CNET Reports from EmTech08

Senior writer Martin LaMonica of CNET writes about Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures, keynote speech at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference:

Khosla: Crazy clean-tech ideas yield breakthroughs
Famed investor Vinod Khosla is one of the clean-tech industry’s most vocal cheerleaders. But most of today’s clean technologies fall short of his 1-billion-car test.

“If it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t matter,” says Khosla. “Most of what we talk about today–hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol, solar photovoltaics, geothermal–I believe are irrelevant to the scale of the problem” of climate change…read more

LaMonica also analyzes a panel discussion on green transportation and one of its panelist, JB Straubel, the chief technology officer of Tesla Motors:

What road to greener transportation?
The route to a less polluting car looks more like a multipoint intersection than a single superhighway, a panel of experts said on Wednesday.

The auto and fuels industries are in the midst of dramatic technological change, but it’s still not clear how quickly which new technologies will be adopted…read more

Tesla’s ‘Bluestar’ to be all-electric family car
Tesla Motors has received many accolades for producing an all-electric luxury sports car. But its long-term plans may hold its most challenging task: making a mass-market electric car…read more