#a better place
The Visitors Center is housed in an old oil tank. Model cars line the showroom. Comfy seats surround tables with iPads. A staircase ascends to a conference room and the reception desk. The theater showing their promotional film uses recycled car seats.
This is A Better Place, a venture-backed American-Israeli company creating the infrastructure for electric cars. The company got its questionable name from a question posed at the 2005 World Economic Forum of how we can make the world a better place by 2020. “End our dependency on oil,” Shai Agassi, the CEO of the company, answered.
Instead of gas, these cars run on recyclable lithium ion batteries. A fully charged battery will last 120km before it runs low. Tired (or empty) batteries can be changed at a switching station, where a robot will switch the battery in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas.
Agassi launched A Better Place in 2007. Since then, they have deployed networks in Israel, Denmark, the US, Australia, China, France, and Japan. There are two pilot projects in Tokyo and San Francisco deploying electric taxis throughout the cities.
Sitting behind the wheel, the car looks exactly like other cars. But it feels different. It is silent, making the same amount of noise when the car is off as it does when it’s on because there’s no engine. And it’s smooth, feeling no difference when accelerating or slowing because there are no gears to change.
I love the way it glides, that it has little environmental impact without sacrificing quality. That’s nice. But they still have much to do. They need more charging and switching stations built, more cars sold. They need to make it more affordable, to be able to reach those who cannot discount cost-effectiveness. I’d like to think that in another decade or so, by the time I need to consider owning a car (if ever), electric cars will have replaced the gas-guzzlers crowding the highways, that we will be taking serious efforts to end our dependency on oil, and that these marginalized vehicles will be the norm.
