Los Angeles Times

I spent the summer of 2013, fresh out of grad school, as a reporting fellow on the business desk of the Los Angeles Times. I had thrived in a business reporting class the previous semester, and saw a lot of value in making potentially dry stories come alive with human narratives. At the Times, I worked closely with the Highway 1 team, focusing specifically on alternative fuel to fold into my clean-tech beat. Again, I won't post every article here, as many of them were shorter daily blogs. But the stories below were pretty rewarding to report out; you can find two others in the Freelance section of my Clips, as they were published while I was still finishing up grad school. 

L.A. Start-up's Plasma Lights Help Turn Film and TV Shoots Green

Published July 31, 2013, in the Los Angeles Times

Rob Rutherford looked up from his workbench, order receipts and debris from Hive Lighting's products strewn around his laptop.

"The bulbs shipped," he said to business partner Jon Miller. Both grinned.

More bulbs meant more business: new film, TV and commercial sets to be illuminated by Hive's energy-saving plasma lights, which represent a step forward in energy-efficient production.

Hollywood has embraced the cause of environmental sensitivity. In recent years, the Producers Guild of America and major studios have launched green initiatives that focus on efforts such as recycling trash and diverting props and sets away from landfills.

But it's been more difficult to change the way films are made — with their trucks and generators — so that productions use less energy and curb pollution.

Since incorporating Hive in February 2011, 30-year-olds Rutherford, Miller and their partner, Jaime Emmanuelli, 46, have built a brand around a relative newcomer in production technology.

Plasma lights, more often used in street lamps and medical imaging, breeze past the color-quality problems in LED lights. They last as much as 30 times longer than conventional hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lights — a perk on months-long film shoots with 18-hour days.

Plasma lights can reduce on-set energy usage by 50% and power costs by about 40%, Miller said. And perhaps the most crucial advantage in an industry driven by aesthetics, plasma lights won't flicker, and they cover the full color spectrum while conventional lights lack certain shades.

Jay Hunter, director of photography on Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing," used Hive's lights when the indie film's shoestring budget required the crew to shoot without a generator.

"They don't replace the lights that are out there completely," Hunter said. "The sun is the best color-rendering index possible, but the plasma lights approach that level of perfection."

When it comes to energy-efficient production, "lighting is one of the last frontiers," said Kris Barberg, executive director of EcoSet Consulting. Her firm advises clients including Honda, Microsoft and Target on how to make commercial shoots as green as possible.

Barberg said she recommends Hive, but "a lot of people just don't care to be in the conversation of responsible best practices on film productions. They just want to get the shot."

Hunter said his decision to use Hive's lights was less about saving the planet than it was playing with new technology while saving money.

"No one's going to give me an award or hire me in another job because I saved the production 1,000 gallons of fuel in the generator and didn't use as many light bulbs," he said.

Shannon Bart, who founded EcoSet before leaving to become sustainable production manager at NBCUniversal, said industry professionals are ready to embrace advancements in efficient technology.

"It doesn't happen overnight, and new technology isn't always cheaper, but [cost] hasn't always been a complete stopping point," she said.

Bart said spreading sustainability "takes everybody involved — including studios and small vendors like Hive — coming up with great solutions."

Amanda Scarano Carter, West Coast chair of the Producers Guild of America's green initiative, said much of the responsibility in standardizing energy efficiency lies with major entertainment companies.

But, she said, that leaves out a substantial portion of entertainment produced by independent filmmakers with far fewer resources. "It becomes problematic when it comes down to just interested individuals who don't have money backing them."

Despite Hive's initial success, cinematographers haven't been beating down the door of its downtown garage work space, nestled behind the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which gave the company its start.

"The No. 1 question we still get is 'What the heck is that?'" Miller said. "And usually not that politely phrased."

Miller, Rutherford and Emmanuelli declined to divulge financial specifics other than to say that revenue so far this year has been 10 times higher than in all of 2012. Besides the three partners, the company has two full-time employees and about a dozen part-time workers.

They're exporting to Brazil, Australia, France and Germany. Their lights lit the "Much Ado" red carpet at this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, as well as the sets of CBS hits "The Mentalist" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." On Monday, the Hive partners learned they would be lighting next month's swimming competition at the International Paralympic Committee's World Championships in Montreal.

To supply these high-profile projects and events, Hive tries to keep operations homegrown.

Hive gets its bulbs from Luxim Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Topanga Technologies in Canoga Park. Sheet metal and paint jobs are done in North Hollywood. Glass covering the bulbs comes from Sylmar, where another company supplies the rings surrounding the lenses.

The one element that comes from outside the U.S. is the electronics board in each unit, parts of which ship from China. A third Sylmar company, Mogul Manufacturing, puts it all together based on Hive's design.

"The more product we have, the more demand it creates. And the more opportunities we have," Miller said, "to show everyone what we can do."

Elon Musk Puts on a Show for Tesla Fans at Battery-Swap Demo

Published June 21, 2013, in the Los Angeles Times

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk threw a cocktail party in honor of a car battery Thursday night.

A debut for the new 90-second automated battery-swapping system for the automaker’s Model S electric sports sedan, the gathering provided a window into the sleek PR machine that's helped turn Tesla into a darling of the media and Wall Street.

Inside a revamped hangar at the automaker’s design studio in Hawthorne -- next to Musk's SpaceX rocket factory -- the electric-car guru seemed to channel Tony Stark, the fictional industrial tycoon of "Ironman" fame.

Attendees were greeted by a legion of valets, expense and gratuity covered by the host. Tesla staff members were dressed completely in black, with the exception of Musk, who sported blue jeans topped by his trademark black T-shirt and a black velvet sport coat with satin lapels.

At least 300 people filed inside once doors to the design studio opened, mostly Tesla enthusiasts who had driven their expensive electric cars to the event. They crowded the open bars in the massive hangar while pulsing remixes of Blondie, Lana Del Rey and Daft Punk flooding from a DJ booth set the tempo for the evening.

Musk pushed the green theme hard: Tiers leading toward a vast stage were carpeted in fake grass, and potted trees stood among clusters of white leather armchairs -- a plush upgrade for lawn furniture. Women in fitted black A-line dresses carried trays of hors d’oeuvres, weaving through the milling masses, flowers tucked behind their ears. They would later reappear with mini-molten lava cakes and raspberry cupcakes to sustain partygoers standing in the epic valet line after the event.

A white Model X SUV prototype sat parked on the garden patio, its side hatch doors open and reaching toward the sky. People leaned over velvet ropes to peer in at the three rows of white and black leather seats, a touch-screen tablet console up front -- but only before turning around to pose for photos taken by fellow guests.

Back inside, a giant video screen played muted classic car commercials and cartoons. A good half-hour after the scheduled 8 p.m. start time, Musk finally took the stage to the reworked chugging of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

“You’re here for the title fight,” Musk said after a brief introduction by designer Franz Von Holzhausen. “It’s gonna be battery-powered cars versus gasoline -- the final showdown.” 

With a touch of self-deprecation -- "This could go wrong," Musk said with a smile -- a red Tesla drove to center stage and the battery-swapping demo began. A screen above showed video of a man filling his car with gas.

As tense electronic music provided the soundtrack and as stopwatches timed both the fill-up and battery swap, automated machinery latched onto the bottom of the Model S.  The battery, which takes up most of the car's underbelly, was detached and lowered into the automated pit. A new battery rose up to take its place, finishing the entire process in just over one minute and 30 seconds.

Meanwhile, the man in the video above continued to wait for gas to fill his tank.

"Looks like we've got some extra time," Musk said. "Let's do another one."

A second Tesla pulled up, and its battery was replaced well before the car in the video was refueled, four minutes and nine seconds after the demonstration began.

Once the new method proliferates, Tesla drivers will be able to choose between "fast or free" -- pay the equivalent of 15 gallons of fuel in the region and have a full charge in 90 seconds, or wait 30 minutes for the no-cost Supercharger system Tesla rolled out in October last year. 

"Hopefully," Musk said, "this is what convinces people, finally, that electric cars are the future."

L.A. Cleantech Incubator Is Getting Room to Grow

Published June 19, 2013, in the Los Angeles Times

Inside a cavernous warehouse downtown, crumbling brick walls, exposed wiring and a gaping concrete pit suggest anything but the future of clean technology.

A group of Los Angeles nonprofits, utilities and universities aims to change that when work begins this week on what's slated to become a hub of collaboration and green innovation in the city's arts district.

Headed by Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, the La Kretz Innovation Campus will take up 3.2 acres of the so-called Cleantech Corridor, a four-mile swath along the Los Angeles River that is intended to house environmentally conscious manufacturers and other businesses.

The dilapidated warehouse, 60,000 square feet and nearly a century old, will expand on the incubator's current home next to the Urth Caffe on Hewitt Street.

The new digs, expected to open early next year, will house open-air conference rooms, bays for individual companies to occupy, labs to test sustainable technologies and a manufacturing workshop. Entrepreneurs will pay $500 a month for each workstation, sparing them the expense of budget-busting leases. Outside, what is now a vacant parking lot will become La Kretz park, outfitted with picnic tables, patches of grass and Wi-Fi.

That's the eco-minded vision of the incubator's executive director, Fred Walti, and chief operating officer, Neal Anderson. Walti said he would like to see L.A.'s urban area become a "frontierland" alternative to Silicon Beach, as the booming tech sector around Santa Monica and Venice is known.

"We're going to rebuild L.A.'s industrial core with tomorrow's industry," Walti said.

The expansion comes at a difficult time for the clean-tech sector.

Venture capital funding, which has declined over the last few years, has dropped sharply for fledgling clean-tech companies, according to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Assn.

Venture capitalists are on the lookout for money-efficient companies that can grow quickly, often in online media and software. But getting a high return in a short amount of time is harder to do in clean tech, Walti said. As a result, venture capitalists who do invest in clean tech look for more developed companies.

"That's left a vacuum of early-stage investment for [clean] technology all over the country, certainly in L.A.," Walti said.

There's also stiff competition from companies in other countries, said Tom Solazzo, U.S. clean-tech leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. "The local clean-tech companies are really playing in a global market."

In addition, Los Angeles is arriving late to the party. Silicon Valley, with its more advanced technology community, attracted more venture capital financing in the first three months of this year than Los Angeles and Orange counties did in all of 2012, the report found.

The incubator launched in 2011 as a nonprofit offshoot of the city's Cleantech L.A. initiative. Funded by the city's Community Redevelopment Agency and Department of Water and Power, it has nurtured 18 companies, many of which were born in its partner institutions: UCLA, USC, Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Walti said the start-ups — covering industries such as solar-thermal technology, energy storage and transportation — have already pulled in $13.7 million in investments.

The participating companies take full advantage of the incubator's all-inclusive approach.

"We have access to the resources and the connections and the ability to use local government, yet we're run by entrepreneurs," Walti said. "There's not a lot of distance between decision and action."

The incubator works with its companies "from garage to Series A financing," a process that begins with an online application. Staff members recruit the help of outside experts during a six-week vetting process, looking for companies that are likely to succeed while boosting L.A.'s economic outlook. They invite promising applicants to two-hour meetings to resolve any concerns about their business models.

Once the entrepreneurs move into their designated office spaces, they meet with incubator mentors once a week for at least an hour. They're guided on how to test prototypes, where to find their ideal reference customers — the first client they can use as an example in future sales pitches. As a group, founders attend seminars, covering topics such as whether to form a limited liability corporation and how to select a board of directors.

"Almost every one of these seminars I sit in," Walti said, "I think, 'Gee, I've made all those mistakes.'"

The La Kretz campus, with an expected cost of $43 million, will give the incubator room to spread out — 30,000 square feet of the warehouse will be shared with DWP demonstration labs, an upgrade from the incubator's current 3,000-square-foot home.

Despite close quarters, the program appears to have worked so far.

One incubator company, Skyline Innovations, which installs solar-thermal systems for large residential buildings and low-income housing, has tackled more than 60 commercial-scale systems. The privately held company declined to report revenue, but a marketing representative said Skyline's 2011 sales were four times those in 2010, and 2012 numbers doubled the previous year's.

Another member of the incubator family, electric car charger provider 350Green, already had 600 stations in 20 markets when it was bought by Car Charging Group Inc. in Miami in July. Walti said the management team will have a home on the La Kretz campus to develop its next business.

Starting new companies, after all, means generating more jobs. Walti cited a study by the entrepreneurship nonprofit Kauffman Foundation, which used U.S. census numbers to show that on average, firms less than 5 years old collectively added 3 million jobs in their first year. Older firms lost about 1 million jobs annually.

Research also shows it's cheaper to create jobs through incubators than through community development. A study commissioned by the federal Economic Development Administration found jobs created by incubators cost about $180 each, compared with $3,000 for those that come from local projects. The study found 87% of incubated companies were still functional after five years, and 84% of them stayed near their incubator.

The Los Angeles incubator tries to focus on burgeoning companies dedicated to solving what Walti calls societal "pains." With the region's emphasis on sustainability and finding practical solutions to environmental deterioration, Walti said, L.A. provides an ideal living laboratory.

"That's what the whole corridor concept is all about," he said. "We're actually going to build companies that produce things. And while we're doing that, we're going to be making the planet better. What's wrong with that?"