Bloomberg Some of the latest battery technologies may become obsolete before reaching the market because of the breakneck pace of advances in the industry. Teams of scientists from San Francisco to Shenzhen are experimenting with new chemical processes to improve the traditional lithium-ion cell and find new ways to bottle up electricity for use at another time. Investors in those ...

Bloomberg The smoke billowing from California’s wildfires is dimming output from solar farms. First Solar Inc., which operates more than two gigawatts of solar farms in the state — that’s equivalent to about two nuclear reactors — has seen production dip at installations near fires, according to spokesman Steve Krum. The slumps in generation have been “very minimal,” he said, ...

Bloomberg Speculation about who may or may not finance Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk’s audacious plan to take the carmaker private is distracting dealmakers from a normally quiet August spent in the Hamptons or Southern France. As the intrigue enters a second week, with pressure increasing on the billionaire founder to explain how a deal would be funded, one of ...