Mobile phones: The future model for the car industry?
August 19th, 2008By Stephen Lee Davis
There is a fascinating story on the cover of this month’s Wired Magazine about Shai Aggasi and Better Place, Inc., and his out-of-this-world plan to turn the car industry as we know it on its head. His plan is essentially to replace the car as the primary commodity being sold by automakers, and turn them instead into energy companies, selling electricity to power a worldwide fleet of electric cars, simultaneously slashing emissions, reducing the need for oil, stimulating investment in alternative energy, and discovering a new industry worth billions or trillions of dollars:
Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of “smart” charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan—unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go—all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They’d buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity—the minutes.
Whether you think that cars feature prominently in the near future as oil gets more expensive and new alternatively-fueled autos are still years away, it’s a fascinating story well worth reading. Aggasi’s fundamental business plan is so radical, it’s akin to you or I walking into a room full of scribes in the 14th century transcribing ancient encyclopedic volumes, and showing them not a printing press — but a laptop connected to the web and surfing Wikipedia.
h/t to Reid for the link.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
[...] at Smart Growth Around America, Steve Davis discusses the new Wired piece on Shai Aggasi’s crazy electric car plan: Agassi dealt with the battery [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am
This is ridiculous. I work for the government regulating the energy industry, and this proposal would be dead in the water for so many reasons that I can’t list them all. But let’s start with this one: the auto industry does not own electric generation, transmission, or distribution. Without these billion-dollar investments, they would be at the mercy of the current utilities, who would have no reason to let the auto companies share in the profits.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 am
[...] achieve what he sees as the world’s biggest environmental challenge — oil addiction – he has turned the heads of many, and may become one of our generation’s greatest heros. I hope [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Another approach could involve the development of a “universal battery pack” that could be developed as the standard energy module around which electric cars are designed. Current gas stations could be modified to include battery pack charging stations. Then when you needed to “charge up” you could just swap your battery pack with a charged one for a fee.
The auto industry and service stations nation wide could be tied into that.