The Electric Car Reborn

At Wednesday's NDN conference, Project Better Place, CEO, Shai Agassi gave an inspiring talk about what promises to be the next chapter in the history of the electric car. Shai is an amazing speaker (see video) whose story is just as amazing. The second in command at SAP where he was widely viewed as the next CEO, he left to found a startup dedicated to the simple notion of ending the era of the gasoline car. His key insight that electrical infrastructure-not the car-is the key to bringing the electric car to market was conceived at Davos when he was asked for ideas on how to make the world a better place. Initially he went to Shimon Peres to discuss introducing a car in Israel whose short distances, high gas costs and interest in reducing dependence on oil make it a logical place to start. Peres challenged him to find an auto company to build the car and financing for his idea. When he secured Renault/Nissan to build the car, and $200 million in startup capital, the Israeli government responded with innovative legislation that is being downloaded by other legislatures for study faster than any bill in history. The legislation creates a sizeable differential in the tax on gas and non-gas cars for ten years. As usage shifts to electricity from gas, the tax on both will rise to preserve revenues but the differential will persist until, the Israeli government anticipates, gasoline cars disappear for good.

Part of what is so inspiring about Shai's idea is its social approach. Rather than view the car as a technical object, he looks at it as a driving contract. We expect a car to be ours, to have 5 seats (though we drive alone, we want to be prepared for a roadtrip with friends), to be fast and to be affordable. All these, the electric car can easily fulfill. But one last element has been the holdup. We also expect to fill our car up no more than about 50 times a year and for the fill up to take under five minutes. Recharging an empty battery takes longer. By focusing on the energy infrastructure rather than the car, Shai's inspiration is to use a plug-in architecture for daily charges making fillups easier as well as cheaper and a battery swapping technology to deal with those rare instances when someone needs to travel more than 130 miles.

The idea has been generating such buzz that already other car companies are looking to join up. This is what they call game changing.