Build Your Dream Car Company or BYD. BYD is a Chinese company that originally built batteries for cell phones and decided to build electric and hybrid cars that will be also be available in Europe and the US. Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway bought a equity stake 10% in BYD for $230 million a few years back.

Warren Buffett is famous for his rules of investing: When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will. And perhaps most famously, Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

So when Buffett’s friend and longtime partner in Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), Charlie Munger, suggested early last year that they invest in BYD, an obscure Chinese battery, mobile phone, and electric car company, one might have predicted Buffett would cite rule No. 3 above. He is, after all, a man who shunned the booming U.S. tech industry during the 1990s.

But Buffett, who is 78, was intrigued by Munger’s description of the entrepreneur behind BYD, a man named Wang Chuan-Fu, whom he had met through a mutual friend. “This guy,” Munger tells Fortune, “is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch – something like Edison in solving technical problems, and something like Welch in getting done what he needs to do. I have never seen anything like it.”

Coming from Munger, that meant a lot. Munger, the 85-year-old vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is a curmudgeon who frowns on most investment ideas. “When I call Charlie with an idea,” Buffett tells me, “and he says, ‘That is really a dumb idea,’ that means we should put 100% of our net worth into it. If he says, ‘That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’ then you should put 50% of your net worth into it. Only if he says, ‘I’m going to have you committed,’ does it mean he really doesn’t like the idea.”

This time Buffett asked another trusted partner, David Sokol, chairman of a Berkshire-owned utility company called MidAmerican Energy, to travel to China and take a closer look at BYD.

Wang Chuan-Fu started BYD (the letters are the initials of the company’s Chinese name) in 1995 in Shenzhen, China. A chemist and government researcher, Wang raised some $300,000 from relatives, rented about 2,000 square meters of space, and set out to manufacture rechargeable batteries to compete with imports from Sony and Sanyo. By about 2000, BYD had become one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cellphone batteries. The company went on to design and manufacture mobile-phone handsets and parts for Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung.

Wang entered the automobile business in 2003 by buying a Chinese state-owned car company that was all but defunct. He knew very little about making cars but proved to be a quick study. In October a BYD sedan called the F3 became the bestselling sedan in China, topping well-known brands like the Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota (TM) Corolla.

BYD has also begun selling a plug-in electric car with a backup gasoline engine, a move putting it ahead of GM, Nissan, and Toyota. BYD’s plug-in, called the F3DM (for “dual mode”), goes farther on a single charge – 62 miles – than other electric vehicles and sells for about $22,000, less than the plug-in Prius and much-hyped Chevy Volt are expected to cost when they hit the market in late 2010. Put simply, this little-known upstart has accelerated ahead of its much bigger rivals in the race to build an affordable electric car. Today BYD employs 130,000 people in 11 factories, eight in China and one each in India, Hungary, and Romania.

Its U.S. operations are small – about 20 people work in a sales and marketing outpost in Elk Grove Village, Ill., near Motorola, and another 20 or so work in San Francisco, not far from Apple. BYD makes about 80% of Motorola’s RAZR handsets, as well as batteries for iPods and iPhones and low-cost computers, including the model distributed by Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child nonprofit based in Cambridge, Mass. Revenues, which have grown by about 45% annually during the past five years, reached $4 billion in 2008.

In acquiring a stake in BYD, Buffett broke a couple of his own rules. “I don’t know a thing about cellphones or batteries,” he admits. “And I don’t know how cars work.” But, he adds, “Charlie Munger and Dave Sokol are smart guys, and they do understand it. And there’s no question that what’s been accomplished since 1995 at BYD is extraordinary.”

One more thing reassured him. Berkshire Hathaway first tried to buy 25% of BYD, but Wang turned down the offer. He wanted to be in business with Buffett – to enhance his brand and open doors in the U.S., he says – but he would not let go of more than 10% of BYD’s stock. “This was a man who didn’t want to sell his company,” Buffett says. “That was a good sign.”

Wang is also focused on building a stronger executive team to drive the company forward. “The good news is, he’s 42 years old,” Sokol says. “The bad news is that he’s clearly the brains behind the organization, and the drive. He has to develop a team faster, but I think he knows that.” Last winter it was Sokol’s turn to lead Wang on a tour of his home country. They started in Detroit, where BYD’s cars generated buzz at the North American Auto Show, and wound up on the West Coast, where Wang met for the first time with Charlie Munger. In between, they stopped in Omaha.

“How did BYD get so far ahead?” Warren Buffett asked Wang, speaking through a translator. “Our company is built on technological know-how,” Wang answered. Wary as always of a technology play, Buffett asked how BYD would sustain its lead. “We’ll never, never rest,” Wang replied.

Buffett may not understand batteries or cars, or Mandarin for that matter. Drive, however, is something that needs no translation. Click HERE to read the full very interesting bio on Wang Chuan-Fu.

An early criticism of the federal government’s investment in electric car infrastructure was that it focused too narrowly on a few locations. But yesterday the US Department of Energy announced 16 projects to support EV adoption in 24 states and the District of Columbia in an effort to encourage adoption more broadly across the US.

The Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Initiative Awards, totaling $8.5 million, were provided to communities ranging in experience—from those with extensive electric car charging plans in the works, to those just getting started.

With these funds, one-year projects will help communities address specific needs, such as updating permitting processes, revising codes, training municipal personnel, promoting public awareness, and developing incentives. Community-specific plans will be created and be made publicly available, allowing all stakeholders to learn best practices.

• California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District was awarded $1 million to create a unified statewide approach to planning and implementation of plug-in electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
• The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority was granted $994,500 to develop a plan for a network of electric vehicle charging stations throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
• In Texas, $1 million will be spent to develop a plan for plug-in electric vehicle charging infrastructure for the Texas Triangle cities of Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston/Galveston, and Austin/San Antonio. Additional planning work is being conducted in Houston and Austin.
• EV readiness and deployment strategies will also be created for Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. Each of the Clean Cities approved projects will receive at least $300,000.

These latest grants are dwarfed by the D.O.E.’s $114.8 million of funding for The EV Project, designed to deploy and evaluate private and public charging in California, Oregon, Washington Arizona, Tennessee and Texas. Those funds were made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and were matched by another $115 million in private investment.

The funding was in line with the Obama administration’s larger goal of stimulating green jobs-creating infrastructure development, but like some other projects, it’s been slow to get off the ground. The EV Project has come under fire in states like Oregon, where it installed its first charger in June—despite having initially promised 1100 chargers by that time. According to Ecotality, the problem with the planned timetable for the EV Project was that it outstripped actual electric vehicle deliveries.

One of the benefits of the Clean Cities Initiative’s community-specific funding model is that money (and chargers) can go where they’re needed, when they’re needed—without the risk of overbuilding some areas at the expense of others in an attempt to meet deadlines.

(By Zach McDonald via PlugIn cars)

Video footage of a young girl driving a car along a busy motorway has been posted on the internet. Guess you could say it’s Mini Driver, although not to be confused with the British actress Minnie Driver. Boom Boom!

The tiny motorist gripping the wheel as she negotiates the traffic is believed to be just four years old. Her parents apparently allowed her to drive along the road in Jinal, Shandong Province, China, filming her from the back seat of the car.

In the video, posted on YouTube by user wangdazhi712, the child called Jia Zheng by a man in the vehicle believed to be her father, can be seen calmly overtaking other cars.

After a couple of minutes the man is heard apparently saying: “Jia Zheng, stop the car. Let daddy drive.” Once the car is pulled over, the man gets out, walks around to the driver’s side and gets behind the wheel as the girl moves onto the back seat.

He is seen removing some sort of implement from the driver’s footwell that appears to have been used by the girl to operate the pedals.

In the market for a hybrid supercar? Porsche is taking preorders for the 918 Spyder hybrid, a supercar first announced at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The vehicle was intended to remain a concept, but Porsche received such a positive response that it decided to put the supercar into production. Now, just a year later, customers can start lining up. Check out this video.

The lithium-ion battery powered vehicle packs a punch, with the ability to go 0 to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds and a top speed of 199 mph. According to Porsche, it also features a “high revving 500-plus horsepower V8 engine assisted by two electric motors with a total of at least 218 horsepower” inspired by the Porsche RS Spyder racing engine.

And like any good hybrid, it has an impressive fuel economy: 78 miles per gallon, 16 miles on pure electric charge at up to 94 mph.

That kind of power doesn’t come cheap. The Spyder will retail for $845,000 when it goes on sale in 2013–and only 918 customers will have the opportunity to buy it. So it isn’t exactly the mainstream hybrid vehicle of the future, but it is proof that electric cars can be just as sexy as their gasoline-powered counterparts.

Have you heard of Zonda? They’re a big leader in top speed and power contests for automobiles.

The Zonda is made by Italian supercar manufacturer Pagani Automobili SpA.

They have a new model called the Huayra, named after the ancient God of the wind Huayra Tata.

It has a six-liter, 12 cylinder engine with two turbochargers built by Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance unit. This engine “breathes through a pair of air intakes behind the occupants that the company”, and is a “tribute” to supersonic aircraft of the late 1950s and 1960s.

So far, Pagani has developed five Huayra prototypes, and has road-tested for about the past four years. They traveled for more than 300,000 miles and they plan to cover about 600,000 miles before they come to the United States.

The Huayra is planned to debut at the Geneva Motor Show next month, and the price is going to be about $1 million dollars.

Driving a car with disappearing doors will definitely grab everyone’s attention.

The Audi features a 2.0 TFSI engine and electric motor that deliver 245-horsepower and yield 33.6 mpg–not that impressive by itself, but the vehicle can operate on EV-only mode at up to 62 mph (the highest electric-only speed for a hybrid). Audi’s hybrid also can drive up to 1.86 miles at 37 mph in EV-only mode.

In typical Audi style, the Q5 is outfitted with impressive extras, including 3-D Google Earth navigation, internet connectivity for Google services, and hot spot connectivity. Audi hasn’t yet revealed pricing, but it won’t be cheap.

A Bugatti Veyron worth $1.7 million became the world’s most expensive car ever to be wrapped. The car is on display in Vegas, at Epson’s booth at the Specialty Equiment Market Association (SEMA) event. The wrap was designed by SkinzWraps and printed using an Epson printer and Avery technology.

The Bugatti Veyron is the most expensive and fastest sports car in the world. It seats just two and has a 16-cylinder, 1,001 horsepower engine. It can hit a top speed of 253 miles per hour.

This concept auto, known as the Halo Intersceptor, is one of the most advanced cars ever seen. It’s not just a car, but it’s a plane, a boat, and a helicopter. The way the Halo Intersceptor works is that the car parks and locks itself in a different chassis. Below is a video showing how it works. I would love to have one!

Check out the new Volkswagen Touran or Sharan next time you want to own a vehicle. Why? Well, Valeo’s Park4U system will be implemented in both vehicles, being the latest generation semi-automatic parking system from the company itself that will rely on ultrasonic sensors which are located in the front and rear bumpers in order to precisely calculate the length of the parking slot available, while automatically maneuvering the car into the slot. A lot of people need something like this

The Nissan Leaf, has reached its goal of 20,000 pre-orders three months ahead of schedule. Pre-orders first became available in April.

Not everyone who pre-ordered will necessarily buy a Leaf, of course. A $99 reservation fee isn’t enough to force people to follow through on their commitments. It is an encouraging sign however for the $33,000 all-electric vehicle, which will be available throughout the U.S. by the end of 2011.

The car company also hopes to drum up interest during the upcoming “Drive Electric” tour, which begins on October 1. The Leaf will make stops throughout the U.S. for public test drives and technology demonstrations.

Saab will be making its first step into the electric vehicle market. It’s developing an EV, the 9-3 ePower, and it will be debuting the car publicly at the Paris Motor Show later this month, according to a press release.

Saab says it’s planning a test driving and evaluation program to be enacted in its motherland of Sweden, and that won’t start until at least 2011.

The car will have a 184 horsepower electric motor. It can go from 0 to over 60 miles per hour in 8.5 seconds, and its top speed is around 90 miles an hour. It will have a range of about 125 miles, enabled by a compact lithium-ion battery occupying the car’s wheelbase.