"The mission is to end oil," he says, "not create a company."

This could really work in Hawaii. Cut a deal with Hertz, Alamo, etc., and you have an instant user base. Oahu is so small, you could probably get away with just 20 or so swapping stations. Plus if anyone ever runs out of juice, it's pretty easy to drive out to them and swap the battery out in the field, since nothing's ever more than an island's length away.<p>My one thought is that he shouldn't be making the car and the battery. He needs to just design the battery stands and whatnot and license the technology to "real" car companies.

I like the idea. A lot. Agassi has created a vision. An idea that is apparently appealing to a lot of people. And he has convinced two countries that are willing to put his ideas to the test. Who knows: this thing just might work!<p>Ethanol, Hydrogen, etc. etc. all need new distribution networks. Electricity is "everywhere". In a country like The Netherlands almost every km of highway has lamppost along the road. A city has electricity cables running everywhere. It should be easy to install a lot of those charging stations.<p>In Europe a lot of cities have high parking fees. What if you would lower the parking fees for electric cars? By installing charging stations at those parking spaces the city council would get a percentage of the charging costs to make up for the "loss" in parking fees.<p>There are however potentially other problems. If this plan makes electric cars cheaper or more economical than normal cars people will be using their cars more. And that is huge problem. Cars take up space. A lot of space. And because of the high fuel prices people were finally cutting back on their car use.

You know how, sometimes, you read an article and some startup is doing the thing you thought would be cool and would displace an entire industry? But you were lazy and didn't write it down and ask for funding?<p>Doh...

Eww, a cellphone style, lock in walled garden economics, on something so basic like electricity, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If this style of business become popular, the common slashdot metaphor of "imagine if you couldn't get gas because it's a honda gas station", or "only special ford cars can go on this road" might actually become a reality.

Ending oil also needs to address chemical feedstocks.<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=xH_JyuL08K4C&#38;dq=methanol+economy&#38;pg=PP1&#38;ots=rStARuDwrI&#38;sig=LCVCLaEZZkn7d4oN5EC4zWqufhg&#38;hl=en&#38;sa=X&#38;oi=book_result&#38;resnum=1&#38;ct=result" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=xH_JyuL08K4C&#38;dq=methano...</a>

The article makes me very happy.<p>There's lots of data here. The cost of battery deprecation is $1050. That's enormously useful information to me.<p>I should say that the slow charge is a problem with batteries, but <i>not</i> with compressed air. :-)

If anyone has the link to a video of his speech, it would be much appreciated.<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.betterplace.com/press-room/videos/" rel="nofollow">http://www.betterplace.com/press-room/videos/</a>

I'd just like to take this opportunity to plug ammonia as an alternative solution. High energy density. No nasty emissions. No need for new infrastructure. No need for new cars. We just need to ramp up ammonia production, which we need to do anyway to meet growing fertilizer requirements for a hungry growing population.<p>Any HNers with me?

"The mission is to end oil" vs "Driven: Shai Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road (wired.com)"<p>I don't wonder why this thread gets more attention than the earlier same story here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280245" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280245</a>

The phone model isn't pretty. Making deals with governments, locking people into networks. But I suppose at this point, anything that works. But the end result may be ugly.

The mission should be the other way around - it should be to create a company that creates, as its byproduct, an 'end' to oil.

Holy blundering errors, Batman:<p><i>"At 38, Agassi is the youngest invitee. Just after the dotcom boom, SAP, the world's largest maker of enterprise software, paid $400 million for a small-business software company he started with his father; now he's SAP's head of products and widely presumed to be the next CEO."</i><p>He left SAP a year and a half ago after a massive power-struggle on the executive board where it was clear that he <i>wouldn't</i> be the next CEO. That's why he founded the <i>"not"</i> company that is the topic of this article. Except, well, that it's a VC backed company.