There a lot of reasons Kleiner was foolish without even touching the global warming debate. $100k electric sport cars aren't a real solution to global warming. There is cheap abundant politically connected dirty energy. There is abundant clean cheap natural gas. Even people who believe that global warming will have large undesirable effects aren't necessarily willing to spend more money to do something about it. It isn't necessarily rational to bet on people behaving rationally.
--
edit: I am not arguing against electric cars, especially cheap ones. But fancy Fisker $100k electric cars were rich people's vanity toys, not global warming solutions.
Solution or not "Fisker" was a bad investment. Their strategy from the start they was doomed to fail. Relying on outsourced IP in a new technology isnt something I would invest in.
$100k electric sport cars aren't a real solution to global warming.
Of course they are! With electric cars, it doesn't transmits carbon, plus it can get cheaper energy from the grid. Of course, coal plants are still dirty, but they are more efficient than using gasoline in ICE, and ICE only converts like 30% to forward motion.
All that is left is to improve and drive the cost of solar panels into the ground until they are competitive with oil and coal.
I haven't seen a good analysis of gas (from the ground) to ICE in mpg, vs. electricity from coal (in the ground) with grid losses and batteries, with the capital costs of the vehicles amortized. I'm not sure what the best comparison is -- dollars, kilos of CO2, other emissions, etc.?
Obviously the US grid isn't even 100% coal, and we're presumably moving toward more and more NG and renewables at all times, but it would be interesting to quantify this over time.
-- edit: I am not arguing against electric cars, especially cheap ones. But fancy Fisker $100k electric cars were rich people's vanity toys, not global warming solutions.