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Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses

July 16, 2010, 3:51pm PDT | Length: 00:06:20
At a Churchill Club Event in Mountain View, Calif., Better Place CEO Shai Agassi discusses his systems-based model to bring the electric car to cities around the world. He talks about the challenges so far building out the company's charge spots and battery-switch infrastructure in Japan, Denmark, and Israel, and what it will take to scale in countries like China and the U.S.
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Talkback Most Recent of 6 Talkback(s)

  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    Mr. Agassi fails to address the most important topic. From where is he going to source a low cost low polluting source of energy with which to charge/recharge the vehicles batteries?

    Consider, an IC engined vehicle is a SULEV or PZEV emitter, often less than ambient. The electric grid is a sophisticated business, optimized for low cost or low emissions at any time whether in the middle of a hot afternoon or on a low demand night. Any additional generating capacity to recharge the batteries has to come from the most expensive and/or most polluting power source at that time and the problem just worsens as more batteries get added to be recharged. There is no way to finesse this issue.

    There is a down loadable spreadsheet at http://bit.ly/auHe4d to model some of the elementary aspects of this. Not specialized industry supported, this allows the user to gain some insights into what admittedly is a complex subject.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    msd1107
    19th Jul 2010
  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    @msd1107 Why is this the most important topic? Your argument assumes that all electric battery charging will occur during peak hours, noon to 6pm. I would argue that most charging would occur in non-peak hours when there is excess capacity on the grid. Finally, the source of generating capacity is a separate issue. Are you suggesting that rolling out electric vehicles should wait until renewable energy sources are in place? Or are you just stating the obvious, that electric vehicles will not solve all of our energy problams?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    josmyth
    21st Jul 2010
  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    About the only source of 'non polluting' sources is hydo, geo thermal, wind or solar. There is NO free energy for the average electric car buyer and no source except the grid or geothermal (if you live in the northwest). I would still love to have a electric car that would do 200 miles on a charge.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    vger_z
    20th Jul 2010
  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    Iceland would be an ideal candidate for a lot of reasons. Charging station could use low priced electricity at night. All the electricity is geothermal or hydro. The country has low population but various driving requirements.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    raggi
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    I too am curious about the quantity of emissions for charging. For me the source would be Georgia Power in the Atlanta area and they use coal for a great deal of their power generation.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CharlesEtheridge@...
    2nd Aug 2010
  • RE: Shai Agassi's Better Place: Rolling out the electric car to the masses
    I have an additional question: Will the proposed car have air conditioning? Here in the Southeast that is absolutely a necessity. The ideal would be to have a car with an automatic temperature control as does the Prius, which has fully automatic temperature control.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CharlesEtheridge@...
    2nd Aug 2010

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