CEO Advocates Electric Car Networks

Shai Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place, a company devoted to supporting the widespread usage of electric cars, touted the idea of transportation as a subscription service in a speech to a packed forum at the Institute of Politics yesterday.

Better Place, founded in 2007 with the encouragement of the Israeli government, allows electric car users access to charging stations and battery swap locations powered by renewable energy for a fee. The company’s model has been implemented in Israel and Denmark, and plans have been made to introduce the infrastructure to California’s Bay Area and Hawaii.

He said the company realized the necessity of extensive infrastructure to be in place “before the first car shows up.”

“You wouldn’t buy a cell phone for a network that doesn’t exist,” he said.

He said another innovation has been separating the car and its battery. Currently, one full charge of the battery yields around 120 miles of driving, and the batteries can recharge whenever the car is parked. In the cars driven by Better Place users, batteries can be switched out for new ones in under three minutes, less time than it takes to pump gasoline.

Agassi said the last important aspect of Better Place’s business plan is the adoption of a system similar to the cellular phone network business model, in which drivers pay for the miles they drive. Agassi said that in this way transportation becomes a “sustainable service” to which drivers can subscribe.

Audience members generally greeted Agassi’s plan with optimism.

“He gave some really good business perspectives that I hadn’t thought of,” said Amy Englehart, a graduate student at MIT. “He’s approaching the problem in the right way. We need to set up the infrastructure grid. I’m surprised nobody else has thought of it.”

Some, though, expressed reservations.

“I’ve seen Agassi speak before, and every time I leave hoping that it will be a similar revolution as perhaps the cell phone revolution, but not quite seeing the spark,” said John Dutton, an employee of the World Economic Forum. “I hope that we will see that tipping point soon.”

Agassi said his vision to free the world from oil dependence comes in part from his experiences growing up in Israel.

“Countries that had oil but were running out of it were signing treaties with Israel,” he said. “[By reducing foreign dependence on oil] you’ll see diversification, you’ll see modernization, which leads to peace and democracy.”