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Heroes of the Environment 2008
Shai Agassi is part scientist, part visionary, with a lot of salesman thrown in. And he thinks big. By 2011, the Israeli-born entrepreneur wants to have 5,000 electric cars on the nation's roads; by 2015, he says, "I predict no more gasoline cars will be sold in Israel."

We have no time for experiments
We have no time for experiments. A talk with Shai Agassi, founder of the company Project Better Place

Questions by Susanne Preuß

Solar Parking Lots: Charge While Your Park!
A parking lot that charged electric cars could play an important role in a future infrastructure where we will need charging stations in public places. If electric car drivers are to have the same freedom we have today with gasoline, such stations will need to be everywhere. Shai Agassi wants to solve this problem by integrating thousands of new charging stations into the electric grid, which is what China seems to be doing too.

Electric cars are suddenly sexy
It's as if somebody flipped a switch – after 100 years of being effectively ignored, electric cars have become the focus of widespread attention, in large part because pending fuel-economy and emissions regulations will be difficult if not impossible to meet without them...the Renault/Nissan program is particularly interesting, in part because of its affiliation with Project Better Place, a company founded by Shai Agassi. Agassi, a former executive at software giant SAP, has ambitious plans that include redefining the whole vehicle ownership/energy-supply experience.

Mean machines go green
WE'RE crawling bumper-to-bumper down El Camino Real, a four-lane highway out of San Francisco, when a gap opens up in the traffic ahead. My driver, multimillionaire Elon Musk, seizes the opportunity and steps on the throttle. I'm instantly pinned to my seat, watching helpless as we surge with terrifying acceleration towards the rear end of a truck. Yet there's not even the faintest hint of the roar you'd expect from the nifty little sports car we're in. The engine barely makes a sound. That's because this is the Tesla Roadster, the first all-electric production sports car of the century. Musk brakes hard and once again we're crawling with the traffic, albeit a few cars further ahead.

The revolution will not be grumpetized
The primary barrier in the way of biofuel, natural gas, and hydrogen vehicles is simple: infrastructure.

From SAP ERP Software to Saving the World: Catching Up with Shai Agassi
Shai Agassi isn't easy to track down these days. Since his abrupt departure from SAP in 2007—right before SAP's annual Sapphire show —the former president of SAP's products and technology group has been on a personal mission that has global aspirations: to get the world's population off of its reliance on oil.

Is America Ready to Drive Electric?
Certainly, electric cars have at least one built-in advantage: The electrical grid already exists. Other auto alternatives, like hydrogen fuel cells, would require the development of an expensive new infrastructure to deliver the gas to fueling stations around the country. But to make plug-ins a truly viable alternative — one that could kill petroleum — we will need to make changes to the way we supply and use electricity, both small and large.

Detroit and Silicon Valley Won’t Lose to Japan and China
When it comes to clean energy investments like hybrid batteries, America has fallen behind the international curve. Now Washington needs to get America's intellectual and industrial leaders down to the same task and make us competitive again.

Toronto could become electric transportation hub
The Ontario government is in early talks with a Silicon Valley technology company about turning Toronto and surrounding areas into an electric transportation hub, complete with electric charging infrastructure and local manufacturing of battery-powered vehicles, the Star has learned. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Better Place has already struck similar partnerships with Israel and Denmark and has raised more than $200 million in private capital, which will go toward developing a sophisticated network of charging spots and robot-controlled battery-exchange stations in high-density regions of each country.

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