The problem, he decided, was oil-consuming, CO2-spewing cars. The solution was to get rid of them. Not just some, and not just by substituting hybrids or flex fuels. No half measures. The internal combustion engine had to be retired. The future was in electric cars.

Agassi is thinking big. Google, Ford, and Exxon Mobil big. His brother tells me that Better Place is going to become one of the biggest companies in the world. When I ask Shai if he's worried about a competitor stealing his idea, he stares at me like I'm an idiot. "The mission is to end oil," he says, "not create a company."

"We still think we're selling to them," he says, after one of his long, drawn-out pauses. "We're not. It's not us to them. It's them to us. You see, people want this to happen; we just happen to be in the way of their getting what they want. We can't give them the car fast enough. That's something we need to capture: 'We're here to serve you,' not 'We're here to sell to you.' We're a facilitator, not the creator. This is going to be a community. We just need to get out of their way. They're going to push for policy, they're going to sell the cars, they're going to be zealots."

While I applaud Agassi's efforts, I think economics, not environmentalism, is going to be the driving force that eventually motivates the world to "end oil." Nations that consume oil want economic independence from oil producing nations, and individuals want cheap, convenient transportation. I'm not suggesting that environmental concerns won't help to sell the world on oil's eventual replacement, but that's just marketing. Were a gallon of gas currently selling for US$0.25/gallon, this wouldn't be an issue.

Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan - unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go - all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They'd buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity - the minutes.

There would be plugs in homes, offices, shopping malls. And when customers couldn't wait to "fill up," they'd go to battery exchange stations where they would pull into car-wash-like sheds, and in a few minutes, a hydraulic lift would swap the depleted battery with a fresh one. Drivers wouldn't pay a penny extra: The ERGO would own the battery.

I'm all for replacing gasoline with electricity (all other things being equal), but we'll still need a source for all of this energy. It will never be provided by wind, and assuming that solar energy even has the potential to meet such high demand, the technology isn't yet available. France has the right idea (and how often does one hear that?), producing eighty percent of its electricity by nuclear power. Worldwide, but especially in the United States, people will need to embrace nuclear energy if we intend to end our reliance on oil to any significant degree in the next several decades.

RE: t r u t h o u t | Driven: Shai Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road