Better Place Electric Vehicles Charging
Better Place Electric Vehicles Charging
Better Place representing the largest deal
2010 was a great year for cleantech ventures, in which venture-backed investments reached a total of $7.8 billion among 715 deals. This total demonstrates a 28% increase over venture-backed investments in the previous year of a total of $6.1 billion among 624 deals. North America comprised the largest portion of the financing, representing 68% of the total amount with $5.28 billion invested among 391 deals. This was followed by Europe and Israel with 21% and Asia with 10%, according to data gathered by the Cleantech Group from across North America, China, Europe, and India.
It was not a surprise that most of this funding was in California where the Israeli electric car infrastructure company Better Place representing the largest deal at $350 million in a Series B round led by HSBC, with input from Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management, Israel Corp., VantagePoint Venture Partners, Ofer Hi-Tech Holdings, Morgan Stanley Principal Investments, and Maniv Energy Capital.
Better Place is also pressing on in Israel aiming to deploy a network of charging stations for electric cars across Israel next year. This will be one of the most extensive grids of it kind in the world. Israeli-American businessman Shai Agassi, of Project Better Place, said Israel’s small size and dense population, along with Israel government help, made the country attractive for his firm’s network for encouraging electric cars. Agassi foresees that by 2015 about half the cars in Israel will be electric.
Around 1,000 companies from around the world came to study Better Place’s progress at a recent business conference in Israel. Agassi commented, ”When China comes to Israel to learn about electric cars, then something amazing is happening in Israel.”
