It’s not the car that’s game-changing but the system, actually. Project Better Place asks, “How do you get a country completely off oil?” The answer: Give away fast, comfortable, full size, all-electric plug in cars the way phone companies give away cell phones. Install plug-in outlets all over, GPS locatable.
For trips beyond the 100+ mile battery range, provide stations to swap out batteries faster than filling a gas tank. Most people will take a new car for free, they speculate, with a monthly usage charge. Charging the swap-out batteries will take a lot of electricity, which will be renewably sourced as much as possible. That creates a large and reliable market for clean energy, which will drive the price of electricity lower than coal, and will help trigger a massive switch to clean energy.
According to Shai Agassi, founder and CEO, for $100 million (the price of two months of oil imports—with 80 percent of that going to US jobs building the infrastructure for his system) the US could eliminate the need to import oil, going to all-electric, plug in cars. Fantastic? $200 million in investment capital and the sign-on of the Israeli and Danish governments lend it some credibility. Likewise, the Renault/Nissan Alliance is putting up to a billion dollars into developing not just prototypes but mass production for the car and battery set. Mass production for Israel is set for 2011, according to Agassi.
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