility that produces electricity.

"As for the small turbine, we'll be making a launch in May when we erect the first product on our own roof. We've already had initial sales in this project. We're currently negotiating a number of sales with potential customers overseas while in Israel the interest is coming from potential distributors," Rokov told Globes.