Better Place in WIRED

It is most fitting that I dedicate this inaugural post to Project Better Place. PBP is an electric car company and yet so much more than an electric car company. It is a vision of a completely new driving experience. It is a realistic way to get off oil. It is a source of pride and glory for the State of Israel. More than anything else, it is Shai Agassi, the former software entrepreneur who made it happen.

Mr. Agassi was featured recently in a length WIRED magazine article. PBP has been getting good press lately, most notably in a NY Times op-ed by Thomas Friedman in July. But the WIRED article delivers far more PBP information than anything I've seen thus far, both in terms of business progress and the people themselves. Here are some of the highlights:

- Mr. Agassi got the idea for his company at a Young Global Leaders retreat in Switzerland. He was assigned the topic of making the world a better place by saving the environment, and the rest is history.

- PBP's all electric cars will be charged by smart charging hubs located all over the place, especially in areas where cars are parked - curbs, parking lots, etc. When you plug your car in, the hub identifies your account and charges you according to your plan with PBP.

- PBP uses an ongoing cell phone metaphor. The car is like a cell phone and miles will be like minutes. PBP owns the infrastructure, which includes the car batteries, the hubs and the charging stations (see below). Like a cell phone plan with either limited or unlimited minutes, you get a miles plan.

- If you need a quick recharge, you pull into a charging station. These stations will be like car washes - you pull in, a machine takes out your dead battery and puts in a new one. Meanwhile PBP starts recharging the dead battery so that it can go into someone else's car when it is fully charged.

- The cars will have their own "operating system" - AutoOS - which is designed to make the whole PBP experience more user friendly. AutoOS will enable a number of features, such as

• A car key with an indicator light telling you how charged the battery is
  
• A navigation system which will recognize common driving routes
• Informing the driver of available parking spots with PBP charging hubs
• Automatically decide how to most efficiently and cost-effectively charge the driver's car
• Text message the driver the status of his car charge
• Find battery-swap charging stations if needed
  
  
  

- Shai, his father Reuven and his brother Tal are all working on PBP.

- The charging hubs may include robotic arms that automatically dock with your car when you pull into a spot, saving you the trouble.

- The State of Israel is PBP's first customer. PBP is proposing a tax scheme where the normal Israeli 78% car tax will be lowered to 10% for non-fossil fuel cars. Over time, the tax on non-fossil fuel cars will be brought back to 78% but the tax on fossil fuel cars will be raised as well. Israeli politicians are generally supporting PBP's ideas.

- The first cars will be made by Renault, the French partner of Nissan.

- Mr. Agassi's financial partner is Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer.

- After Israel, PBP will be working with Denmark. Denmark has a lot of wind power that gets wasted during the night, when people use less electricity. By working with PBP cars, that otherwise wasted electricity could be used to charge thousands of cars.

- In the U.S., PBP is going to focus on Hawaii, where fuel costs are high and there is a political culture that supports alternative fuels.

That's all for now. Tomorrow night I'm going to hear Michael Granoff, PBP's head of oil independence policies speak in New York. I'll let you know if I get any more details...