Why Shai Agassi Quit His Dream Job to Make the World "a Better Place"

Inspiring.....

need more, many more like him

Solar, hydrogen and fuel cells. Its clean and can power the world. Problem is oil industry cannot figure out how to create a monopoly and utilities can not either.

nasa says the sun is causing global warming. can we now figure out a way to tax sunshne?

Wouldn't it be great if the media/schools spent more time educating folks on successful entrepreneurs and what it took for them to succed. Instead they teach BS on success is acheived through steeling or inheritance and all the public can do is sit on their a_s and wait for the Feds to help them....stupid public keep holding your breath.

He looks Jewish.

God, she's annoying. Does she have to say "uh-huh" after every sentence?

She's annoying. Does she have to say "uh-huh" after every sentence?

Sachtain, kol hakavod!!

It's amazing how a simple con can get by if you promise to save the Earth (which electric cars clearly cannot do-). Earth Tech asks mindless, irrelevant questions and provides Agassi to work his con once again. The problem is that Better Place represents a bet that 1) Agassi can get away with a monopolistic business model if he wraps it in environmental chutzpa and 2) that development of a rapid charging battery is decades away. Battery swapping is a simpleminded and old idea - it was considered long before Agassi was born, and rejected for a variety of reasons. One is that a battery represents the major and prohibitive cost ogf an EV, yet Better Place errects a system that increases that expense, since every better Place client on the road taking a trio will have to be backed up by 4 or 5 spare batteries, greatly increasing the customer costs (which Agassi hides in "fees" and battery leases paid on a monthly basis. There is also the obvious fact that despite recharges in a minute, the inconvenience of having to recharge around every 80 miles (these stations cannot be numerous enough to do any better) and go out of your way to get there, makes travelling a tale of horror. So exactly what dos Better Place offer? Well, Agassi is a fool in not relizing that 1) fast recharge batteries are not decades away - A123 Systems has licenses technology that actually will reduce the cost of li ion batteries as it produces fast recharging, large (200-250 mile range) batttery packs - all within two years. And then there's EEStor. And it get seven worse - the Chevy Volt can eliminate 98% as much gasoline and emissions as Agassi's impractical, consumer-unfriendly system and will no doubt arrive in late 2010. Also BYD will arrive at half the price, making Agassi's scheme totally obsoslete. Agassi's sells his plan on lies and deception to a naiive public and Tech Ticker media. Anyone familiar with electric cars knows that Better Place has zero chance of success and will be shown to beclearly obsolste long before the first system has been completed - even in a tiny coutry like Iserael, whose government inexplicably failed to realiize that electric cars in its country hardly need to be recharged while away from home - home is simply never very afr, and simply 120 volt outlets that would cost nothing to oinstall can accomplish everything that Better Place can. Only places like same-religion Israel and nutty Denmark, looking to find some way to use that exorbitantly expensive but unusable wind power on their western coast and hoping that electric cars can suck it up, are agreeable to something as extravagant, obsolete and pointless as Better Place. Tech Ticker once again has been scammed by allowing their "civic responsibility" get in the way of their ability to reason and analyze. So what else is new. Agassi know who is suspectible to a con and thus came here. Agassi has passed the point of being able to claim nobler intentions for his plan. He can't be so dumb as to not realize that cars already on the streets and others ready by late 2010 are superior and immensely more affordable methods of eliminating carbon and gasoline. Agassi can now be deemed someone in it purely for the cash. At this point there is no doubt of that. And building a monopolisitc system as he has shows what his clear intention was all along. He wanted to be king of the road and savior of the earth,. Sorry Agassi, no one's buying your bill of goods these days, except brainless boobs like those here at Tech Ticker.

Yes, he is Jewish and Israeli as well !

OK. What's next? Open up shelters for the homeless and do something real good.

Wow, what's happened to Sarah Lacy? She actually acted like an intelligent, professional, journalist during this interview? What a shock! She usually wears those retro hairbands and acts like a bimbo. We just might have to take her seriously in the future.

OK. What's next? Open up shelters for the homeless and do something real good.

Create a biofuel/electric hybrid that runs on jatropha or switch grass. How come the public is not told about jatropha? Why are we trying to make biofuels based on food stock?

Shai quit his job because he is a fool. What kind of business model is based on an inevitable decline in demand. How stupid is that? It's gonna be 5-10 years before there are any number of swapping stations. Battery technology will have improved by then, not to mention built-in gasoline rechargers. And in 20 years, battery technology will have progressed to the point where swapping stations are largely unnecessary.

What a great interview and a heart worming story. If he makes billions on his concept is irrelevant for me. As a small business owner in Israel I totally salute Shay! I for one hopes there would be many more like him and that governments will learn to cooperate with entrepreneurs like him. I would also take this opportunity to say to Shimon Peres txs, you are an inspiration for all of us. Shy - if you ever read this, please come to give a talk at our local school in Kibbutz Givat Haim where they run a social entrepreneurship program. Doron Doron Regev Tnuanet - Global Maps Inc Office: 972-4-6308085 Mobile: 972-52-6811094 http://www.tnuanet.com Global Maps is a Carbon Neutral Company - we print ONLY when we must

We need more business leaders like this.

This Agassi guy is a smart crook. He's relying on the fact that the public and the people in power are brainwashed into this "clean" -- whatever it means -- stuff. He plans to make money like Donald Trump who made a fortune by building in "partenership" with cities or state goverments with very little of his money -- seed money. The falacy is that whatever is realy "clean" is not practical on grand scale i.e. wind, solar, and what is practical is not clean i.e. hydrogen or bateries since in order to get hydrogen or charge the batery you need "carbon" fuel anyway -- in fact if one goes that way, one will use mare dirty energy since the conversion is not very efficient. His enterprise is also risky in a long run, since the "clean energy" religion may not last -- people nowadays go away from Buda or Alah or Christ and become secular. The "clean energy' is based on the myth that "carbon" is bad and carbon dioxide is warming up the globe. Do some research, and you'll find out what an idiot Gore is, and on what shaky basis this people want to revamp our society -- note that countries like Indonesia, Iran etc have very little to loose if the world MUST go for this so called clean stuff. Quick money, that what he is after.

Amazing project, it's being implemented in Israel. I hope the next place will be in US. Imagine not a single gas station in NY (or LA), no air pollution, no paying for gas, don't care about oil prices going up. Hopefully soon...