Shai Agassi knows how to get government money — even when the government isn’t sure how to get government money. California to set up a $1B electric car network:
Better Place (formerly Project Better Place) has scored a coup in the California Bay Area. The electric vehicle startup has struck a deal with the region, including the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, to set up a $1 billion charging network for electric cars, with car availability beginning in 2012.Unlike its charging network in Israel, it looks like the Better Place network in the Bay Area is a plan to support electric car development throughout the state. The deal in Israel involved a tie-up with Nissan-Renault to make the small cars that work with the stations, which swap out depleted batteries for new ones.
California has a rather larger area and population, and a diverse set of companies that want to commercialize electric cars. That’s likely why it was clearly stated that the thousands of Better Place stations to be installed in northern California will be agnostic to the type of electric car, allowing charging of cars with either fixed or replaceable batteries.