Shai Agassi is out front and loving it. Four years after announcing he would
launch the world’s first national network for all-electric cars in Israel, his
Better Place company is in pole position on the starting-grid in what appears to
be a one-car race.
In January, the first consignment of 100 Renault
Fluence ZE (“Zero Emissions”) family sedans arrived in Israel. By the end of
2012, hundreds of Israelis will be driving around the country in cars powered
only by electric batteries supplied by Better Place. They will be able to
tricklecharge their vehicles over several hours at thousands of charge spots at
their office, in the streets of major cities, at public parking lots or
overnight at their homes. Each full-charged battery will fuel about 100 miles of
driving.
For longer distances, drivers will be able to use a national
network of swap stations where spent batteries will be replaced by fully-charged
batteries in an automated process that takes less time than filling a gasoline
tank.
Agassi, a whiz-kid programmer who sold his first company for $400
million in his early thirties, says he is amazed that four years on, with the
Israeli network about to go live and more networks under construction in Denmark
and Australia – as well as pilot programs in Canada, California and Hawaii –
Better Place has no serious competitors.
No competition “There has never been a technology disruption of this magnitude
where one company was left to run with an idea, where no competition showed up
in the span of four years,” Agassi tells The Jerusalem Report.
“That to
me is astonishing. It’s as if somebody would have left Apple for four years to
build an MP3 empire and expected to catch up. In technology, usually one year is
enough to create an advantage that is really hard to catch up
afterwards.
“We all thought that the car industry would be more
pro-active in catching up and what we’re seeing is that the car industry is
extremely conservative,” he says.
Agassi, who drove an electric car to
commute to his office in Palo Alto before relocating back to Israel, where he
was born in 1968, to launch Better Place, is passionate that electric cars are
not just a passing trend but a mass-market phenomenon that will sweep the
automobile industry. He believes the all-electric Renault Fluence ZE will become
a top-selling car in both Israel and in Denmark, where the second Better Place
network is planned.
Agassi says the plan he originally announced in 2008
is on track. “By and large we were scarily accurate on most of the predictions
that we made,” he says.
“We needed a few less stations than we originally
thought, less public charge spots than we thought. Most of the charge spots are
actually at people’s homes, not in the public area,” he says.
One surprise is that early applicants are not limited to people driving shorter
distances, but include heavy users driving up to 30,000 miles a year. In the
past few months, Better Place has signed deals with 400 corporate fleets and
three of Israel’s top five leasing companies. They include major corporations
like cellphone companies whose fleets are on the road all the time, clocking up
high mileage.
The Fluence ZE is being sold to private customers for NIS
122,900 ($33,000), a comparable price to the regular model. Customers then
purchase a mileage package from Better Place that includes the battery,
recharging and swapping, up to a certain mileage per year – similar to a
cellphone package. A basic 20,000 km (12,427 miles) per year costs NIS 1,090
($295) per month, while 30,000 km (18,641 miles) costs NIS 1,599 ($432) per
month. Better Place says customers will save about 15 percent in fuel costs and
more in lower maintenance and insurance compared to a gas-fueled
vehicle.
A special package costing NIS 157,500 ($42,600) includes the
Fluence ZE and all-inclusive service for three years for those driving up to
25,000 km (15,534 miles), giving an estimated saving of 35% over a similar
gas-powered car.
“They are actually showing up for financial reasons,
less than for altruistic reasons,” says Agassi.
“When you get a car that
is actually cheaper than the gasoline equivalent, you open up a much broader
market than just the niche early adopters,” he says.
When he launched the
project in 2008, Agassi said he was also inspired to rid the world of its
dependency on oil and the pollution it creates. He predicted that oil prices
would continue to rise, increasing the advantage of electrically powered
vehicles.
“Within a decade, the cost of energy for a single year of fuel
supply for a combustion car should cost more than the cost of energy for an
electric car’s entire life, even when taking the cost of battery into
consideration,” Agassi said.
Today he is even more convinced of that
calculation.
“The odds of the world oil prices actually going down, given
everything we’re seeing around us today, I wouldn’t take that bet. If anyone’s
betting on a two-digit number in the next three years, they either found a way
to create world peace or they found a way to bring oil from places we don’t know
yet,” he says.
“Nothing in the macro conditions, short, medium and
long-term, indicates oil’s going to go below $100 a barrel.”
He also
points to China, where Better Place buys its batteries. The Chinese are looking
at the Better Place model very closely and may well launch their own competing
network, if the company does well in Israel and Denmark.
“Just in the
next five years with growth of seven to eight percent in China, you’re adding
almost all the cars in Western Europe in China in the next five years,” Agassi
says.
His confidence is shared by some of the savviest investors in the
game.
Nissan-Renault has poured more than half a billion dollars into
developing the new sedans and expects to supply more than 70,000 electric cars
for Better Place drivers in Israel over the next three years.
Leading
funds have lined up to provide Better Place with more cash than Agassi expected.
Last year, the company raised $200 million from investors, bringing the total to
around $750 million. New investors include America’s General Electric
conglomerate and the Swiss UBS banking group. The company is now valued at
approximately $2.25 billion.
“Of all the clean tech we looked at in the
area of transportation, nothing compares to Better Place. The business model is highly attractive,” says Anthony
Bernbaum, the global head of direct principal investments at HSBC, Britain’s
international banking corporation, which has sunk $150 million into Better Place
so far.
Agassi says the new investment will allow Better Place to start
expanding into other areas.
“The real next big networks will most likely
happen in Western Europe,” he says, but Better Place is already looking further
afield with future plans dependent on the success of its first three
networks.
“Think of Israel’s network as a single cell organism,
integrated and covering the entire country. Denmark is roughly the same. Think
of Australia as a three and-a-half cell organism with one network connecting it.
Melbourne is a cell roughly the size of Israel, same thing for Sydney, same
thing for Brisbane and a half cell for Canberra, connected with a freeway that
is roughly the same length as the freeway between San Diego and Seattle,” says
Agassi.
“When we prove that we can do a cell, it’s not that hard to
expand it to do multi-cell. Once you do multicell, you prove that you can
actually do places like the US ,” he says.
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