Working Smarter

Working harder has its benefits. I’ve learned that energy is the ability to do work. We use energy and most likely a huge chunk of CO2 goes sailing off into the atmosphere. Let’s try working smarter.

Better Place founder, Shai Agassi

Shai Agassi has a pretty amazing solution that is very smart. He is the founder of Better Place. The company focuses on developing complete ev infrastructure solutions. One of their stated goals is to get off our addiction to oil. Mr. Agassi gave a talk at Technion, Israel’s MIT. For those of you who don’t speak or understand Hebrew, Ofri has generously translated some key moments of the video. I am posting them here so you all can see them for yourself.

• We started with a very interesting question: How do you run a whole country without oil?
• A few years ago it was a simple question when the costs were at 40$ a barrel but at 140$ a barrel it became critical. In the last few week I’ve discussed this question with many of the world’s greatest and they are very concerned about it. Why? Because 4T$ is going to move from the industrial world to a certain 12 countries.
  So where did the 100$ difference [for oil] go to? Its not like they were losing money before…
  What they do is they create funds that buy 10% of every huge company out there, in a few years they will own the world.
• When the American economy needs to pay 800B$ a year to import oil the American economy stops.
• 75% of the food prices going up is due to the world’s attempt to create Bio-fuel.
• How do we create an electric car that is going to be more comfortable than the normal car?
• The new line of lithum-ion-phosphate batteries can create around 140-150Kwh per 1kg
• So we know how to create a car that can run around 200km without giving up the good things that we love (ac, seats,speed and such). If we remove the rear seats we can get around 500km. Tesla can go 450km but then the car becomes VERY expensive. the batteries are very expensive.
• But what we can create now days is a very fast car, our prototype car can do 0-60mph in 7.5seconds. which is pretty fast,most people i drive with are scared when i start driving.But then we remain with 2 problems:

1. Distance, after 200km I’m going have to stop and charge the batteries and where would i do that? How long will that take? So out of that came the conclusion that we have an infrastructure problem. (a problem out of the car)
2. Price: batteries makes the car very expensive adding around $12k – $15k to a normal car…

• Then comes the idea to “Better Place”. What we did was separate the car [from the battery]. The car is the car and the battery is here to replace the oil.
• For comfort reason we need to place a charging socket at every parking spot.
• How many times a year did any of you drive longer than 150k in one trip? 10? 15? 20? around that…
• So how do we solve the long trips? Replace the batteries.
  Its gotta be quick. So you enter what looks like a car shed at every gas station. An automatic system replaces the battery in under a minute, total time. If, lets say, there are people in line… 3minutes. (if you’ve waited for 4 minutes a free sandwich is on us
• So now we have an interesting situation: since its not your battery – you dont pay for it and replacing the batteries happens less than the time your fueling your car.
• So what we end up is a more comfy, clean and fast car. The only thing that remains is the price issue. 20k for the car and another 15k for the battery.
• The idea was to buy the car and the battery and to promise the idea of switching batteries.
  I told that idea to Bill Clinton and after 5minutes he reply ” You’re solving the right problem at a wrong time” until this moment every leader in the world gave me the same reply “its good that the young people are solving the world’s problems.”
• Until your gonna prove this idea in Israel and some will buy it and some wont because it cost the same. 15 years have passed. Then you’re going to have to convince the people in America to pay double the price of a normal car. (in Israel we have high taxes on normal cars and none of zero emission cars, so what happens is that the battery’s cost is covered by the lack of tax). Another 15 years have passed. In 30 years we wont have a plant.
• So I asked Mr. Clinton “what do you suggest?” he told me “You need to get the guy who cant afford a new car. “The average Joe”. The ones that drive that old 97′ ford feista, Shes bad, eats alot of gas and so on… but the good thing about it is that its value is close to zero. the only cost you see is the gas cost each week and the and repair cost every two months.
• So now the question is how do you place “The averege Joe” in that brand new car at the same price it costs him to throw it away which means for free? I asked him “how do you give some one a free car?” he replied “I dont know you’re a smart guy.” he turn around and walked away.
• From here came the thought of the business idea: the cellphone. You get a free phone and you pay for the calls.
  How much do you pay for gas each week? 100$? Well I think that if you’re willing to pay 100$ each week you deserve a new car and unlimited distance.
• Gas this year around the world: 3-4T $
  New cars: 2T $
  Used cars 3T $
  Car parts: 1.5T $
  Insurance 1T $
• Add it all together and the entire industry rolls in around 10T $ worldwide each year.
• A change like this has never happened in the world’s economy. EVER. And its gonna happen within a snap. Why? Because today you can’t buy a car without a loan from the bank.
• The change isn’t going to come from the bank. The bank wont give some one a loan because they wont be sure if you’d be able to resell this type of a car. (gas car)
• The cost of the entire [Electric Vehicle] infrastructure is amazing:
• on average, 2 charging spots per car on the market 100$. [Look at it another way,] on average 500$ per car. [For the charger,] 80% is installed in the ground. you can import the installation from China.
• 2 million cars on the market in israel bring to a total of 1B $ out of which 800M goes to labor. This creates new work places.
• So a very unique situation was created: with the sum of 1B$ (which is btw the amount of money we pay for 2 months of gas) we wash ourselves clean of oil.
• In order to create the electricity for all of the cars in the country in a clean manner, without a single atom of co2, we can create a solar park at the size of 2GW at the cost of 5B$. in fact out of that 5B$ 80% is labor another 4B stays in the country.
• so a total of 6B$ to rid ourselves of oil, which is one year’s cost of oil.

He is talking specifically about ending Israel’s dependence on foreign oil imports. The numbers for the U.S. would be much higher.

For the price of one year’s supply of oil, he proposes to:

1. Give the “Average Joe” a free car, based on the cell phone business model. Each car has the latest battery on the market and a decent 200km range.
2. Establish charging stations at every parking space.
3. Construct battery swap-out stations for long trips.

I’ll be watching Israel’s progress on this plan with interest.