The Prius Bubble

The tech elite and the financiers who fund them are bored with Google and MySpace. Their New, New, New Thing—apologies to Michael Lewis—is alternative energy.

Wired and Business 2.0, the print bibles of the dot-com boom, are now stuffed with stories about light-emitting diodes, zero-emission cars, rechargeable fuel cells, and hackers who pimp their Prius hybrids to run even farther on electricity.
Many of the people who cooked up the Internet revolution have moved over to the energy industry. Bill Gross (no relation) is the founder of IdeaLab!, the incubator of technology-based companies that spawned eToys, NetZero, Petsmart.com, WeddingChannel.com, and a host of other dot-coms before it nearly busted in 2000. IdeaLab is riding high again, and one of its most promising portfolio companies, Energy Innovations, develops solar panels for commercial buildings. Gross is still talking in revolutionary terms. “Reinventing energy is a multitrillion-dollar opportunity. It’s the next big disruption,” Gross told Wired last July. “It dwarfs any business opportunity in history.”

Slate