I’ve watched the TED video, read the NY Times piece and I’m in. Shai has one of the best plans for the future of cars I’ve heard.

So, now that GM is imploding, I’d love it if you could ask Shai what he would do with GM if he could influence what they do next? Could GM make a switch to building electric cars? Could GM maybe take one of its divisions and make this transition?

Could GM’s engine making division(s) make a transition to making electric motors and drivetrains for those motors? What would be involved in changing GM’s infrastructure or a piece of GM’s infrastructure to build these kinds of cars?

We were in the market for a hybrid but now I’m quite convinced that electric vehicles are the future and we might as well not go the “mermaid” route (loved that anecdote by the way).

It would also be useful to hear what kinds of interaction Shai has had with the Obama administration and what that looked like. It would seem that Obama would be excited about the scope and vision of this idea.

Bottom line, electricity is created by the burning of fossil fuels. In this country that means coal and oil.
We do have some hydro but it’s such a small percentage.

My question is if you have hundreds of millions of people switching over to electric cars will this not just be more of the same due to the huge increase of electricity usage?

If WBUR really were really interested in this subject, they should have brought in an Engineer from Toyota Labs who is working on 2014 versiou of Prius.

Not this snake oil guy with a good Publicist with connections; and a bunch of web-site designers and a phoney business plan.

This guy is a con-man.

Oh — just heard — that’s part of his idea.

Dear On Point – Please make sure you ask Mr. Agassi to explain how we will get the power to run. Today, 50% of the electricity in the US comes from burning coal, and we don’t yet and may never prevent CO2 emissions from coal generation. Only 1-3% of our power now comes from wind. How does Mr. Agassi envision us getting to a situation where charging up an electric vehicle does not depend on electricity generation that itself emits pollutants?

Nancy Brockway
(Former Commissioner, New Hampshire PUC)
10 Allen Street
Roslindale, MA 02131
617-645-4018

Great idea, however the largest investor in Better Place is Israel Corp, a company that primarily invests in oil refineries, shipping companies, and chemicals. They own 33% of better place, so they have a LOT of influence.
And I agree with my neighbor Nancy Brockway, electric is not zero emissions.

Right (to questions above):
Where does the electricity come from?

I only see another industry trying to enslave the consumer. Oil companies have held consumers hostage with gasoline prices for 30+ years. All I see is another corporate scam to encourage consumer dependence, then fleece them with high prices justified by politically-bought excuses.

What are you going to pay those who switch out the batteries in 45 seconds? Sounds like a high stress, physical job to me. Corporate America has a record of not paying a living wage to these workers, but paying multi-million $ bonuses to hype-mongers like Shai Agassi.

Shai’s opening statement of the cost to install infrastructure along the west coast being 0.01% of the total cost of oil used last year only speaks to the cost of installing the infrastructure (by the way-how many exchange stations does that cost cover? 100/1000/10000?). What are his cost estimates to travel the same mileage (traveled last year in the US) using electric (excluding the car costs)? What happens to the spent batteries?

He is a dreamer … who is “really onto something”!!! After having read books such as Hot, Flat and Crowded I can’t understand why the masses are not marching in the streets with pitch-forks and torches demanding technology such as this. It is imperative not just to the environment and the future, but our very own national security. This is a vast industry the previous administration totally missed the boat on. Research and development, manufacturing, installation, repair, service, etc., etc. – jobs, jobs, jobs. Don’t the “Hawks” and the fat cats in the oil industry see this? Obviously, you need the open-mindedness of forethought and vision rather than short-sighted, immediate gratification to truly envision this.

Did he say “Nobody wants rollover miles in an electric car.” … I see, the idea is that just like a cell phone the minutes expire at the end of each month. …So I guess that in his plan, the miles expire at the end of the month as well.

Does anybody on earth LIKE the way cell phones are billed, and like it so much that they want their car to be under the yoke of such billing plans?

Lylia – “Has anybody driven a toyota Prius (best battery tech + best hybrid car, today) for more than 300 yards with electric power only.”

Yes, I can get about a mile on one part of my commute – 25 MPH road, pretty flat. But you are correct in that the issue of distance is related to battery capacity.

I did not post this anti-Semitic post, Buy American.
Posted by jeffe, on April 24th, 2009 at 10:54 am EDT

Someone is using my forum name.
Whoever is doing this it is cowardly act. I think I know who did this but I don’t have proof. I am contacting the web master and if you did this from your home, your IP address will give you away.

Who ever you are your a coward.

And two more points.

First: I think the idea is feasible if you live in a dry, warm, clean environment like CA, or Israel. But all of these ideas usually fail when they enter a wet, cold, salt and dirt laden environments.

But, perhaps the robotic exchanger will do a wash and dry of the auto’s undercarriage before the swap, but it will take longer than 5 seconds.

Second: with limited range, how many “swaps” does one have to make to drive 200 miles?

Two Questions:

a.] Who would make the most money from this?

b.] How would this new industry be regulated?

*Correction to above typo:

1.] Deny Russia access TO oil-consuming customers/ countries by Western globalist expansion thereby making Russia economically obsolete. NOTE that, when oil prices drop, Russia, an oil exporter, hurts.

I read about this idea years ago and its DOA. The Tesla, which a light weight sports car (~2400 lbs), has a battery pack that weighs over 800 lbs that is distributed around the vehicle because of volume constraints. Expect that the battery pack for a heavier sedan will way close to 1000 lbs, and even if it can be fashioned into single module (and the vehicle can support it), it would be very hard to swap out in 45 seconds.

This will require heavy lifting equipment and most likely, access underneath the vehicle. It will also require trained personnel at a pay significantly higher than the typical gas station attendent. The typical gas station has several pumps that are all self-service, and they really don’t make money off the gas, which is why they want to sell you hot dogs and soda with each fillup. For safety reasons, there will be no self service at battery swapping stations. This plan just doesn’t seem economical.

Whoever is posting under the name jeffe — I hope the site monitors have been notified and take note.
People who drive a lot are obviously the main consumer of both cars and energy, but the 21st century smart growth plans call for more centralized town centers, walkable and self-sufficient, more communal centers. Partly this allows for fewer miles driven, hopefully saving the planet from global warming, but also it means multi-use buildings, residences nestled, ess sprawled. Where I live, much attention goes to saving wetlands from turning into parking lots or broader roads. Living roofs help but real turf is a diminishing resource. Nonpolluting cars threatens this plan unless the cars become smaller and also do not substitute for mass transit.
Currently there are electric vehicles, I see from Hammacher Schlemmer’s catalog, that will take me where I need to go. And the problems are infrastructure, not availability. Partly there are rules of the road. You have to be able to go a certain speed, and you have to add lights to the vehicle. Since I do not have an outdoor outlet for the battery, nor can carry it up three flights, I inquired could the city wire the municipal parking lot, and the answer was yes, but it would cost $100 a month to park there, and I would take up space for a Ford. Then they backed out of wiring it.
I am sure I am not the only one who basically can use a bicycle but occasionally needs more groceries than can be hauled that way, or needs to go seven miles, not two. In that case, I need recharging at the turnaround point, but there is no charging station. It sounds like A Better Place would not help me there, because the minimal plans described require a lot more mileage than say 20 miles a month. Just as with the phone company I pay $4.00 a month for NOT using long distance calling, I would pay them for NOT driving a lot.
Just as after 1973 it was very discouraging to see Americans forget about the dangers of dependence on foreign oil, here there is a threat that easy vehicular energy will abort our moving toward a green environment. Cars are an important part of it, but given a world developing by leaps and bounds, all aspects of environmental preservation and energy conservation have to be part of the planning.
I did hear on 60 Minutes, I believe it was, that lithium is available almost exclusively in Peru (which is causing the predictable conflicts over access), I believe it was, which seems to be in direct contradiction to what Agassi set forth.

Bob Lutz and Wagoner’s most favorite word was “Volt”, whenever they were grilled about GM’s viability and financial health when gasoline was $4.50/g.

The are both gone and taxpayers paying the bill for their mistakes in the past, while Honda and Toyota were working on making gasoline based cars better and more efficient.

I have more faith in Toyota which owns the best battery company in the world than these talking points who want to get a cut out in dollars from every environmental wish list.

NO, please don’t remove posts because others get upset.
Put a 2 or some other marking next to the second “jeffe” to differentiate between the first and the second. To delete a post would be a slap in the face not only to those who agree with it but also to those who are impartial and/ or are trying to be objective. It would be troublingly anti-democratic to silence other people in our supposedly free society. What, then, would be the purpose of a public forum? Populist agreement & political correctness?

If those are the names associated with Shai Agassi’s clean cars, and they are all Jewish and/ or are linked to Israel, those are the names & that’s how it is. Of, course, readers should always cross-reference. Please note, however, that not all Jews are Israeli; and that not all Jews are sympathetic to the actions of those who call themselves Zionists.

It is popular nowadays to say that we need to get off of “Saudi Arabian” oil. Now, imagine if all the names associated with the development of electric cars were long-sounding Arabic names linked to Saudi Arabia. I’m sure that would raise some eyebrows too – because they are not American, they are singularly the world’s largest oil producer, and they collect a LOT of American dollars. But, in contrast to criticizing non-American Israeli interests, it still seems that it would be more acceptable these days to express distrust of non-American Saudi Arabian interests – perhaps because of terrorism like as if they exclusively invented it.

Has anyone ever considered that there may be economic & geopolitical connections between Israel AND Saudi Arabia? Whether it’s oil or electricity that is used for powering cars… FOLLOW THE MONEY…

While I understand many of your comments (and agree with some), let’s all be willing to at least consider ideas that have been deemed “undoable” or too difficult or what have you.
To those of you who questioned the veracity of ‘green’ claims when our electricity-generating infrastructure is so dependent on (dirty, polluting) coal, Mr. Agassi did point out that in Denmark, the cars would be run from wind-powered electricity; in Israel, solar power would “fuel” the electricity. So there certainly ARE alternatives.
And while I am certainly one of the people who see the oil industry as a dark (though necessary) evil, if I want to think optimistically (which I am only just starting to do after all the false starts of the 1970′s), I can imagine that the fossil fuel people may POSSIBLY be seeing the writing on the wall, and would rather get into the next technology on the ground floor. (Although my more pessimistic side sees more nefarious possibilities, of course.)

I thought it was pretty swift and helpful to put out the names of the people involved in Better Place. To me, the name Agassi is more Arab than Israeli, and the names on the board were interesting. I was wondering where those hundred of millions of dollars might have come from. So it was helpful. I didn’t see it as pro or con anything, though I certainly see where posting in another’s name is awful. If there were several jeffe’s posting regularly we would learn another way to tell them apart. I don’t know. But the program made quite a bit out of the leadership of Israel in this, so it is not out of place, to my mind. I wish Iran would see its future in electric cars and battery production rather than nuclear as its hedge against oil depletion.

PLEASE DON’T FEED THE TROLLS.

wbur, this anti-semitism is an outrage why have you not come in to moderate this forum ?. If you are not part of the solution , you are part of the problem . Everyone else please take note of this hatred if you really care …

I do not have any problems with anyone criticizing Israel.
Far from it. What I am objecting too is the the extremism.
When someone posts that they support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad statements about Israel that sends a clear signal what they are about.

The other issue is context, posting the Jewish names in this way is a clear message that because this is an Israeli backed and Jewish backed enterprise that it deserves these political attacks. Again I appeal to the producers of On Point to at least make some attempt at controlling this.

Nuclear!

Even if there was a Chernobyl or two per decade, it won’t do as much damage the environment or contribute as negatively to our morbidity and mortality as does burning fossil fuels.

If John was asking about the cost of charging electric vehicles, I can only say that the golf-cart size ones I was checking out turned out to be cheap if time-consuming to charge. The cost was comparable to running a couple of table lamps, as I recall.
That cheapness, I thought, is probably why, as I heard on On Point (way long ago) that in London, if you drive a Smart Car, you can come into the City and have free parking, free recharging. I believe there is a driving fee which is waived too. I almost don’t believe it. I believe it was an executive at Lloyd’s of London, speaking about his wife’s driving.
You should be able to plug in virtually anywhere you park, right into a parking meter, in my view. Agassi was saying no, a monopoly on providing this service was not such a great idea. (I heard the head of Google saying he was trying to partner with the U.S. government to do what Agassi is proposing — was saying that last summer.)
And no to one auto-electric-grid provider because governments would have to step in to avoid the same kind of manipulation that oil-producing nations can now exercise, I suppose.

One of the worst cases of disinformation and distortions of truth I have ever heard…..one example….China may be a potential power in electric cars, so we should invest in electric cars???…truth is they will produce most of that electricity for those cars from really dirty coal….the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases on the planet….the man is a charlatan and you do the public a disservice by allowing him an hour of air time as if you support his position. Do you know that one coal fired electricity plant in the US (65% of the US generation capability comes from coal) emits more radiation than all 104 nuclear plants in the US combined…..?! But no mention of that by him or you?…..very poor reporting.

i’m sorry to say, but i do not see the US being part of this. they are caught in a situation where it’s impossible to get out and their economy will suffer for a very long time i guess.
anyway, thee are plenty of nations who can adopt this system immediately. this will have a huge impact for sure.
where the energy will come from?
solar panels or wind energy. panels are getting cheaper every day and the higher price seems to be part of Agassis business plan. With the greater demand the prices will logically drop and cheap energy will be available for any need.
it’s a law of mass production.
just imagine solar panels undergoing the same innovations that mobile phones did. from a 3 kilo brick into your writswatch.
now don’t say that solar panels are more complex than a mobile phone.

Audio for this show is at Odeo if you are looking for it:

http://odeo.com/episodes/24500516-Shai-Agassi-s-Clean-Car-Vision

Supplying clean electricity to power millions of electric cars is peanuts. The Teslamotors electric car consumes 0.11 kWh/km. If only one parking space of this electric car is covered with photovoltaic cells, generating electricity to drive 25000 miles per year is easy. (Parking area of 3m*6m results in 20.8m2 at 30 degrees incline. PV cellls with 15% efficiency and a typical sun radiation of 1500 hours per year will result in 4677 kWh per year or 42500 km = 26400 miles.)

Facts about Photovoltaics:
With the $180 billion spent on AIG and its bonuses, one could have financed 600 Oerlikon thinfilm photovoltaic factories, which produce 96 GW per year. That is 96 GW every single year!
http://www.tinyurl.com/oerlikon-160MW
(As a comparison all nuclear power plants in the US have a total capacity of about 100 GW).

And these photovoltaic modules can easily be placed on existing roofs: 120,000 km2 of the US is built. If only 10% of that area has roof area, that leads to a maximum solar flux of 12,000 GW or 1,200 GW at only 10% efficiency
Btw, thinfilm photovoltaics can produce up to 30 times more energy than is needed for their production:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

And as far as electric cars powered with wind energy are concerned:

By 2020 Germany will produce 150 billion kWh of wind energy per year (Needless to say that Germany has 27 times less area than USA). One million electric cars require about 2-3 billion kWh (That is less than 2% of the wind energy produced).
http://www.tinyurl.com/windcar

Oh btw, according to the Department of Energy the costs of wind power are between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh. Average capital costs of Windturbines are $1480/kW (2006).
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf

New nuclear on the other hand has reached costs between 25 cents and 30 cents per kWh:
http://www.tinyurl.com/costs-of-nuclear

Also, transporting electricity is several order of magnitudes cheaper than saving failed banks:
HVDC can transmit power from coast to coast with losses of only 3% per 1000 km at costs of €70/kW per 1000 km (transmission line only):
http://www.tinyurl.com/HVDC-costs
China is already transporting electricity from its center to the coast with efficient HVDC transmission lines: http://www.tinyurl.com/abb-HVDC
Needless to say, the first transcontinental rail-road across America was completed 1869 even before the Battle of the Little Bighorn and certainly without the tools, machines and roads available today.

Needless to say that there’s still Solar thermal, Geothermal, Biomass, Wave, Tidal and most importantly efficiency: Denmark has a higher GDP per capita than the US and yet it uses less than half of the energy per capita than the US. It is cheaper to save energy than to buy energy.

That’s James Jones opinion. One that I might subscribe to.
Lilya if this guy was Irish would you be making all these outlandish comments about the Middle East?

Please don’t call you names? Are you kidding after all the BS you have been doing on this forum, give me a break.

What a nut this lyla …your going to find yourself in an insane asylum if you continue with that hate …

?????????? Can someone tell me what she is talking about?….(She must already be in an insane aylum) ….

Lilya, u as well as everyone knows r.m. a internet troll who likes to inflame peoples views.

agruing with him will just feed the troll. u have the right to say what u want, just as jeffe, or anyone else so dont let people push your buttons or tell u what u can or cannot say(lucky enough we live in a democracy).

But realize people will say things u dont agree with and have the right to say that as well. If u wish to show a conflict of interse for or against shai than show why there can be one like Romero trys to do.

Naming board members can hardly be seen as anti-semite just as naming board members on oil companies who may have arab ties or money given by lobbist to politicans.

onpointradio.org Friday, April 24, 2009

Shai Agassi’s 2020 vision

Shai Agassi sees the world kicking its dependence on oil with electric cars. On our show today, he named the year 2020 as the tipping point.

Comment by Peter Moss:

Electric cars are a diversion. First, they draw attention away from pollution at the coal/nuke/oil/gas fueled power plants. Shai very cleverly shifted attention to Denmark where over-the-water windmills will generate electricity, and then to Israel, where solar panels will generate electricity. But what about the rest of the world? In other words, the “clean coal” people, oilocrats and the nuclear generators are NOT going to replace themselves with “clean” sources of energy.

Second, the environmental pollution from Shai’s spent batteries is unimaginable, and has not been addressed.

Third, the world’s 200 million car park would have to be replaced.

By contrast, hydrogen is the only clean automotive fuel, burning to water, and internal combustion engines can be readily retrofitted with an insulated tank for liquid hydrogen. The hydrogen can be generated existing commercial processes, by electrolyzing water to hydrogen and oxygen, and cryogenically separating and liquefying the hydrogen for distribution to additional hydrogen tanks in existing gas stations. The electricity for electrolysis and liquefaction can be generated by windmills.

Please read the chapter on “Environment and Energy.” on my web site. I hope you will invite me for a one hour segment to explain my ideas in more detail. Thank you.

Ok, I haven’t read through this whole forum, please excuse me if someone has mentioned this earlier.

Here’s how I look at energy, any moving object on this earth has energy, correct? If so, it is like a food chain cycle. We eat food, we get energy, then we can transfer our energy to something else. For example,

1) In the workout gym– we put out so much energy, and wasted them, they are not going anywhere. Why not converting all our energy into the machines, so our workout energy can provide some watts for generating the electricity for the gym, then our membership price would go down.

2) Europe is big on cycling, they have very good rental bicycle system especially in the metro area. Why not U.S. start doing this, and go beyond. Cities can install a small device in each bicycle to collect the energy generated from pedaling, at the end of the day, city will collect all these small device and plug them into a bigger unit, like a grid.

Those are wild ideas we can consider.

Jeffe, Jeffe, Jeffe

Why are you so Thick?

The reason why I posted something with “jeffe” was to show you that when somebody takes something that is yours without any compensation, it is natureal for you to be angry and outraged and want justice.

If I were to offer you $2.45 you would still want “jeffe” to be yours; but for $100.00 you would gladly give up jeffe and use something else.

“jeffe” was never yours, you don’t own this forum.

The point is… imagine…that somebody took your family home by force in 1948 (or in 1967), how would you react?

That was the only idea. How can you not get it, still cry over there?

jeffe Don’t argue with her ,its not worth your trouble . she’s a nut . She claims to be Jewish but she is just a bus..tter who twists words to her own tune. Thank god that poor guy who (supposing) (in her mind) was going to married had a good family who stopped it in time and saved his life from her nightmare .