fortunes

Electric cars enjoy cool factor but still costly

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--By Keshav Sondhi's telling, the handful of electric vehicles that FedEx is testing are wonderful, offering sufficient range and one-third the operating cost.

But because an electric truck costs three or four times more than a conventional truck, FedEx's worldwide fleet of all-electrics is only 19 out of about 40,000 trucks.

"We want those trucks. We believe in energy independence," said Sondhi, FedEx's chief engineer for electric vehicles. "We have a deep belief in electrification, but the capital (needed) has inhibited us to what we have now."

So it goes for so many consumers and businesses considering electric vehicles. The smooth and peppy acceleration of electric motors makes for a good driving experience, fueling up is cheaper, and owning a plug-in reduces imported oil and carbon emissions.

But for electric vehicles to break out beyond early technology adapters, battery prices need to fall dramatically--to about half where they are today in the coming years--said auto executives at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference here. Cost reductions are expected to come from higher scale manufacturing and technology improvements.

"By mid-decade I have high confidence that we (as an industry) will establish (battery) cell production in the U.S.," said Tony Posawatz, the vehicle line director for the Chevy Volt. "The simple fact of producing cells with shorter transport takes likely hundreds of dollars out of the cost of pack." … Read more

Bill Ford: Few, if any, trade-offs in going green

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--The U.S. auto industry needs to "go green" in more than one way, says Bill Ford.

Ford is committed to making its vehicles more fuel efficient by investing in a number of technologies, including electrification, biofuels, fuel cells, and more efficient gas engines.

But auto manufacturing itself needs to be "reconsidered" so that it's not all about smokestacks and environmental hazards, Ford said Wednesday during a talk at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference here. Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford, is the executive chairman of the company's board of directors. … Read more

88 percent of firms show Zeus botnet activity

Most major U.S. corporations--up to 88 percent of the Fortune 500 companies--may be affected by botnet activity from computers compromised by the Zeus data-stealing Trojan, according to an RSA study released Wednesday.

RSA's FraudAction Anti-Trojan services analyzed data stolen by Zeus from infected computers in August and traced evidence back to IP addresses and e-mail addresses belonging to the corporations, said Sean Brady, manager of the Identity Protection and Verification Group at RSA, which is the security division of EMC.

Specifically, "domains individually representing 88 percent of the Fortune 500 were shown to have been accessed to … Read more

Coda's 'everyday electric car' coming to California

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--The Coda sedan will only impress your friends once they realize it's electric.

The sedan, due to start shipping in California in the fourth quarter, is designed to be simple and useful rather than flashy. But functionally, the car will meet the needs of many people and be priced in the "low to mid 30s," or somewhere in the range of $35,000 after federal and state credits and rebates, according to Kevin Czinger, CEO of Coda Automotive.

"The coolness of this car is that it's anti-cool," Czinger said after showing … Read more

Nuclear power: Friend or foe to renewable energy?

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--As renewable energy gains steam, environmentalists are increasingly being asked whether to support their longtime enemy: nuclear power.

At the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference here, nuclear power has frequently entered the discussion over the future of clean energy. Prompted by government policies, utilities are investing in wind and solar power but there are limits to what renewable power can do, say people in the industry.

When environmentalists say that clean energy can supply all electricity needs in the near future, they're being idealistic, said David Crane, the CEO of utility NRG Energy, which has invested in … Read more

Stewart Brand warms up to nukes, geoengineering

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--The iconic environmentalist Stewart Brand has come around to the notion that the Earth can't solve its own problems any more.

Brand, the original publisher and editor of the "Whole Earth Catalog" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is an ecologist and Internet pioneer who founded the online community The Well. When it comes to dealing with global warming, he thinks environmentalists need to push for things that many of them now oppose.

Specifically, he's an advocate of bio-engineered plants, nuclear power at large scale, and geoengineering, or ways to manipulate the … Read more

Wal-Mart chairman: Go green for money, not image

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--Wal-Mart Stores pushed forward with a risky sustainability initiative at a time when its public image was suffering. But ultimately the company's rationale for "going green" was purely economic, according to former CEO Lee Scott.

Over the past five years, Wal-Mart has put in place a number of initiatives including renewable energy at stores, reducing waste in packaging, and creating a sustainability index of its suppliers. Its actions have raised suspicions and admiration from outsiders, politicians, and employees.

But the effort has endured because the motivation was purely economic, said Scott, who was the … Read more

Fortune: Apple is world's most admired company

Fortune on Thursday released its annual list of the world's most admired companies and topping that list is Apple. Another tech giant, Google, placed second overall.

To collect its data, Fortune asked businesspeople to vote for the companies that they admired most, from any industry. This is the third straight year that Apple has taken the title of most admired company, but this year it also took the top position in the computer category. Last year, it was second in the category.

In the computer category, Apple is followed by HP, EMC, Xerox, Dell, Canon, Seagate, and Western Digital. … Read more

SAS, Google top Fortune's best-employer list

Looking for a new job in the tech field? You may want to check out Fortune's list of the best companies to work for.

Among the technology firms that ended up on Fortune's list were SAS at No. 1, Google at No. 4, Cisco Systems at No. 16, Adobe Systems at No. 42, and Microsoft at No. 51. The firms scored points for a couple of different factors, including top pay and best perks. And with the job market still tight, Fortune also looked at the job growth for each company.

Grabbing the top spot was software company … Read more

Unreliable reading

We've reviewed a lot of programs from Mystic Board, and almost all of them are poorly designed pieces of software that contain very little in the way of useful content. Although MB Tarot Suite is a disaster as far as its design is concerned, we do give it credit for delivering something that vaguely resembles an actual tarot reading.

MB Tarot Suite actually contains four applications: Tarot Reading, Astrology Tarot, Tarot Numerology, and Runic Tarot. Each of these asks for the user's name and date of birth, and then provides users with a basic reading. Of course, the … Read more