Former SAP executive Shai Agassi raised $200 million to create an electric car recharging/battery swapping infrastructure in 15 countries that will make it easier for owners to drive their battery-powered cars.
"I have two great passions: electric cars and Israel," Michael Granoff, the head of Maniv Energy Capital, told me yesterday.
I had called him to follow-up on an email he'd sent me expressing surprise that I had missed the big announcement about Shai Agassi's$200 million Project Better Place to build what the former SAP executive calls the AT&T of electric car infrastructure.
Granoff is a long-time reader of EV World and explained that it was this publication that, in some small way, inspired him to track down Agassi -- then in Israel -- and propose to help him fund his concept to "extend the grid to the parking lot."
The catalyst for Granoff's move was a report on EV World about Israel Corp.'s interest in funding the creation of an electric car manufacturing company in Israel. It turns out that report, and subsequent ones, got the story wrong. Agassi wasn't planning to manufacture electric cars, but to provide the charging and battery exchange infrastructure they will need, hence the reference to AT&T's cellular telephone network.
"What AT&T is to the (Apple) iPhone, we will be to the electric car," Granoff said.
Now there is more to this concept than meets the eye because it involves not only working with the governments and electric utilities of 15 different countries, which he wouldn't identify. It also means getting the cooperation of a growing list of automobile manufacturers who will agree to standardize not only their vehicle charge protocols and plugs, but also the packaging and placement of their battery packs, which in itself will be a daunting challenge.
Granoff stressed that this is not a "technology play", but an integration and deployment project that aims to make it easier to consumers to adapt electric cars, not harder. He explained to me that Agassi -- whom I hope to interview in the near future -- is convinced that the era of the electric car is here with the advent of lithium iron phosphate batteries that can provide a single charge range of greater than 100 miles. That is sufficient to meet the driving needs of much of the consumer commuting market.
While the Maniv Energy Capital executive wouldn't elaborate on the technology to be employed in the system, our conversation strongly suggested that it will not only involve some form automatic -- drive over and charge from beneath -- charging system (conductive or inductive?) but also smart charging that will sense the needs of thousands of vehicles all arriving at the same time of day and wanting to be recharged. In order to not overload the local grid, the system will need to balance the load, charging vehicles on a priority basis defined by the historic needs of each vehicle and on the capacity of the grid at any given time.
And how will all this be paid for? Again, Agassi and Granoff plan to emulate the cellular telephone model by offering EV owners a monthly subscription plan that not only entitles them to charge when and where they want on the network, but to also exchange their batteries if they need to drive beyond the range of their battery pack. Here they envision a chain of "carwash"-like exchange facilities that allow the electric car owner to drive into, have the battery pack dropped out and replaced with a fresh one, and be on their way in minutes. It's an idea that has been around for more than a century and will require a great deal of standardization of packs, connectors and vehicle packaging.
But then $200 million dollars, half of it from Israel Corp., should help smooth what could otherwise be the very choppy seas of automotive secrecy and competitiveness.
And when will all this start to happen? Fairly quickly. Granoff told me that they hope to have prototypes done by first quarter of 2008. By late 2008, they want to have demonstration units in place by the dozens, if not hundreds. By 2009, they want 100s to 1000s deployed so that the system can be thoroughly tested so that they can go into full production by 2010.
It's a grand vision and maybe just the stimulus the industry needs to spur development of not only new, greener, cleaner, more sustainable vehicles, but a new model for the automotive business as the world moves rapidly into the age beyond oil.