Some minor issues

Well I made a minifesto

I read about Better Place in WIRED‘s September issue, and man this is great. It’s about a visionary called Shai Agassi, once considered SAP‘s new CEO who started a company with the mission to end oil!
The way: end oil in transportation, and switch to an electricity powered alternative.

I usually don’t buy these world improvers, there’s mostly not much body in their ideas. Sometimes it’s just not well thought, not feasible or just assumes people to give up certain stuff (like comfort). I know one thing: people won’t change attitude and certainly not behavior if you take something away from them. So just don’t bother, if that’s the condition: start over.
Being kind of a petrol head myself I know I’m not easily going to switch over to a car that’s less then that I’m used to. Sorry guys, gotta do better!

Well, Better Place IS better. The idea is feasible and well thought, there’s decisiveness, we’re not supposed to give up certain things .. it’s just good! The big problem of electronic cars is always the charging. What if you run out of power? How fast can you charge? Who’s paying? Better Place solves these problems by dividing the ownership of the car from the actual power source. You’ll lease the battery. Refill station are able to change the battery in 5 minutes (the time you lose by filling up gas as well) and you’ll get a subscription for recharging. What’s in there for you: You’ll pay 3 times less for the power then for the gas, and save the planet an incredible amount of CO2. And: the prototype is doing 0-60 faster then my current car. The car will stay the same anyway, apart from the power source.

Kudos! You can read the entire article here online (as we can expect from the words most innovative and simple best magazine)