Shai Agassi and The Horse & Carriage 2.0

Last Tuesday night, i had the pleasure of speaking to Shai Agassi, founder of the BetterPlace company, after a special lecture organised by Picnic and the Mayor of Amsterdam. I had naturally seen and loved his TED talk (those who haven’t… do!) about his BetterPlace initiative, but what struck me again was the clarity of his argumentation.

-He set out to solve ‘Peace in the Middle East’.
-He figured out that what Israel needs to do is end its dependency on oil
-The Arab nations need to modernize, which they will only do when their ‘magic’ and almost free oil billions stop flowing in.
So: his ambition became to bring the price of oil down to zero (by making it useless for cars)

He set out to solve the challenge of running Israel without oil. Which, after a few dead ends, led him to understand that the actual problem to solve was: make an electric car that is more convenient and cheaper than an oil-based one. To do this, you need to separate the battery from the car, because rapid charging is pretty much impossible. So, what you need is three things:
a. a car that runs on a changeable battery
b. switching stations, in which robots change your battery in 3 minutes
c. charge spots, so that you can top up your battery overnight at home

He used a wonderful metaphor: he compared it to the model that existed BEFORE petrol-based cars: the horse and carriage. As a travelling nobleman, you would travel from inn to inn, changing stallions when they were tired, driving on with fresh horses. Rather than wait whilst your horses ate and slept. As a lover of all things lo-fi, offline and analog (yes, i still listen to vinyl records and BASF cassettes) i love the idea that one of the biggest things to hit our society in the next 10 years, is actually as much ‘Flintstones’ as it is ‘Jetsons’.

After his presentation i had the opportunity to talk to him over a drink. I asked him, which skill or trait had been most important in convincing all the different types of people involved. He interestingly replied with a reference to Malcom Gladwell, saying that he is simply the first person to spend over 10,000 hours on the topic, so he’s the first ‘Electric Car Virtuoso’. Hence he has viewed, discussed and argued the topic from almost every conceiveable angle, be it technical, economical, chemical, social, political and business-wise.Staying on the topic of Malcolm Gladwell, I asked him when he expected to reach the Tipping Point for BetterPlace. Around 2015, he expects the market to Tip, so stay tuned….

Bad news for the two biggest industries on earth (oil & automotive) but his story is very convincing. According to his analysis, we need only 100milllion euros to get it running in the Netherlands, something like 15 euros (not even half a tank of petrol…) per car on the road. Sounds astonishingly doable!