It will not be long when all the vehicles plying on the roads will run on renewable energy instead of fossil fuels which are a major cause of pollution. Major venture capitalists in the US are now doing extensive research in the field of using renewable resources to power their vehicles. They are now looking for something new after the destruction of General Motors which filed for bankruptcy. The automotive sales in the US have dropped by 40% in the last two years according to reports published in the Cleantech Q2 Investment Monitor. Hence the automotive companies are planning to come up with the most cost effective and clean technologies to attract the customers in buying vehicles.
At present, many venture capitalists in the US are investing in the transport sector for electric vehicles, power trains and other components that help to sustain the environment. The total investment in the automotive sector accounted for about 35% of the total investment in adopting cleaner technologies. The start ups will concentrate on the production of new components as well as innovations in the automotive industry.
The other subsectors that will be gaining the attention of the investors include biomass to power technologies in SouthEastern US which do not have wind and solar energy. However these regions have ample amount of biomass feed stocks and hence efforts are made to convert this type of energy to power the automobiles. However biomass plants require large scale capital and hence there is going to be good funding from the investors as they predict extremely good returns from this sector.
There will be advancement in smart grid technology as well. Production of flow battery technology will begin soon. A flow battery is a battery where electro chemical substances flow through chemical energy either directly or indirectly. The vehicle to grid technology also holds a lot of promise as the electric vehicle market will combine with the smart grid technology market.
Hence investors will try to find companies that are in the process of exploiting technologies to use them as an added advantage. They are looking fir investing in 3 sectors which are Cleantech, Nanotech and Energy. These are all micro cap stocks that are believed to give excellent returns in the market. The returns often surge for more than 100% when these companies achieve a particular milestone. However these stocks are amongst the least covered by the analysts at present.