FEB 18

Shai Agassiz, whose ambitious electric vehicle program, Project Better Place, has already found some serious backers (mostly in the form of the government of Israel), just sat down for a while to talk with our friends at GreenBang.

The meat of the project comes fairly swiftly in the interview, with Shai likening Project Better Place to cell phone comapanies:

What we’re saying is, we buy the batteries and the infrastructure. We buy – it’s like bandwidth but what we sell you is kilometres which is what you really want. You don’t want to buy batteries. None of us likes to collect batteries but you do like to pay for a kilometre, especially if you can use it without creating any emissions.

Now in the mobile industry, the longer you commit to buying minutes from the same provider, the more credit you get upfront. The way you get that credit is in the phone. And sometimes – it’s funny today, you can actually see in some mobile providers, they say “if you sign up with us, we’ll give you a free phone and a high-definition television.

So the credit is so much bigger than the phone today that they have to give you something else. In our model, you’re effectively getting – the longer you sign up, the more credit you get. In some cases you’re going to just get enough credit to get a free car.

They go on to talk about how the project was conceived, and how something of such a colossal size could possibly be pulled off in time to matter.

I personally wish they'd spent more time talking about the advantages of Project Better Place over other vehicle electrification programs, and, specifically, about the drawbacks of having battery replacement stations.

Project Better Place works by having the whole battery swapped out at something like a cross between a gas station and a car wash. Of course, adding in infrastructure has been a huge problem for many new fuel sources, and I worry that it won't be possible to finance that switch very easily.

But Shai seems to have convinced a great number of people, so we'll just have to assume that this switch will make business sense in a large part of the world. I hope we can make the switch soon.

Via GreenBang

Comments (4)

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Great Idea!
written by Bill, February 18, 2008

I think that is a really great idea. It isn't really how I would want it to be, everyone hates cell phone companies, but it is a start!

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To continue the analogy
written by Rob, February 18, 2008

Mobile phone companies threw up towers and other infrastructure everywhere, even given great initial cost, and Cable TV companies have managed to dig up streets all over the Western world to deliver their product, so I don't see why this shouldn't be possible.

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Are there any details concerning this st
written by Vladan, February 23, 2008

Is this what exactly is inside the offer? Does anybody knows something more? It's very interesting idea that could solve a lot of issues. We could imagine this here at the Reunion Island.

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Project Better Place - Response to Vlada
written by Joel, March 16, 2008

Vladan,

I also have read about this. Business Week ran a large article on the project. It is true they will have stations that replace the batteries but my understanding is they are planning to have many more electric vehicle charging points or locations.

Joel

Los Angeles

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