Shai Agassi courageously works to change the nature of transportation in Israel; Mr. Agassi’s company has the eventual goal of expanding their operations to countries all around the world. As founder and CEO of Project Better Place, Mr. Agassi created his business based on the idea that consumers can support a shift from fossil fuel cars to electric cars. This blog writer agrees heartily with Shai Agassi that consumers would love to support a green technology if it were made affordable to them.
In order to provide these commercial options to every day people, there are some deals that need to be made with car manufacturers, electricity suppliers and even some incentive programs within the Israeli government.
Project Better Place worked with car manufacturers to get them to produce a special line of electric cars. So far, they have gotten Nissan to agree to manufacture an electric car. Hopefully all the auto makers will jump on board soon.
The next step was convincing the Israeli government to create special tax subsidies that would reward purchasers of electric vehicles. These tasks accomplished, the last step is to insure that there is an energy infrastructure in place so that people can charge up their new electric vehicles with ease.
Electric cars have one notable limitation: the fact that they rely on batteries that need recharging. Project Better Place is working on creating a network of recharging stations and battery swapping stations so that people can easily “charge up” their vehicles. While this step is by far the most expensive part of the electric car solution, it is also a business opportunity ripe for the picking; electric charging stations will cost money to run, but they will also be able to charge their customers for the service. Since customers will be able to charge their batteries anywhere, these charging stations would be advised to hook themself up to the electric grid in general, so that they can also sell energy on the grid for domestic use, thereby shielding themselves from sales slumps where their customers simply charge up at home.
Check out the full episode of ECO HEROES with Shai Agassi.
In order to get a geographic appreciation of Project Better Place, make sure to check out Shai Agassi’s Map Marker [www.sundancechannel.com] on Eco-mmunity Map.
Feel free to leave comments on this post and click the following link to find Project Better Place [www.projectbetterplace.com].
Discover More ECO HEROES using the links below:
Jonathan Demme [www.sundancechannel.com]
Ira Ehrenpreis @ Technology Partners [www.sundancechannel.com]
Jerry Fiddler @ Solazyme [www.sundancechannel.com]
Sarah Gitlin @ Dalton High School [www.sundancechannel.com]
Shai Agassi @ Project Better Place [www.sundancechannel.com]
Sherry Strong [www.sundancechannel.com]
Zem Joaquin [www.sundancechannel.com]
Adam Green [www.sundancechannel.com]
Robert Thurman [www.sundancechannel.com]
Joanna Opot @ Starting Bloc [www.sundancechannel.com]
James Wells @ Sustainable South Bronx [www.sundancechannel.com]
