It was President George W. Bush who said in his 2006
State of the Union speech that America needed to end her addiction to
oil. Ever since the president's oil addiction line, politicians have
been arguing about how to rehabilitate America the oil addict. And the
private sector has been pouring money into alternative energy like
flood waters over broken levees.
Meanwhile, some of the solutions
have been a little too hasty, if not misguided. A case in point is the
ethanol rush, which has sent the price of corn soaring along with all
corn-derived items. In fact, one could argue that all food prices have
gone up as an indirect result of the corn-based ethanol solution to
America's "petrolism" (addiction to petroleum). In my native country of
Liberia, the price of rice has more than doubled, thanks to the biofuel
solution to our energy need. Talk about 'the law of unintended
consequences'!
As we all know by now, other alternatives besides
corn or biofuels have stepped up to the plate to contend for the oil
replacement spot: wind power, solar energy, hybrid technology, hydrogen
fuel, and the all-electric vehicle.
Speaking of the electric car,
a businessman named Shai Agassi was on the Dennis Miller Show on August
5, 2008, touting his project to mass produce electric vehicles. Mr.
Agassi claims to have raised more than $200 million, the largest for
any startup company in recent memory.
"Previously, Shai was
President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG). He resigned from
this position on March 28 effective April 1st, 2007, to pursue
interests in alternative energy and climate change. In October 2007 he
founded a company named Project Better Place, focusing on a green
transportation infrastructure based on electric cars as an alternative
to the current fossil fuel technology" (wikipedia).
Project
Better Place will adopt the strategy of the cell phone industry: build
the infrastructure first; then build the product. It will cost $100
billion to put the infrastructure in place. That amount is equal to
what the United States spends on two months' supply of petroleum.
Unlike
oil, which is produced from just one source (fossil fuel), scientists
know how to generate electrons from various sources: coal, dam, solar,
wind, etc. And any electricity generated from any of these sources can
be used to power electric vehicles.
You see how the success of
electric vehicles could mean the end of the petrol industry. Is that
drastic or what? No, really, will such a solution be overkill? How many
petroleum companies and employees will lose their jobs for the sake of
these electric vehicles? Let's hope that oil companies will be swift
enough to make the switch from fossil fuel to electrons, or else, we
may be looking at an economic depression when the electric cars
initially take over from our gas-guzzlers. Well, of course, the world
economy would bounce back, depending on how quickly the petroleum
gorillas and oil addicts rise from the slumber to make the transition
from "big oil" to "brilliant electric".
Project Better Place will
partner with automobile companies Renault and Nissan to build the
electric vehicles. They will start by testing 50 cars. By 2010, they
will manufacture 500 electric cars. If successful, they will go into
mass production mode, with tens of thousands of electric vehicles to
hit the streets.
Starting with Israel, Project Better Place will
build swap/charge stations, like filling stations, where drivers of
electric cars can recharge their batteries or swap their batteries out.
If the plan works in Israel, Better Place will repeat the process in
Denmark. The company has selected Israel and Denmark to be the electric
vehicle guinea pigs, because, according to Shai Agassi, these nations
are "transportation islands".
This entrepreneur speaks with such
doubt-free confidence that he makes listeners feel his solution to the
oil-dependent transportation is a sure thing. He claims that making the
electric cars is actually the easy part; they already have the
technology in place. He says getting those electric car stations built
is really the bigger challenge. Once that is done, electric vehicles
will begin to flood the planet in the same way that cell phones have
covered the earth from Europe to Africa, from Asia to America, once the
satellite signals and other hardware was available.
After Dennis
Miller's interview with Shai Agassi, my only question was, "Where will
I get some serious money to invest in Better Place at the ground level,
so I can join the current ranks of alternative vehicle
multimillionaires?"
Another question: Will it cost less than
half-a-tank of gasoline to swap or charge an electronic car's battery?
Better be! What we need is not only an end to oil addiction but a
sobriety plan that won't cost us the same as our current addiction. If
not, then we would have been better off remaining petroleum addicts,
especially if we could supply the drug from our own soil.
So,
depending on cost to the consumer, in the next few years, we might just
be saying, "Give me that li-ion battery," or, "Hand me another booze ~
I mean tank of gas, and make that regular unleaded with techron."
