{"id":226983,"date":"2010-01-25T14:41:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T19:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34136"},"modified":"2010-01-25T15:34:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T20:34:11","slug":"betting-on-better-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/226983","title":{"rendered":"Betting On Better Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

News broke<\/a> yesterday about a huge private investment in green tech company Better Place. Its business is one which has yet to be embraced by consumers: electric vehicles. In fact, its specific aspect of electric vehicles is even more distant to the emerging technology: the company mostly specializes in the infrastructure, like charging stations. An investor consortium led by HSBC has invested $350 million in the firm’s efforts. That’s one of the biggest green-tech investment deals to date. Is this a smart move?<\/p>\n

To be clear: this consortium isn’t out for charity — it’s out for a profit. And that makes sense, as clean-green-tech seems like an obvious play for investors. As people become more concerned with global warming and carbon emissions, there is lots of profit to be made in defending Mother Nature. <\/p>\n

Yet, electric vehicles haven’t exactly celebrated widespread success yet, at all. There are worries that ample resources may not be available to accommodate the demand for batteries. Prices need to come down<\/a> significantly before the technology can walk on its own two feet, without government subsidy. <\/p>\n

But in evaluating this technology, you needn’t only consider whether it can be successful on its own. Indeed, if prevailing government attitude doesn’t change, it may never have to. Most major nations have seen significant government support of electric car technology. The United States, the Great Britain, China and Japan, for example, have all encouraged electric vehicle production by offering subsidies for purchases and\/or direct investment in the manufacturers. <\/p>\n

So, in a sense, these investors might not only be considering the likelihood that the technology succeeds on its own, but whether governments will throw enough money at the emerging technology to make it a winner<\/a>. And that may be a very smart investment. At this point, most governments look like they’ve made their choice: they want electronic vehicles to dominate the streets in the years to come. <\/p>\n

I think that likely makes an otherwise very risky endeavor a much safer bet. Politicians are fickle, but in giving EV technology a head start with lots of state support, it would have to be a truly disastrous technology not to beat out its competitors, at least in the short-term. In the long-run, if the electric car turns out to be a dud in comparison to other technologies, then the government sponsorship will mean little. But these investors are especially interested in the short run, as Better Place’s press release makes clear. And for now, governments are making sure that electric vehicles win.<\/p>\n



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News broke yesterday about a huge private investment in green tech company Better Place. Its business is one which has yet to be embraced by consumers: electric vehicles. In fact, its specific aspect of electric vehicles is even more distant to the emerging technology: the company mostly specializes in the infrastructure, like charging stations. An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}