Plugging in to the electric car revolution

Today, Agassi says, Better Place is installing the first 1,000 charge spots in 50 parking lots in central Israel. The heavy lifting there still lies ahead.

Agassi is moving quickly. Julie Mullins, a Better Place spokeswoman, says he’s in talks with 25 countries around the world. He wants to expand in California beyond San Francisco, and is also looking at the US east coast.

But could it be that Agassi is moving too fast? Better Place is getting people very excited, but it could be derailed by technology - or, rather, the absence of it.

Agassi is drawing up timetables dependent on, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of EVs for his projects by 2012. Better Place isn’t going to make EVs itself, and it has a strong partner in Carlos Ghosn, CEO and president of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. But the automaker is working with Better Place only in selected markets, including Israel and Denmark (but not, at least yet, in Australia and San Francisco).

Simon Sproule, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Nissan, says the automaker is also working directly with other local and national governments to set up EV infrastructure without Better Place as a partner. It has announced independent projects with the states of Tennessee, Oregon and California and, on November 22, with the sustainably minded government of Portugal (which gets 40 per cent of its energy from wind, solar and hydroelectric).

“The partnership with Better Place is very strong, and it’s a fascinating business model,” Sproule said. “For some places it will work really well, but in other cities and countries we want to do our own thing.”

The plethora of announced projects - with many more likely to come - raises questions about whether automakers can meet a worldwide demand with large fleets of roadworthy EVs. With the possible exception of Renault and Nissan (which haven’t committed to firm production numbers) few established automakers, or the upstart independents challenging them, are talking about large volumes ready for showrooms in the next three years. Low gas prices, of course, are also likely to slow the rollouts. But Better Place doesn’t seem to be worried.

“The Renault-Nissan Alliance has committed to have cars for Israel and Denmark, and we are very confident that there will be EVs available in 2012,” says Mullins.

A big short-term challenge is developing the stable, inexpensive and long-range lithium-ion batteries that will power the EVs of the future. During the presidential campaign, Republican candidate John McCain talked of offering $300 million to the company that could come up with such technology, but prizes like that may not be necessary when the industry is wholly focused on finding just such a battery pack.

Another caveat concerns the battery-swapping concept. Better Place imagines an automated station similar to a car wash that can analyse whatever vehicle has pulled in, select the right battery pack from the wide variety in stock, and make a smooth swap in under three minutes. “Our engineers are hanging out in dark holes trying to figure out how that will work,” said Nissan’s Sproule. “An automotive battery is a big, heavy thing. It’s not like replacing the batteries in your torch [flashlight] or something like that.”

And finally, there’s the big question of raising the money. Agassi’s San Francisco venture, for instance, is dependent on Better Place itself raising $1 billion; the three cities participating are not major financial contributors. It’s not surprising, then, that local governments are enthusiastic.

“This could be one of the best economic stimulus packages this region will ever see,” said John Grubb, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, a business group for the nine-county region. But renewable energy plans around the world are starved for capital in the current market.

Agassi is a fast talker with an impressive plan. As he offers a solution that could have a real impact on foreign oil dependence and global warming, he’s undoubtedly gotten the attention of governments around the world. He just may be developing what will be the first truly feasible, game-changing infrastructure alternative to fossil fuel. So if the technology cooperates and the investment money pours in, we may finally see the fulfilment of those futurist visions.