Sell Electricity, Not Cars
From the New York Times, this is kind of innovative idea that gets me excited:
Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world.
The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.
"We're basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model," he said. "If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we're AT&T.;"
He said his approach was a radical departure from other electric-car ventures that relied on advances in battery technology, which have come slowly.
Instead, he plans to extend the existing electric-power grids with a wide network of intelligent recharging stations in urban areas and supplementing it with a smaller number of automated battery-replacement stations.
The economics will be more compelling in Europe, where gasoline is roughly twice as expensive as in the United States, he said. Assuming a life span of 1,500 battery recharges, he said that the energy cost of all-electric cars would be about 7 cents a mile. That would be less than a third of the cost of driving a gasoline-powered car today.
"It's much easier to transport electrons than octane molecules," he said. "We've already got a grid that goes around the entire world; all we have to do is extend it."
Mr. Agassi envisions tens of thousands of recharging spots that will adjust for both cost and use patterns. For example, a group of parking-lot chargers at a workplace might recharge a visitor's car before a regular employee's car parked for the entire day.
The system will also supplement recharging stations that require about one minute of recharge time for every minute of driving, with a smaller number of car-wash-style stations for swapping batteries. This would make it possible for a driver to go to a station rather than wait to recharge a battery, he said.
I have no idea if this will work out or not. Still, I pay around $250 month for gasoline, so I wouldn't be opposed to paying a monthly subscription fee if it came out the same, or less, per month. It's an intriguing idea and I do so like seeing ideas that are "outside the box".
This entry was tagged. Innovation