Israel trumps Detroit?

December 14, 2008 - 3:45 PM by

For the second time this year (the first being in July) influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman mentioned Shai Agassi’s ambitious company Better Place. Better Place aims to build an electric car network that helps the world lower their dependency on oil. Israel jumped on the bandwagon early and recharging stations are being built as we speak.

The water locked islands of Hawaii recently signed to create the network in their state. Hawaii’s signing by Gov. Linda Lingle servers two purposes. The first is helping the state meet its goal of slashing fossil fuel use 70 percent by 2030, the second being a showcase of sorts for the electric car to the millions of tourists who visit Hawaii every year.

“If we can get them into electric cars when they rent, we do two great things,” Agassi said. “One, we avoid emissions and, two, we use the opportunity to educate them, to teach them in Hawaii how it needs to be done in the rest of the world.”

Friedman also said column said something that really resonated with me and I’m sure will likely resonate with many of my generation.

…our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

That’s exactly it. Friedman completely nails it. Detroit is a dinosaur refusing to change, giving only cursory nods to the way of the cleaner automobile. Get on the train or get run over. I don’t believe pumping money into Detroit is necessarily a bad idea, it’s where the money is going that is the bad idea. If the money is just to keep the companies afloat so they can produce their same gas guzzling vehicles, then no, the government shouldn’t bail them out. If the money is going to be invested in the industry to help produce more gas efficient vehicles that will help alleviate the grip of foreign oil then I am certainly game.

Back to Better Place’s role in Israel. The “pay as you go” model of leasing has serious legs to stand on here. When I heard Agassi speak over the summer I brought up the issue of the outrageous taxes on automobile purchases here and whether the electric car will be accessible to “Israel Israeli.” He explained to me that President Clinton said to him that his plan will only succeed when Joe Sixpack, the guy who just buys cheap clunkers gets interested. It was at that point that Agassi developed his “subscription” model. Users (I think we should call them such just because it sounds cooler) will have the option to either buy or lease a car and then “buy miles” much like we buy minutes for our cellphones.

And Shai, I know I asked you after I heard you speak over the summer to be beta tester. Offer still stands. We can use a new car.

Image of Shai Agassi courtesy of Viernest from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Tags: , , , , , • Category: A New Reality, Business, Environment 

Comments

One Comment on Israel trumps Detroit?

  1. David-Joe on Sun, Dec 14th 2008 5:53 PM

    2. Thomas Friedman is a leftist self-hating Jew and is not someone I recommend payiing attention to.

    I recently drove in a Tesla in New York City and it was a great experience. It has Lotus connections using the Lotus bodywork.

    Whether electric cars will take off worldwide in any significant way remains to be seen.

    The American car, auto industry in Detroit has failed but there is also a thriving foreign car auto industry [Toyota, BMW, Volkswagon etc] in the Southern States emplying around 140,000 people.

    As long as the gasoline powered car is reasonably accessible – and nowehere in the United States is there any building of electric charging stations – Americans will rather not switch to electric.

    And the oil producers will continue to produce oil – and there is a lot of oil left in this world.

    I think the electric car will for years to come still be a niche market that appeals to the quirky.

    At the same time Israel IS in a position to be a leader this way even if it takes another 50 years or more.

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