Companies To Watch: Private Companies

Company: Tesla Motors
teslamotors.com
Year founded: 2003
Funding Raised: $278 million
Daimler, Valor Equity Partners, Technology Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DBL, Westly Group, Compass Venture Partners

This startup beat the major players to the punch by bringing the first highway-ready all-electric car to market, but the car remains a luxury item at more than $100,000. With a $456 million loan from the government, Tesla now hopes to introduce a more modestly priced electric sedan.

Recently received $21.3 million in stimulus funding to build a facility that will manufacture electrodes and other materials for ultracapacitors, which can store and release energy faster than batteries. Better ultracapacitors could enable carmakers to cut the size and cost of battery packs used in plug-in hybrid vehicles by as much as half.

Founded by genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, Synthetic Genomics has partnered with ExxonMobil and BP on projects that would use genetic engineering to make cheap, cleaner fuels from algae and coal-bed methane.

Produces cellulosic ethanol using a thermochemical process that turns biomass into synthetic gas and then liquid fuel. The company is set to open the United States' first commercial cellulosic-ethanol plant in Georgia next year.

Uses a unique type of microbe to convert biomass into ethanol in one step, potentially replacing a multistep process that uses expensive enzymes to break down cellulose.

Spun out of the University of Bristol in 1995, the company is developing a personal rapid-transit system that uses less energy than other forms of mass transit. The first version of the technology is currently in operational testing at Heathrow Airport.

Is commercializing a cheap one-step process for producing cellulosic ethanol, using specially developed yeasts and bacteria. Late last year the company started producing ethanol at a demonstration facility; it hopes to break ground on its first commercial production facility next year.

Is building charging stations for electric vehicles worldwide and also hopes to open chains of battery-swapping stations, but this will require car companies to standardize their batteries.

With a half-billion-dollar loan from the U.S. Department of Energy recently secured, production of a luxury plug-in hybrid, the Karma, is expected to begin next year. The company is also working to bring a more affordable model to market.

Constructs subway and rail systems throughout the world--including what will be the world's largest automated light rail, currently under construction in Dubai.

Read more:

» Petroleum's Long Good-bye

» Cleaner Vehicles by the Million

» High-Speed Rail

» Urban Renewal

» Scaling Up Is Hard to Do

» Companies to Watch Private, and Public

» Satellites for Speedy Skies

» Washington Backs Plug-ins

» Electric Cars Move Slowly

» Research to Watch